In Taiyuan, there was a scholar named Wang. One morning, while walking along the road, he encountered a young woman, carrying a bundle and hurrying along by herself. She seemed to be walking with difficulty. Wang quickly ran a few steps to catch up with her. She turned out to be a beautiful girl of about sixteen or seventeen years old, which pleased Wang. He asked her, “Why are you walking alone on the road before dawn?”
The girl replied, “You’re just a passerby, unable to share in my worries. Why even ask?”
Wang said, “What troubles you? Perhaps I can help in some way. I won’t refuse.”
With a sorrowful expression, the girl said, “My parents, greedy for money, sold me as a concubine to a wealthy family. The wife there is extremely jealous and humiliates me day and night. I can’t bear it any longer and want to run away as far as I can.”
Wang asked, “Where do you plan to go?”
The girl replied, “I’m on the run; there’s no fixed place I can go.”
Wang said, “My house is not far from here. You could stay there temporarily, if you’d like.”
The girl happily agreed. Wang carried her bundle for her, and they went back to his house. Once inside, the girl looked around and asked, “Why do you have no family members here?”
Wang answered, “This is my study.”
The girl said, “This place is perfect. If you show me kindness and let me stay, please keep it a secret and don’t tell anyone.”
Wang immediately agreed. That night, they shared the same bed. Wang hid her in a secret room, and many days passed without anyone knowing. Later, Wang revealed this to his wife. His wife, Chen, upon hearing it, suspected that the girl was an escaping concubine from a prominent family and advised Wang to send her away. But Wang stubbornly refused to listen.
One day, Wang happened to go to the market and encountered a Taoist priest. As soon as the priest saw Wang, he looked shocked and asked, “Have you met anyone recently?”
Wang replied, “No.”
The priest said, “Your whole body is surrounded by evil energy. How can you say no?”
Wang protested that he had not. The priest sighed and said, “It’s unbelievable! How can there be someone so close to death and yet so ignorant of it?”
Wang found the priest’s words unsettling and began to doubt the girl. But then he thought, “She’s clearly a beautiful girl. How could she be a monster?” He dismissed the priest’s warning, suspecting he might just be after money under the guise of exorcising spirits.
Soon after, Wang returned to his study and found the main door locked from the inside. This aroused his suspicion, so he climbed over a broken wall to enter the courtyard. He noticed the door to the inner room was also shut. Silently, he crept to the window and peeked inside. What he saw terrified him: a hideous demon with a ghastly face, sharp, saw-like teeth, spreading a human skin on the bed and using a colored brush to paint on it. After finishing, the demon tossed aside the brush, picked up the skin, and, like shaking out a piece of clothing, draped it over itself, instantly transforming into the beautiful girl.
Wang, seeing this with his own eyes, was paralyzed with fear. Like a wild animal, he crawled on all fours out of the house and hurriedly sought out the Taoist priest, but the priest had vanished. After searching everywhere, he finally found the priest in the outskirts of town and fell to his knees, begging for help.
The priest said, “Let me drive it away. It’s a creature that has worked hard to cultivate itself, and it’s only recently found a replacement body to reincarnate. I don’t wish to kill it.” He then handed Wang a whisk and told him to hang it by the bedroom door. Before parting, the priest agreed to meet Wang later at the Qingdi Temple.
When Wang returned home, he was too afraid to enter the study, so he slept in the inner room of his house and hung the whisk by the door. At around the first watch of the night, he heard rustling sounds outside. Too terrified to peek, he asked his wife to check. She saw the girl standing outside, glaring at the whisk, too afraid to enter. After a long while, she left. But a short time later, the girl returned, cursing furiously, “That priest thinks he can scare me? I won’t give up! Do they expect me to just spit out the meat I’ve already eaten?” She tore the whisk to shreds, broke down the door, and stormed in. The demon leaped onto Wang’s bed, tore open his chest and stomach, and ripped out his heart before fleeing.
Wang’s wife, Chen, screamed in horror. When the maid brought a candle to check, they found Wang already dead, his abdomen a bloody, mangled mess. Chen, too frightened to make a fuss, silently wept in despair.
The next morning, Chen sent Wang’s younger brother, Erlang, to inform the priest. The priest was enraged, saying, “I showed it mercy, but that demon dares to act so recklessly!” He immediately followed Erlang to Wang’s house. The girl was nowhere to be found. The priest looked around and said, “Luckily, it hasn’t gone far.” He then asked, “Who lives in the southern courtyard?”
Erlang replied, “That’s my house.”
The priest said, “The demon is there now.”
Erlang was shocked and doubted the priest’s words. The priest asked, “Has anyone unfamiliar come to your house?”
Erlang said, “I went to find you early this morning and haven’t been home, so I’m not sure. Let me go ask.” He left and soon returned, saying, “Indeed, a strange old woman came this morning, seeking work as a servant. My wife took her in, and she’s still there.”
The priest said, “That’s the demon.”
They all went to Erlang’s house together. The priest, holding a wooden sword, stood in the courtyard and shouted, “Wicked demon, return my whisk!”
The old woman inside was horrified and tried to flee. The priest chased her, striking her with the sword. The woman fell, and with a ripping sound, the human skin tore apart, revealing the demon’s true form, which lay on the ground howling like a pig. The priest decapitated the demon with his wooden sword, and its body turned into a thick black smoke that swirled on the ground. The priest pulled out a gourd, uncorked it, and placed it on the smoke. In no time, the smoke was completely sucked into the gourd. The priest corked the gourd and put it into his bag.
When they examined the human skin on the ground, they saw that it had eyebrows, eyes, hands, and feet—nothing was missing. The priest rolled up the skin like a scroll, packed it into his bag, and prepared to leave.
Chen knelt at the door, begging the priest to bring Wang back to life. The priest replied that he lacked the power to do so. Chen wept bitterly, refusing to rise. After thinking for a while, the priest said, “My skills are limited; I cannot raise the dead. However, I’ll point you to someone who might. You should seek him out.”
Chen asked, “Who is it?”
The priest said, “There’s a madman in the marketplace who often lies in the dirt. Try pleading with him. If he insults you, don’t be offended.”
Wang’s brother Erlang, who knew the madman, set off with Chen to find him. When they arrived, they saw a beggar singing crazily on the street, with snot trailing down three feet, and a stench so foul that no one could approach. Chen knelt and shuffled toward him on her knees. The beggar laughed, “Does this beauty love me?”
Chen explained the situation. The beggar laughed again, “Anyone can be your husband. Why save him?”
Chen continued to beg. The beggar said, “What a strange thing! A dead man, and you want me to revive him? Am I the King of Hell?” He angrily struck Chen with his begging stick, and she endured the pain.
By this time, a crowd had gathered around them, thick as a wall. The beggar spat a large wad of phlegm into his hand and held it to Chen’s mouth, saying, “Eat it!”
Chen’s face turned red with embarrassment, but recalling the priest’s words, she swallowed it, gagging as she did. The phlegm felt like a lump of cotton stuck in her throat, scraping as it went down and settling heavily in her chest.
The beggar laughed, “The beauty loves me!” Then he stood up and walked away, ignoring Chen. Chen and Erlang followed him to the temple, but he vanished without a trace, leaving them ashamed and frustrated as they returned home.
Chen returned home, filled with both grief over her husband's tragic death and shame from the humiliation of having swallowed someone else's phlegm. She cried out to the heavens, wishing for her own death. She wanted to clean the blood and prepare her husband’s body for burial, but the family members were too frightened to come near. Chen had no choice but to pick up Wang’s body herself, gathering the intestines that had spilled from his stomach, all the while weeping bitterly.
As her cries grew hoarse and her strength waned, she suddenly felt the urge to vomit. The hard lump that had gathered in her chest and abdomen surged up her throat. Before she could turn her head, it fell directly into Wang’s chest cavity. Startled, Chen looked down and saw that it was a human heart, pulsing and emitting wisps of smoke-like heat as it beat inside Wang's chest. Overcome with astonishment, she quickly pressed Wang’s chest together with both hands, pushing the sides of the cavity to close. As soon as she eased her grip, warm steam began to escape from the gaps, so she tore a piece of silk and hurriedly wrapped Wang’s chest and abdomen tightly.
When she touched his body again, she could feel that it was gradually warming up. She then covered him with a cotton blanket. In the middle of the night, she checked on him and found that he had begun to breathe faintly through his nostrils. By morning, Wang was miraculously alive. He only said, “It feels like a vague dream. I can barely remember, but I feel a faint pain in my stomach.”
Looking at the spot where the demon had clawed him, they saw that a scab, the size of a coin, had formed. In a short time, Wang fully recovered.
Yishi said: “People in this world are truly foolish! Even when it's clearly a demon, they think it’s a beauty. And foolish people, blind to the truth, often mistake sound advice for lies. Greedy for beauty, they indulge without restraint, and in the end, their own wife will swallow the phlegm of another and take it as a delicacy. Human virtue and vice will inevitably receive their due rewards according to the will of heaven. Yet, the ignorant and the foolish remain unaware. How pitiful!"
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