Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) by Moss Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

firmly refused to answer. Infuriated, some wanted to cut him down, others to take a shot at him. Tzu-ch’un made no response, and the General left in a towering rage.

     
    Next came ferocious tigers, poisonous serpents, wildcats, roaring lions, and scorpions, all striving to seize and devour him. Some of the beasts even leaped over him. But Tzu-ch’un remained unmoved in spirit and expression, and in a short time the nightmare melted away.
    Suddenly a storm blew up, pelting and soaking, with lightning that made the gloom visible. Reels of fire circled past him left and right. Electric bolts struck before and behind him. Tzu-ch’un could not open his eyes. In moments the waters around the area were ten feet deep, and with the streaming lightning and booming thunder it seemed as if nothing could stop the very rivers and mountains of earth from coming apart. Waves reached his seat, but Tzu-ch’un sat upright and took no notice. Soon everything vanished.
    The General returned, this time leading an ox-headed sergeant and his soldiers of hell, together with other weird-faced ghosts. They placed a huge cauldron of boiling water before Tzu-ch’unand closed in on him with spears, swords, and pitchforks. “Identify yourself,” they charged, “and we will free you at once. Otherwise beware! We shall pitch you into the cauldron.” Tzu-ch’un made no reply.
    Thereupon his wife was brought in and thrown onto the stairs before him. “Speak, and we will spare her,” they said. They whipped her till her blood flowed freely, some shooting her, some hacking her, some scalding her, some burning her. Unable to bear it, she cried out, “Truly I am but a poor and simple woman, unworthy of a gentleman like yourself. Yet fortune has enabled me to serve you as a wife for over ten years. Now their honors, these ghosts, have taken me, and the pain is more than I can endure. I would never dream of having you crawl on hands and knees to beg for me, but a single word will save my life! Who among men should be considered more heartless if you would deny me that?” She wept, cursed, and scolded, but Tzu-ch’un would not glance at her.
    “You think we won’t put her to death?” The General said. He ordered a chopping block brought, and they began to cut her up inch by inch, beginning with the feet. She shrieked frantically. But to the end Tzu-ch’un took no notice of her. “This villain is a master of the black arts,” said the General, “and must not remain among the living.” He ordered his men to cut off Tzu-ch’un’s head.
    When Tzu-ch’un’s head was struck off, his soul was brought before the king of the dead. “Isn’t this the heretic of Cloud Pavilion Peak? Throw him in hell!” Tzu-ch’un tasted the torments of hell to the fullest—molten bronze, the iron rod, pounding, grinding, the fire pit, the boiling cauldron, the hill of knives, the forest of swords. But he kept the wizard’s words firmly in mind and bore the pain without letting a moan pass his lips. Then the torturers reported to the king that the punishments were completed.
    “So devious a villain does not deserve to be reborn a male,” decreed the king of the dead. “Let him go back as a female, in the home of Wang Ch’üan, the deputy magistrate in Shanfu county, Sungchou.”
    After her birth the child suffered many ailments. Hardly a day went by that she was spared acupuncture, cauterization, and harsh medicines. Once she fell into a fire and could get no relieffrom the pain. Yet not a sound escaped her. She matured into an exceptional beauty, but she never used her voice, and the family regarded her as mute. She never responded to the liberties relatives took with her or the innumerable little insults she suffered.
    In the same locality lived an advanced degree holder, one Lu Kuei, who became fascinated by the reports of her beauty and sought her hand through a matchmaker. The offer was declined by the family on account of the woman’s muteness, but