Zhu Erdan of Lingyang, styled Xiaoming, was generous and bold by nature but dull of apprehension. Although he studied hard, he had as yet won no fame. One day the members of a literary club were feasting, and one of them joked, "You have a reputation for boldness. Can you, in the dead of night, carry here the judge of the left corridor of the Temple of the Ten Kings? If so, we will club together to buy you a feast." For at Lingyang there was a Temple of the Ten Kings, whose gods and devils were carved in wood and decked out as if alive. In the eastern gallery stood a standing judge with a green face and red beard, of most hideous aspect. Some had heard, at night, sounds of torture from the two galleries, and whoever entered felt his hair stand on end; so they used this to put Zhu to the test. Zhu laughed, rose, and went off without more ado. Before long he shouted from outside the door, "I have brought the long-bearded Grand Master!" The company rose, and soon he carried the judge in and set him on a table, pouring out three libations of wine. At the sight, the others cowered and could not sit at ease, and begged him to carry it back again. Zhu poured more wine on the ground and prayed, "Your pupil is rash and unlettered; the Grand Master will surely not take offense. My humble home is not far; pray honor it by coming when you are in the mood for a drink, and do not stand on ceremony." Then he carried the figure away. The next day the company indeed invited him to drink; returning toward dusk half drunk, with his zest not yet exhausted, he trimmed his lamp and drank alone.
Suddenly someone raised the curtain and entered—it was the judge. Zhu started up, saying, "Alas, I am as good as dead! Last night I offered you insult; have you come now to visit me with axe and axe-block?" The judge, parting his thick beard, smiled. "No indeed. Moved by your lofty courtesy yesterday, I was at leisure tonight, and have come to keep the appointment of a man of understanding." Zhu was overjoyed and, taking him by the sleeve, urged him to sit, himself rising to wash the cups and light the fire. The judge said, "The weather is mild; let us drink cold." Zhu obeyed and set the flask on the table, then ran to tell his household to prepare meat and fruit. His wife was much alarmed and warned him not to go out. Zhu paid no heed, but waited for the dishes to be prepared and brought them in. Cups were changed and pledges exchanged before he asked the judge's name. "My surname is Lu, and I have no given name," said the judge. When they discussed allusions and anecdotes, he answered readily like an echo. Asked whether he knew the art of the examination essay, he replied, "I can distinguish good from bad well enough. Reading in the nether world differs little from reading in this one." Lu drank like a great toper, emptying ten goblets at a draught. Zhu drank with him all day, till, insensibly, he toppled over like a mountain, and fell asleep across the table. When he woke, the candle was guttering low and his ghostly guest had gone. From then on the judge came every two or three days, and their intimacy deepened; at times they slept with their feet touching. Zhu submitted his manuscripts, which Lu would score with red ink, saying they were no good. One night Zhu, drunk, slept first while Lu still drank alone. Suddenly, in his drunken dream, Zhu felt a slight pain in his belly and bowels. Waking, he saw Lu sitting upright by the bed, having cut open his chest to take out his stomach and guts, which he was arranging strip by strip. "We have never had a quarrel," Zhu cried in alarm. "Why would you kill me?" Lu smiled. "Do not fear! I am only exchanging your dull heart for a clever one." Calmly he put back the entrails, closed the cavity, and finally bound Zhu's waist with a piece of cloth. When he had done, there was no blood on the couch, and Zhu felt only a little numbness in his belly. Seeing a lump of flesh on the table, he asked what it was. "That is your heart," said Lu. "Your essays are sluggish, and I knew your apertures were stopped up. Just now in the shades, out of a thousand hearts I picked a good one to exchange for yours, leaving this to make up the count." He rose, shut the door, and went. When daylight came and Zhu examined himself, he found the wound already closed, with red thread-like lines remaining. From then on his power of composition advanced by leaps and bounds, and he never forgot what he once saw. A few days later he showed Lu another manuscript. "It will do," said Lu. "But your fortune is slight; you cannot rise to great eminence—a provincial and a district degree at most." "When?" asked Zhu. "This very year you will take the first place." Before long Zhu came first in the district examination and indeed headed the provincial list. The scholars of his club, who had always sneered at him, were astonished when they saw his examination paper; on close inquiry they learned of his wonder-working. They all begged Zhu to introduce them, wishing to make Lu's acquaintance. Lu agreed, and a great banquet was prepared. When Lu arrived at the first watch, his red beard bristling and his eyes flashing like lightning, the company blanched and their teeth chattered, and they slipped away one by one.
Zhu then carried Lu home to drink, and when both were tipsy he said, "For washing my bowels and changing my stomach I am already much beholden. There is one more matter I would trouble you with, if I may." Lu asked him to name it. "Heart and bowels can be changed," said Zhu, "and I suppose a face may be changed too. My wife is not ill-favored in her lower parts, but her countenance leaves much to be desired. Could I trouble your knife?" Lu smiled. "Willingly! Give me time to contrive it." Some days later, at midnight, he knocked at the door. Zhu rose hastily to admit him and, by candlelight, saw he carried something wrapped in his lapel. Asked what it was, he said, "What you charged me with was long hard to obtain. But just now I came by a beauty's head and have brought it to fulfill your command." Zhu parted the folds and saw the neck still wet with blood. Lu urged him to go in at once and not alarm the fowls and dogs. Zhu feared the doors were bolted for the night. Lu came and, pushing the door with his hand, it opened of itself. They went to the bedchamber, where the lady lay sleeping on her side. Lu gave the head to Zhu to hold, drew a bright dagger from his boot, and laid it against the lady's neck, cutting as one would cut bean-curd; the blade passed through and the head fell on the pillow. He hastily took the beauty's head from Zhu's arms and fitted it to the neck, adjusting it carefully, then pressed it down. Presently he moved the pillow to the shoulder, bade Zhu bury the discarded head in some quiet spot, and departed. When Zhu's wife woke she felt a slight numbness at her neck, and her cheeks were rough and scaly; rubbing them, she brought away flakes of blood. Much alarmed, she called her maid to fetch water for washing. The maid, seeing her face all a mass of blood, was frightened out of her wits; the basin water turned quite red. When she raised her head her whole face was changed, and she was terrified beyond measure. Taking up a mirror, the lady could not account for it at all, till Zhu came in and told her. Then, looking long and carefully, they saw long eyebrows sweeping over the temples and dimples resting on the cheekbones—a beauty from a painting. Unfastening her collar to examine, they found a ring of red line, above and below which the flesh was plainly of a different color.
Now, Judge Wu had a daughter of great beauty who had lost two husbands without being married, so that at nineteen she was still unwed. When she went to the Temple of the Ten Kings on the festival of the first full moon, among the throng was a scoundrel who, struck with desire, secretly traced her dwelling and, scaling the wall by night and digging through the bedroom door, killed a maid under the bed and tried to force the girl; she resisted and screamed, and in a rage he killed her. Judge Wu's wife, hearing a faint stir, sent a maid to look, who was frightened to death by the corpse. The whole household rose, laid the body on the hall with the head beside the neck, and wept and wailed all night long. At dawn, when the coverlet was lifted, the body was there but the head was gone. The servants were all flogged on the charge of negligent watching, so that the corpse had been devoured by dogs. The judge reported it to the prefecture, which set a strict limit for catching the criminal, but in three months no one was found. Gradually word of the Zhu family's head-changing wonder reached Judge Wu. He was suspicious and sent an old woman to spy on the house. She came in and saw the lady, fled in terror, and told Judge Wu. He looked at his daughter's corpse, which was still there, and was too amazed to decide anything. Guessing that Zhu had killed his daughter by some black art, he went to accuse him. Zhu said, "My wife dreamed of having her head changed, and I truly cannot understand why. To say that I killed her would be a great wrong." Wu did not believe him and brought suit. The family was taken and examined, but all answered as their master had, and the prefect could not decide the case. When Zhu came home he sought Lu's counsel. Lu said, "That is not hard. I shall make the daughter speak for herself." That night Wu dreamed his daughter said, "I was killed by Yang Danian of Suxi; it had nothing to do with Zhu the graduate. He did not covet my beauty; Judge Lu took my head and exchanged it for his. Thus my body died while my head lived on. Do not bear him ill will." He woke and told his wife, who had dreamed the same. So he reported it to the officials, who found that there was indeed a Yang Danian. He was arrested and put in fetters and confessed his crime. Judge Wu then went to Zhu's house, begged to see the lady, and from that time they were father-in-law and son-in-law. So the head of Zhu's wife was joined to the daughter's corpse and buried together.
Three times Zhu entered the metropolitan examination and three times was rejected for breaches of the regulations, so that he lost all heart for advancement. Thirty years passed, and one night Lu told him, "Your span of life is running out." Asked when it would end, he answered, "In five days." "Can you save me?" "Only Heaven disposes," said Lu. "How can a man presume to act for himself? And from the standpoint of a man of understanding, life and death are one and the same. Why rejoice in living and mourn over dying?" Zhu, agreeing with him, had his burial clothes and coffin prepared. When all was ready, he died in his best attire. The next day, as his wife was weeping beside the bier, Zhu suddenly came in gently from outside. She was afraid. "I am indeed a ghost," said Zhu, "but no different from what I was in life. Only I am loath to leave you, a widow with an orphan son." She wept bitterly, tears streaming down her breast, while he comforted her tenderly. "In old times," said she, "there was a saying of souls returning to life. Since you have a spirit, why not be born again?" "The decree of Heaven cannot be defied," said Zhu. "What office do you hold in the shades?" she asked. "Lu the Judge recommended me to superintend the record-books, and I have been given a post; it is no hardship." His wife would have said more, but Zhu said, "The Judge came with me; let some wine and food be made ready," and hurried out. She made the preparations as he bade, and then heard laughter and high, clear voices within the room, just as in his lifetime. Peeping in at midnight, she found the place empty.
From then on he came once in three or four days, sometimes staying the night in dalliance, and setting the household affairs in order. His son Zhu Wei was then only five, and whenever he came he would take him in his arms; when the boy reached seven or eight, he taught him to read by lamplight. The son was clever, and at nine could write essays; at fifteen he entered the county school, never knowing he had had no father. After this the visits grew rarer, at last only once a month. One evening he came and said to his wife, "Now I bid you a last farewell." "Whither are you going?" she asked. "I am appointed, by the decree of the Son of Heaven, Prefect of Taihua, and must depart afar. My business is heavy and the way long, so I cannot come again." Mother and son clung to him weeping. "Do not so," he said. "The boy is grown and there is substance enough for the household. Are there not cranes and phoenixes that part after a hundred years?" Then, turning to his son, "Be a good man," he said, "and do not disgrace your father. We shall meet again after ten years." He went straight out of the door, and they never saw him more.
Later Zhu Wei, at twenty-five, passed the highest examination and was appointed a messenger. Charged with sacrificing at the Western Mountain, he passed through Huayin when suddenly a chariot with plumed outriders dashed into his procession. Astonished, he looked closely at the man in the carriage—it was his father. He got down and fell weeping by the roadside. His father halted the chariot. "Your official name is good," he said. "I can shut my eyes in peace." Zhu Wei would not rise. His father urged on the carriage and drove on at fire-speed without looking back. After some paces he turned his head, and unloosing his girdle-knife sent it to his son by a man. From afar he cried, "Wear it and you will be noble." Zhu Wei would have followed, but the carriage and horsemen floated away like the wind and vanished in a trice. He grieved long. Drawing the knife, he saw it was made with exquisite skill and bore a single line of inscription: "Be bold of heart and small of mind; be round of wit and square of conduct." Zhu Wei later rose to be a Secretary of War. He had five sons, named Chen, Qian, Mi, Hun, and Shen. One night he dreamed his father said, "The girdle-knife should go to Hun." He obeyed, and Hun became a censor with a fine official name.
The Historian of the Strange remarks: "To cut off a crane's leg to lengthen a duck's is the work of a bungler; to graft a flower on another stem is the wonder of an innovator—and what of one who trims hearts and livers and plies knife and awl upon necks? Lu the Judge may be said to clothe fair bone in a foul skin. From the end of the Ming to this day is not long; is Lu of Lingyang still alive? Does any of his spirit linger? To hold the whip for him would be my delight and admiration."