Master Shang, a native of Mount Tai, lived alone in a quiet study. One autumn night, when the Milky Way hung bright and the moon rode in the sky, he was pacing among the flowers, lost in fancies, when a woman leaped over the wall and came to him, laughing, "Scholar, what are you thinking of so deeply?" Shang drew near and looked at her—her beauty was like a fairy's. Overjoyed, he clasped her to him and they grew most intimate. She said her name was Hu, called Sanjie. Asked where she lived, she only smiled and did not answer. Shang did not press her, but vowed to love her forever. From this time she came every night without fail. One night, sitting knee to knee with Shang by the lamp, she was so dear to him that he could not take his eyes from her. "Why do you stare at me so?" she asked, smiling. "I look at you as one looks at red leaves and peach-blossom," he said; "I could gaze all night and not be weary." "I am plain," said Sanjie; "that you should look on me so kindly—if you saw my fourth sister, I know not how you would be enchanted." Shang was the more stirred, and, longing to see her beauty, knelt long and begged.
The next night Sanjie indeed brought her fourth sister. She was just fifteen, fresh as dew-laden lotus-pollen, rosy as a misted apricot-blossom; her smile was lovely, her beauty beyond all words. Shang, wild with joy, made her sit down. Sanjie talked and laughed with him, but the fourth sister only drew her embroidered girdle through her fingers and kept her head bent. Before long Sanjie rose to go, and her sister would have followed, but Shang held her fast and called to Sanjie, "I pray you, say a word for me." Sanjie laughed. "The mad gallant is impatient!" she said. "Sister, do stay a little." The fourth sister said nothing, and Sanjie went away. The two made love to their heart's content, and afterward, arm serving for pillow, told each other all their lives without concealment. The fourth sister said she was a fox; but Shang, clinging to her beauty, thought nothing of it. "My sister," said the fourth, "is cruel-hearted; she has killed three men already, and none that she bewitched ever escaped. I, who am favored with your love, cannot bear to see you perish; you must break with her at once." Frightened, Shang asked what to do. "Though I am a fox," she said, "I have the true arts of the immortals. I will write a charm and paste it on your bedroom door; it will keep her away." So she wrote it. At dawn Sanjie came, but seeing the charm, drew back. "The faithless girl," she said, "who has given her whole heart to a new lover and forgotten her go-between! You two were fated to be together; I bear you no grudge, but why this?" and she went away. Some days later the fourth sister went abroad, agreeing to return the night after.
That day Shang chanced to go out and look about. At the foot of the hill was an oak-grove, and from its depths came a young woman of considerable charm. Coming close to Shang, she said, "Why does the scholar cling so to the Hu sisters? They cannot give you a single coin." And she handed him a string of cash. "Take this and buy some good wine," she said; "I will bring a few dishes and make merry with you." Shang put the money in his bosom and went home and did as she bade. In a little while the woman came, set on the table a roasted chicken and a salted pig's shoulder, and sliced them with a knife. They drank and jested, passing the time in high good humor, and then, blowing out the candle, went to bed, giving themselves up to wanton pleasure. They rose only at daylight, and were sitting on the edge of the bed, one pulling on a shoe, when they heard voices. Listening, they found the Hu sisters had entered the room. At the sight of them the woman fled in confusion, leaving a shoe on the bed. The two girls cried out, "The wanton fox! How dare she share a man's bed!" and pursued her, returning after some time. The fourth sister reproached Shang: "You have no self-respect, to take up with a wanton fox. I will not come near you again!" and she turned away in dudgeon. Shang, in a panic, threw himself on his knees, with the most piteous entreaties; the third sister interceded for him, and the fourth's anger was somewhat appeased, so that they became as loving as before.
One day a man of Shaanxi came riding on a donkey to the gate. "I have been seeking a demon," he said, "not for a day only, and now at last I have found it." Shang's father, thinking his words strange, asked where he came from. "I wander over the waters and travel the four quarters," said he, "and in a twelvemonth of more than ten moons am eight or nine from home. A demon bewitched and killed my younger brother. I returned in deep grief, and swore to seek it out and destroy it. I have journeyed thousands of li without a trace, and now it is in your house. If it is not cut off, another will follow my brother to death." Now Shang was intimate with the woman, and his parents, having some inkling of it, were much afraid when they heard the stranger's words. They invited him in and begged him to work his arts. He brought out two bottles and set them on the ground, and after a long muttering of charms and spells four masses of black mist dropped into the bottles. The stranger was delighted. "The whole family is here," he said, and, wrapping the mouths of the bottles in pigs' bladders, sealed them fast. Shang's father too was pleased and pressed the visitor to stay for a meal.
Shang's heart smote him. Creeping close to the bottles, he listened and heard the fourth sister's voice within: "You sit and look on and will not save me—how cruel-hearted you are!" Shang was moved. He hastened to unseal the bottles, but the fastening could not be undone. The fourth sister spoke again: "Do not try that. Only knock down the flag on the altar and prick a hole in the bladder with a needle, and I shall come out." Shang did as she said, and indeed a thread of white vapor issued through the hole and went up to the clouds. When the stranger came out and saw the flag fallen to the ground, he cried in alarm, "She has escaped! This must be the young gentleman's doing." He shook the bottles and listened, then said, "Luckily but one has escaped. This creature is not fated to die; she may be pardoned." And he went away with the bottles.
Later Shang was in the fields overseeing his hired reapers when he saw the fourth sister sitting under a tree at a distance. He went up and clasped her hand, asking how she did. "Ten years have passed since we parted," she said; "my great elixir is now perfected. But the thought of you has never left me, and so I came once more to ask after you." Shang wished her to return with him. "I am no longer what I was," she said; "I must not be soiled by earthly passion. We shall meet again." With that she vanished. Twenty years and more later, when Shang was living alone, he saw the fourth sister come in from outside, and greeted her joyfully. "I am now enrolled in the register of the immortals," she said, "and should not tread the dusty world again. But moved by your affection, I have come to tell you the day of your death. Set your affairs in order betimes, and do not grieve. I will raise you as a ghost-immortal, and you shall know no hardship." So she took her leave and went. On that very day Shang died. He was a relative of my friend Li Wenyu, who saw all this himself.