Ma Feng of Liyang was a provincial graduate without office, tutoring in the house of a family named Li in the west village.
A neighbour named Wang was a violent man who beat his wife. His wife was starving and had nothing, and she stole a chicken from the Li household and cooked it. The Li family found out and told her husband. He was drunk. In a rage he took a knife and dragged his wife over, and once he had the facts out of her he was going to kill her.
In her terror the wife accused Ma Feng of stealing the chicken.
Ma argued and could not prove himself.
“There is a shrine of Lord Guan in the village,” he said. “Let us go and cast the blocks. If they fall yin, the woman stole it. If they fall yang, the man did.”
They cast three times. All three came up yang.
Wang dropped the knife and let his wife go home. And Ma Feng, on account of a stolen chicken, was despised by the whole village and lost his tutoring post for years.
Some time after, a medium was holding a planchette, and the god who came was Lord Guan. Ma Feng, remembering, roundly abused the god for his inaccuracy. The planchette wrote in the ash:
Ma Feng. You will one day hold authority over people. Do you not understand that some matters are urgent and others can wait? You stealing a chicken costs you a post. That woman stealing a chicken dies at once under a knife. I would rather bear the name of being wrong and save a living life. God Above noted that I understand the weight of things, and promoted me three grades. And you resent me?
Ma said: “Lord Guan has been made an emperor. What grades are left to rise?”
The god wrote:
Now, in all the nine provinces there is a shrine of Lord Guan. How should there be enough Lords Guan to go round and share the offerings? Every village shrine has been set up by order of God Above, and in each one some ghost of that place who was upright in life is appointed to do the work. The real Lord Guan stands at the left hand of God. How would he have time to come down into the world?
Ma Feng was convinced.