Cai Weigong, a provincial graduate, used to say: a ghost has three tricks. The first is to beguile, the second is to block, the third is to frighten.
Asked what he meant, he told this story.
My cousin Lü was a salaried student at Songjiang, a man of great swagger who called himself Mr Openhanded. He was crossing the west country by Mao Lake one evening as the light failed, when he saw a woman with paint on her face running in a distracted way with a rope in her hand. She caught sight of Lü, dodged off under a big tree, and dropped the rope.
Lü picked it up. It was a rope of grass, and it smelled of damp grave air. He knew what it was: a hanging ghost. He put it in his coat and walked straight on.
The woman came out of the tree and got in front of him to block him. He went left; she blocked left. He went right; she blocked right. Lü knew this one too — the thing people call the ghost wall. He walked straight at her.
The ghost could do nothing with him. It gave a long howl and changed: hair loose, blood running, tongue out a foot, hopping at him.
Lü said:
“Earlier the paint and powder was to beguile me. Blocking my path was to block me. Now this disgusting display is to frighten me. That is all three tricks spent, and I am still not afraid. I take it you have nothing else. — Do you happen to know that people call me Mr Openhanded?”
The ghost returned to her own shape and knelt.
“I am a woman of the Shi family in the town. I quarrelled with my husband and hanged myself in a moment of stupidity. Now I have heard that a wife over east of the lake is also on bad terms with hers, so I was on my way to take her place. I never expected you to stop me on the road and take my rope. I am genuinely at the end of my resources. I only ask you to release me.”
“How?”
“Tell the Shi family in the town to hold a rite, invite a good monk, and recite the Rebirth Spell many times over. Then I can be reborn.”
Lü laughed. “I am the good monk. I have a Rebirth Spell. I will recite it for you.”
And he sang out, loud:
What a great world — nothing in the way, nothing in the dark. Dying and being born, what need of a substitute? If you mean to go, then go. Would that not be the simplest thing?
The ghost heard it and understood. She prostrated herself twice and ran off.
Afterwards the people of that country said the place had never been quiet before, but that from the day Mr Openhanded passed through, nothing troubled it again.
