Fang Yanji was skilled at the planchette. Every year his spirit-medium had to be a different immortal, and in the fifth year of the Qianlong reign the spirit who came was a Perfected Man named Chen, courtesy name the Old Bearded One, who liked to talk at length with people.
One day everyone asked him why drowned ghosts always smell of sheep. Chen said:
“When a person’s po enters the earth and touches water it goes rank. The rivers are all mud and filth at the bottom, and a po soaked in it turns to the smell of sheep within seven days. Any river ghost with that smell on it cannot harm people. Only after five years, when the smell has gone, can it do anything.”
Someone asked about people burned to death.
“The burned are incomplete in their five limbs, and must find a companion to merge with before they can take shape. Sometimes two, sometimes three. And the rule for merging is: the old do not merge with the young, and men do not merge with women.”
And then he said the thing worth remembering:
“When a plant or tree becomes a spirit it must receive the essence of the moon. But not on just any night — it must be the moon of a gengshen night.
“Because on the gengshen night the moonlight contains the Emperor’s Flowing Nectar. Its shape is like countless olives, with ten thousand strands of golden thread strung together and hanging down.
“Any plant of the human world that receives its essence can become a spirit. Foxes and ghosts that eat it can manifest their powers.
“The reason is this: plants have a nature but no life. The flowing nectar has a nature, and can supply what is missing — the life. But foxes and ghosts already have a life of their own, so for them eating it is simply of great benefit.”
