Vice-Prefect Li of Guangxi was enormously rich. He kept seven concubines and his treasures were piled like a hill. He died of illness at twenty-seven.
He had an old servant, a man of long and steady loyalty, who grieved that his master had died so young and joined the seven women in setting up a fast and a Daoist rite. In the middle of it a priest came to the door with a subscription book, and the old servant snapped at him.
“My master has just died. We have no time for you.”
The Daoist smiled.
“Would you like your master back alive? I can work the rite and bring his soul home.”
The old servant ran to tell the women. They were amazed. They came out to bow — and the Daoist was gone. The servant and the women blamed each other bitterly for having slighted an immortal.
A few days later the old servant met the Daoist in the street. He seized him in fright and joy and begged his pardon.
“It is not that I grudge you your master’s life,” the Daoist said. “But the rule of the underworld is this: for a dead man to return to the light, someone must take his place. I was afraid no one in your household would consent to die instead. That is why I left.”
“Let me go home and discuss it.”
He pulled the Daoist home and told the women. At first, when they heard the Daoist had come, they were delighted. When they heard that one of them must die instead, they were furious, and they looked at one another in silence.
The old servant said flatly: “The ladies are young, and their lives are worth something. What is an old slave’s remaining time worth?”
He went out to the Daoist. “Would I do, in his place?”
“If you can do it without regret and without fear.”
“I can.”
“Then for your sincerity’s sake, go out and take your leave of your friends and kin. When my rite is complete in three days, it will take effect in seven.”
The old servant lodged the Daoist in the house and served him morning and evening. He went from house to house, told everyone what he was about to do, and wept his goodbyes. Some of his friends laughed. Some marvelled. Some pitied him. Some jeered and did not believe him.
He passed the temple of the Holy Emperor, where he had always worshipped, and went in and prayed: “This slave is going to die in his master’s place. Help the Daoist send the master’s soul home.”
He had not finished when a barefoot monk standing before the altar shouted at him.
“Your whole face is full of demon air. Calamity is on you! I will save you — but say nothing of it.”
He gave the servant a paper packet. “Open it at the moment.” Then he was not there.
The old servant opened it in secret. Inside were five iron claws and a rope. He put them in his bosom.
When the three days were up the Daoist had the servant’s bed moved opposite the master’s coffin, locked the door with an iron chain, and cut a hole through which food could be passed. He built an altar near the women’s quarters and began to recite his spells.
Nothing at all happened. The old servant began to doubt.
At the moment the doubt formed, there was a rustling under the bed. Two black things leapt out of the floor: green eyes, deep sockets, short hair all over, about two feet tall, heads the size of cartwheels. They glared at the old servant, and glared as they walked, and circled the coffin and gnawed at its seams with their teeth. The seams opened. There was a cough inside — unmistakably the master’s voice.
The two things lifted the coffin lid and helped the master out. He looked wasted, as though illness still had hold of him. The two rubbed his belly, and sound came gradually into his mouth.
The old servant watched him. The shape was the master’s. The voice was the Daoist’s.
Grimly he said to himself: So what the Holy Emperor told me was true. He snatched at the packet in his bosom. The five claws flew out and became a golden dragon some tens of feet long, which seized him up and set him on a beam with the rope.
Dazed, he looked down. The two demons were helping the master out of the coffin and over to the servant’s bed — and there was no one in it.
The master shouted: “The rite has failed!”
The two demons raged round the room hunting for him and could not find him. The master was furious. He took the bed-curtains and the bedding and tore them to shreds. Then one of the demons looked up, saw the servant on the beam, and was overjoyed; it and the master leapt for him.
Before they reached the beam there was one crack of thunder. The servant dropped to the floor. The coffin shut as it had been. The two demons were gone.
The women heard the thunder and came and opened the door. The old servant told them what he had seen. They ran to the altar. The Daoist lay dead there, struck by lightning, and on his body, in brimstone, were seventeen characters:
The devilish Daoist practised the rite of exchanging bodies, coveting wealth and lusting after women. By the statutes of Heaven, beheaded. Let it be done.