36

The Monk of the Eastern Hall Invites Demonic Spirits during a Lapse in Vigilance

The Man in Black Commits Murder in an Abduction Attempt

As the poem says,

Wandering souls in this vast cosmos

May be confused or misled for various reasons.

The Lord on High in his ingenious ways

Blurs one’s vision and muddles one’s brains.

As our story has it, the Lord on High, in his esoteric and ingenious ways, is the mover behind everything in this world of ours, throwing human beings into confusion at every turn. Even in dreamland, the most ridiculous illusions may prove in the end to have rational explanations that are beyond human expectations.

In the Tang dynasty, a Mr. Zhang of Luoyang, on his way to the capital to sit for the civil service examinations, went with his papers to see Niu Sengru, District Defender of Yique [in present-day Henan].1 En route, Mr. Zhang was caught in a thunder-and-hail storm. As afternoon had darkened into evening and the nearest inn was still a long way off, he sat down under a large tree to rest. When the rain stopped some moments later, he took the saddle off the horse and slept by the roadside with his page boys in the dim light of the moon. They were so tired that they immediately fell fast asleep.

On waking up a considerable while later, Mr. Zhang saw in his drowsy state a yaksha-like being, several tens of feet tall, eating his horse. Frightened out of his senses, he threw himself down into the tall grass, not daring to make a sound. As he lay watching, that being finished off the horse and noisily gobbled up his donkey. Then it grabbed one of his servants, held the man by both feet, and tore him in half. Appalled that the being was now moving on to humans, Mr. Zhang struggled to his feet and ran for his life helter-skelter. The monster gave chase, roaring curses at him. Mr. Zhang kept running ahead frantically without daring to take a look over his shoulder. After he had covered about a li, the noise behind him began to subside. He slowed down and saw a large grave, beside which stood a woman. In his panic, he shouted, not caring in the least whom he was addressing, “Help!”

“What’s happening?” asked the woman.

After hearing Mr. Zhang’s account, the woman said, “This ancient grave here doesn’t have anything in it, and there’s a hole in the back. You may hide inside. Otherwise, your life will be in danger.” (MC: But who is this woman? Could she be a ghost that resides in the grave?) With that, she vanished from view. Mr. Zhang found the hole and got in. Once inside that spacious grave, he could hear no sound from outside, and so he thought himself out of danger.

Soon he took a peek through the hole and saw that the moon was shining brighter than before. All of a sudden, his ears caught the sound of human voices talking. Growing afraid again, he hunkered down and stayed still. An object was pushed in through the hole. As the smell of blood assailed his nostrils, he peered intently in the darkness of the grave and saw, by the moonlight that filtered in, that it was a corpse with a head that was almost severed and barely attached to it. He had not yet recovered from the shock when another corpse was pushed in, followed by three or four more in quick succession. Then he heard voices around the grave counting amounts of gold and silver, other valuables, and clothing. Only then did he realize that there was a gang of bandits outside. With bated breath, he remained in his position and listened.

The ringleader spoke up and called out about ten names (MC: This is Heaven’s will.), distributing items from their loot among the men. There followed a confusion of voices complaining about the unfairness of the distribution, and the clamor did not die out until quite some time later. Believing that there was no one outside now, Mr. Zhang was nonetheless again smitten with fear as he stared at the dead bodies, and he could not get out of the grave with the corpses blocking his way. There being nothing he could do, he stayed where he was, meaning to wait until dawn before deciding what to do next. He tried to calm himself down by recalling the names that he had heard, but several of them had slipped his memory. He kept repeating the five or six names that he did remember until the sky slowly brightened.

In the village where the robbery had taken place, a group of men got together, carrying all manner of objects that could serve as weapons, and went to hunt down the robbers. On reaching the grave and seeing blood all over it, they gathered around it and began to dig. The bodies of all the murder victims were found inside. And then, when they saw Mr. Zhang, they gave a shout, “Here’s one of the robbers!”

As they trussed Mr. Zhang up with rope, the latter said, “I’m an exam candidate! I’m not a robber!”

“If you’re not a robber, why are you in this grave?”

Zhang told them everything that had happened the night before, but no one believed him. “He must be one of the robbers who killed and then took the dead bodies here, and he happened to fall into the grave,” said one of the men. “Don’t believe his lies!”

As the men kicked him and rained blows on him, Mr. Zhang could do nothing but lament his ill fate. Eventually, an older and wiser man spoke up. “Let’s not beat him in private like this. Let’s take him to the county yamen!”

Thereupon, the group of men marched him to the county yamen. On the way, Mr. Zhang saw his servants with his donkey and his horse, complete with saddles on their backs. Appalled, Zhang exclaimed, “What was it I saw last night? Why are the horse and the donkey and the servants all still alive?”

The servants, seeing their master all tied up and in the custody of a group of men, were also stunned. “We were so tired last night that we dozed off by the roadside, and when we woke up at daybreak and didn’t see you, Master, we started looking for you. What a shock it is to see you so humiliated by these people!”

After Zhang repeated his story about last night to the servants, they said, “We slept so well we didn’t see anything unusual. How are such strange things possible?”

The villagers said, “Exactly! He was talking such a lot of nonsense! He must be one of the robbers. And those men must be in cahoots with him!” Without showing the least leniency, they marched him to the county yamen.

Mr. Niu was an old acquaintance of Scholar Zhang’s. (MC: If not, he would be put to torture.) At the sight of the scholar bound and roped by villagers, he said in alarm, “What happened?”

After Mr. Zhang repeated his story, Mr. Niu ordered that he be untied. He also asked the scholar to rise and give him more details about what he had seen the night before. “I still remember several of the robbers’ names,” Zhang added. “And I also heard clearly the amounts of the loot that they divided among themselves.”

Mr. Niu took a writing brush and asked Zhang to write down the names and what he knew about the stolen goods. The police then rounded up all the suspects along with their loot. No guilty person was able to escape justice.

The fact of the matter was that Zhang’s illusions about a man-eating yaksha had been conjured up by the aggrieved spirits of the murder victims in order to force Mr. Zhang to hunker down in the grave and remember the robbers’ names so as to bring them to justice. This is a case of Heaven capturing the robbers through Scholar Zhang (MC: If this was indeed the will of Heaven, what wrong did Mr. Zhang do to deserve this terrible shock?), and this is exactly what I meant when I said, “The most ridiculous illusions may prove in the end to have rational explanations.”

Now I propose to tell another story about illusions that led to multiple operations of karma that defy comprehension, a story that is even more appalling and laughable than the last one. Truly,

Where virtue abounds, vice abounds ten times more,

But debts from previous lives must be paid in the end.

This story also takes place in the Tang dynasty. To the west of Yizhou [the present-day city of Linyi, Shandong], there stands a Mount Gong that towers over the other mountains in the region. There being no human habitation within a thirty-li radius of the mountain, two visiting monks in the first year of the Zhenyuan reign period [785–804] liked the mountain for its quiet seclusion. Believing it to be the ideal place for the cultivation of their spirits, they spared no pains in gathering withered and fallen branches all over the mountain and put up a hut amid big trees. The two monks sat inside cross-legged and applied themselves assiduously to the study of the sutras, day and night.

When people in nearby villages heard about this, they gladly pitched in to build houses for them. Within a month, a temple took shape. The two monks grew even more industrious, and visitors came from far and near to pay their respects to them. Not a day went by without donors coming to offer them meals. The two monks, each occupying one hall, took vows in front of statues of the Buddha to never go down the mountain (MC: Leading to another big court case.) but to study the sutras in the temple and attain the fruit of enlightenment. Indeed,

The temple gate stays closed throughout the day

To rosy clouds, flowing water, and the vast sky.

While red maple leaves fall into the creek,

The monks on the mountain remain asleep.

Also,

Beyond the eaves, quivering filaments;

By the brook, floating petals on spring water.

Shunning fame and gain in the mundane world,

They delight in the mist on the mountain.

More than twenty years went by as they mortified their flesh. One moonlit wintry evening in the Yuanhe reign period [806–20], the two monks were chanting sutras in their own halls when, in the stillness of the empty mountain, faint sobs became audible from below. As the sound of sobbing came nearer and soon reached the temple gate, the monk of the eastern hall was suddenly struck by this thought: (MC: Trouble is stirred up.) “I haven’t gone out for so many years in my life of loneliness on this mountain. I wonder what life is like down there? These sobs sound so sad!”

At this point, the sobs stopped. A figure jumped off the fence with a thud and headed in the direction of the western hall. The monk of the eastern hall was alarmed by the figure’s massive build and grotesque form. Not daring to make a sound, he waited in fear for the next thing to happen. As soon as the figure entered the western hall, the chants of the monk there stopped abruptly and were replaced by sounds of a tussle. After a while, there came the frightening chomping sounds of mastication. In a panic, the monk of the eastern hall thought, “With no one else in the temple, I’ll be the next victim. I’d better get out of here!”

In all haste, he opened the gate and ran out helter-skelter. After confining himself indoors for so long, he did not know his way around the area and just kept going until, drained of energy, he looked back and saw the figure lurching forward with long strides. All the more frightened, the monk frantically ran ahead. Suddenly, he came upon a small creek. He hitched up his cassock and waded across to the other side. His pursuer stopped at the water’s edge and shouted, without crossing the creek, “If it were not for this creek, I would have swallowed you, too!”

The monk pressed forward in fear. Not caring where he was going, he just let his legs take him wherever they wished.

Soon, a blinding snowstorm came on, and he could barely see the way ahead. Just when he was at a loss as to what to do, he saw a cowshed. Quickly, he dived in and hid himself from view. It was the middle of the night, and the snowstorm began to subside. All of a sudden, he saw a man clad in black, carrying a sword and a spear, slowly approaching the railings from outside. The monk held his breath and, from his hiding place in the dark, peeped at the man who was out there, exposed to view. The man in black looked all around him expectantly, as if he was waiting for something. A while later, some objects, most likely parcels of clothing or bedsheets, were tossed over a wall. The black-clad man quickly tied them into two bundles. Then, by the light of the snowy moon, the monk clearly saw a young woman emerge over the wall and jump down. (MC: There is a reason for this.) With his spear serving as a shoulder pole, the man in black lifted the two bundles and, without waiting to talk with her, walked away. The girl followed behind.

“This is a sticky situation for me,” thought the monk. “I’d better get out of here! The man and the girl must be elopers, meeting here at their appointed time. If she is found missing by tomorrow and her folks go out on a search, the footprints in the snow will lead them to me. Won’t I, a monk, be inviting charges of sexual misconduct? (MC: He may have gotten involved if he had stayed put. This is all the work of ghosts and spirits.) It’s far better to get out of here sooner rather than later!” Desperate, and with no idea of which way to go, he just pushed ahead blindly, turning this way and that in confusion.

After covering more than ten li, he lost his footing and fell into an abandoned well. Luckily, it was a dry well, quite deep and wide. By the moonlight that came down, he saw, right next to him, a corpse whose head had been severed. Death had occurred only recently, and the body was still warm. The monk was all the more horrified, but unable to climb out, he was at his wit’s end.

When it grew light, he looked again and recognized the body to be that of the girl who had scaled the wall the night before. As he wondered what could have happened, a group of men gathered noisily around the well. Looking down into the well, they exclaimed, “The kidnapper is here!” A man was lowered into the well by rope, and, to the monk’s utter horror, once down in the well, the man began to tie him up. He could offer no resistance because his body had been frozen stiff. (MC: Even if he had been able to struggle, he could not have done anything.) The man gave him such sharp raps on the head with his knuckles that stars danced before the monk’s eyes. Unable to protest his innocence, the monk felt that he was more dead than alive. After the man had bound him up tight, he was pulled out of the well along with the corpse. An old man burst into wails of grief at the sight of the corpse, and when he had cried his fill, he lashed out at the monk: “You bald ass! Where are you from? Why did you kidnap my daughter and kill her in this well?”

“I’m a monk from the eastern hall of Mount Gong Temple. I haven’t come down the mountain for twenty years. It was because a monster ate my fellow monk in the temple last night that I ran for my life down the mountain, and I was in a cowshed taking shelter from the snow when I saw a man in black arrive, and then a young woman jumped over the wall and followed him. I didn’t want to get involved in any trouble, so I ran away, only to fall into this well and see the corpse. How would I know what happened? I’ve never come down the mountain, and I’m not acquainted with any woman, not to speak of abducting one. And why would I hate any woman so much as to kill her? Please, everyone, give the matter careful consideration!”

Quite a few of the men in the crowd had seen him before in the temple and knew him to be an eminent monk of moral fortitude. But unable to explain away his presence in a well with a dead woman, they could hardly rise to his defense, and so they marched him to the county yamen, carrying the corpse with them.

The county magistrate asked the men what had made them tie up a monk and carry a corpse into the court. The old man said, “My surname is Ma. I’m a native of this county. The body is that of my daughter. She was eighteen and not yet betrothed. It was only in the last few days that I received two offers of marriage for her. This morning, I didn’t see her at home, so I started looking for her and saw her shoeprints in the snow in the backyard. Realizing that she had scaled the wall and gone away, we followed the shoeprints all the way to the well, where the shoeprints gave way to a pool of blood on the ground. Then we looked into the well and saw this monk and my daughter’s dead body. He must be the murderer!” (MC: That he was inside the well is proof that she was not killed by him.)

The county magistrate told the monk to state his case. The monk said, “I’m an ascetic monk from Mount Gong. I haven’t stepped down off the mountain for more than twenty years. Last night, a monster entered the temple and ate my fellow monk. I had no choice but to break my monastic vows and flee for my life down the mountain. Little did I know that I was destined to walk head-on into all this trouble!” After giving a full account of what he had seen last night at the cowshed, how he had run away out of fear of getting involved, and how he had fallen into a well and encountered a corpse, he added, “If Your Honor could send officers to Mount Gong Temple and verify the fact that the monk of the western hall has been eaten by a monster, you’ll know that what I’m saying is all true.” (MC: He is all the more mistaken.)

The magistrate agreed and sent an officer to the temple to investigate and report his findings as soon as possible.

On entering the temple, the officer found the monk of the western hall sitting there, safe and sound, reading a sutra. As the monk rose and greeted the visitor, the latter told him about what the monk of the eastern hall had gone through and continued, “His Reverence said that he fled down the mountain because a monster had come into the temple to eat people. So the county magistrate sent me here to find out the facts, but since Your Reverence is here, safe and sound, what can you tell me about the monster that came last night?”

The monk of the western hall said, “There was no monster. A little before midnight, my fellow monk and I were chanting sutras, he in his hall and I in mine, when he suddenly opened the temple gate and went out. Both of us had taken monastic vows a long time ago, and we haven’t stepped out of the temple gate for more than twenty years. I was surprised by his departure. I ran after him, shouting, but he didn’t hear me. I kept my vow of not leaving the temple and dared not give further chase. As to what happened to him down the mountain, I haven’t got the slightest idea.”

When the officer reported his findings, the county magistrate said, “That bald wretch is obviously telling preposterous lies!” At his order, the monk was brought into the courtroom for another session of interrogation, but he stuck to his story. The county magistrate said, “The monk of the western hall is alive and well. There was no monster in your temple! It just so happened that you came down the mountain on the same day that a young woman eloped and was murdered and found in the same well with you. How can there be such a coincidence in the whole wide world? (MC: Coincidences do abound in this world, which is why unjust court sentences also abound.) This is all too clearly a case of murder, and you still try to lie your way out of it!” The magistrate ordered that torture be applied to the monk. “Out with the truth now!” he roared.

The monk said, “I can only pay my debt from a previous incarnation with my death. (MC: Just what a monk would say.) I have nothing to confess.”

These words further raised the magistrate’s ire. He ordered that all kinds of torture be applied to the monk so as to inflict the worst pain on him. (IC: How unjust!)

“There’s no need for heavier punishment,” said the monk. “I confess that I’m the murderer.”

At this point, the plaintiff, witnessing how the monk suffered because he did not have anything to confess, said to himself, “My family has never had anything to do with that monk. Why would he abduct my daughter? And even if he did, why didn’t he flee with her instead of killing her? And even if he did kill her, he could have escaped. What was he doing in the well? He may be falsely accused.” To his credit, he walked up to the magistrate and voiced his thoughts.

“You do have a point,” said the magistrate. “But a monk who falls into a well in the middle of the night can’t be a decent sort. (IC: This is also true.) And he tells such preposterous lies. He must be hiding something. (MC: With such prejudice and when the story is so fantastic, injustice is hardly avoidable.) But with the murder weapon missing and no spoils found on him, I can’t establish his guilt. I’ll just put him in jail to await sentencing. You’ll go out and do your own investigation. Your daughter must have left traces of her doings and her secret associations with someone. (IC: Valid point.) And there must be objects missing from your house. Check everything carefully, and you’ll surely get to the bottom of it all.”

Thus instructed, everyone left the court, and the monk went to suffer the hardships of a life in jail, and there we shall leave him.

Instead, let me tell you about Ma, who was a rich man from Yizhou, known to all and sundry as Squire Ma. He had a ravishingly beautiful daughter who was in love with her cousin Mr. Du. In fact, they had been in love since childhood and had secretly vowed to be husband and wife. However, Mr. Du’s family was by no means rich. His parents had engaged a matchmaker who brought up the matter several times with the Ma family, but Squire Ma turned the Dus down each time, finding them too poor, He did not know that his daughter was determined to marry the young man. Communication between the young lovers was the responsibility of the girl’s old wet nurse. A woman of loose morals, the nurse was bent on stirring up the girl’s desires and egging her on to commit improprieties so that she could wheedle money out of her. (MC: Many young people are ruined by women with such ideas.) Therefore, knowing the girl’s mind, the nurse offered her services as a go-between and whipped up the lovers’ feelings for each other until they were on fire. But there was nothing she could do about the betrothal. When the girl was of marrying age, a couple of other families made marriage offers. Squire Ma chose one and settled the matter.

The girl grew anxious and consulted her nurse, saying, “I love only Cousin Du, but now I’m promised to another family. What’s to be done?”

The nurse, as shameless as she was, tried to mollify her by saying, “The Du family did come a few times to make the offer, but your father turned them down. So to marry him the proper way is out of the question. The only way out will be to marry someone else and then see him on the sly.” (IC: What good advice!)

“Once married, I wouldn’t do such a thing. Du is the only one for me. I’m not going to marry anyone else.” (IC: Easily said!)

“That’s not up to you. I have an idea: Act before you’re formally betrothed.”

“What do you mean by ‘act’?”

“I’ll go and arrange an appointment for you two. At the appointed hour, you elope with him. Take as much travel money as possible and have some fun in another city or town. By the time your parents find you, the two of you will have been together for quite some time, and a girl from a decent family is not supposed to be torn from her man and married off to another. Nor will other men want her. So this is the only way out.”

“Yes, it’s a wonderful idea. But be sure he keeps the appointment.”

“Just leave it to me,” said the nurse.

Squire Ma was fabulously rich. The nurse coveted the girl’s trunk after trunk of gold, silver, jewelry, and clothes. With her eye on these items (MC: Items that will cost her life.), she was determined not to let outsiders share them with her. She had a son nicknamed “Ox Black.” Not the sort to accept his lot, he spent his days in gambling houses and wrestling halls, making friends with good-for-nothings, and sometimes committing theft and other petty crimes. The wet nurse unconscionably promised the girl that she would be contacting Mr. Du, but in fact she quietly told her son to pose as Mr. Du and take the girl to a place where he was to sell her and make a small fortune. (IC: How hateful!)

After they had drawn up their plan, the nurse went to the girl and said, “I’ve made the appointment with him. Tonight, we’ll carry your luggage to the cowshed outside the wall, and then you scale the wall and get out of the house.”

The girl asked the nurse to go with her (MC: A childish request. Poor thing!), but she declined, saying, “That won’t do. If you go alone, they won’t be able to find you for some time. But if I also disappear, they’ll know that I’m involved and will look for me in my home. Wouldn’t that be a disaster?”

Not having talked to Mr. Du face-to-face, the girl took the nurse at her word. As fate would have it, she believed that her wish to be with Du was to be fulfilled. (IC: Poor thing!) Truly,

She put her faith in the moon,

But the moon played her false.

That evening, the girl and her nurse packed her luggage and tossed the bundles over the wall. Then the girl scaled the wall and jumped, at the time when the monk of the eastern hall was watching from his hiding place. Seeing a black-clad man walking ahead, carrying a load, the girl thought he was Du, thus attired to hide his identity, and followed on his heels. No suspicion crossed her mind. But when they came to the well outside the city, she saw by the light of the moon that it was not Du but a swarthy hulk of a man of vigorous build. Not knowing what was good for her, the girl screamed in terror. The man in black tried to stop her, but in vain. The man thought, “I’m carrying a lot of her stuff. If I take this two-legged thing along and her screams draw attention to me, won’t I lose this entire windfall and the chance to sell her? I’d better bump her off.” (MC: Petty people care only about money. How infuriating!) He drew out his sword and swung it at her neck. How was a delicate girl like her to survive such an act of violence? How sad it is that a fresh flower withered among a rank growth of weeds! But it was partly her own lack of moral integrity that brought her to this tragic end. Verily,

Gambling leads to robbing and lust to killing:

The ancients were right in all their sayings.

Stay away from gambling and lechery

And live your life in peace and tranquility!

After the girl died, the black-clad one threw her into the abandoned well and ran away with her possessions, little knowing that a luckless monk would take the rap for him and languish in jail.

Storyteller! If so, isn’t this a travesty of justice?

Gentle reader, as they say, “The net of Heaven may be of large mesh, but it lets nothing through.” With the passage of time, the law of retribution will begin to work.

Let us retrace our steps and come back to Squire Ma when he realized that his daughter was missing. Without a moment’s delay, he put together a search team. As it turned out, his men came upon the monk and spent much time taking the monk to court and packing him off to jail while the Ma residence remained unsearched. On returning home, Squire Ma gave himself up to thinking about the case and came to doubt that the monk had anything to do with it after all. When he went to his daughter’s room and found all the trunks and cases empty, he knew that she must have planned her elopement. And yet, there had never been any telltale signs of anything amiss. If it was an elopement with an illicit lover, why was she murdered? It was quite a mystery. After much unproductive thought, he saw nothing for it but to make a list of missing items and post copies of it everywhere. He also offered a reward, for he was determined to get to the bottom of the case.

News of the murder put the nurse on tenterhooks since she was the only one in the know. Angry with her son, she said to herself, “I told him to take the girl away. How could he have done such an evil thing?” When she saw him, she reproached him in a subdued voice and cautioned him emphatically with these words: “Be careful. It’s become a case of homicide. This is bad.”

After some time went by, Ox Black began to relax. He took out some money and resumed his visits to the gambling houses. To his dismay, he went on a losing streak. In the twinkling of an eye, he lost all the money he had with him. In the excitement of the moment, he did not want to go back home for more money, and watching the games from the sidelines taxed his patience. From his waist, he whipped out a pair of gold-inlaid hairpins (MC: By the will of Heaven.) and used it for another go, hoping to put everything right by winning back what he had lost. Alas for his hopes—gone forever were the hairpins! He was obliged to call it quits and swallow his resentment. The hairpins, no longer his, fell into the hands of the dealer Fat Brother Huang, as his cut.

After he went home, Fat Brother Huang’s wife saw the hairpins and said, “How did you come by such nice things? Honestly, I hope? Don’t get yourself involved in trouble, I tell you!”

Fat Brother said, “Of course I came by them honestly! Ox Black used them as payment.”

“Nonsense!” said his wife. “Little Ox is a bachelor with no wife, no children. He can’t have such things!”

Suddenly, a rush of memory came back to Fat Brother. “Oh yes! The daughter of the Ma family was murdered, and there’s a poster listing all the missing items, most of which are head ornaments. Ox Black is her nurse’s son. Could he have stolen these objects?”

“You go to Squire Ma’s house tomorrow and redeem the hairpins for money. He’ll surely have something to say about them. If they’re indeed stolen property, we’ll be able to get some reward money. Won’t that be nice?” And so they settled on this plan.

The next day, Fat Brother took the hairpins and went to Squire Ma’s pawnshop. Running squarely into Squire Ma, who happened to be on his way out, Fat Brother said, “I have something here for you to see, sir. If you recognize it to be yours, I’d like to claim a reward. If not, may I redeem it for some money?”

As Fat Brother Huang showed him the hairpins, Squire Ma recognized them as his daughter’s. “Where did you get them?” asked he.

After Fat Brother Huang told him about Ox Black paying his gambling debt with the hairpins, Squire Ma nodded and said, “It’s all too clear that he and his mother were in on it together.” He asked Fat Brother Huang to stay longer and write him this note: “I testify to the fact that this pair of gold-inlaid hairpins was used by Ox Black to back up a bet made while gambling.” Then Squire Ma said to him, “Don’t let on about any of this to anyone.” He gave Huang half the promised reward, with the balance to be paid after the case was settled. Having done right in coming to make this report, Fat Brother Huang merrily took himself off.

Carrying the pair of hairpins in his sleeve, Squire Ma went to the inner section of the house and said to the nurse, “Tell me, how did the young mistress get out of the house?”

“What a funny question, sir!” said the nurse. “You were at home, and so was I. Nobody knows how she got out. Why should I know? Why ask me?”

Producing the hairpins from his sleeve, Squire Ma said, “If you know nothing, why did these items come out of your house?”

The sight of the hairpins made the nurse so nervous that the color drained from her face because she knew that her son was at fault. Her heart pounding violently, she said, stammering, “They could have been dropped by the roadside, and someone picked them up.”

Noticing how the color came and went on her face, Squire Ma was convinced of her guilt, but he did not let on. Instead, he sent for Ox Black and had mother and son trussed up and taken to the county yamen. Ox Black jumped up and down, yelling, “What have I done that you tie me up?”

Squire Ma replied, “You’ve been accused of murder. Don’t waste your time yelling. Save it for your explanation to the magistrate!”

The county magistrate opened his court session right away. Submitting Fat Brother Huang’s note and the pair of hairpins to the magistrate, Squire Ma said, “Here are some of the stolen goods and testimony. Please establish the true facts of the case, Your Honor.”

After examining the hairpins and the note, the magistrate asked, “How is this Ox Black related to your family?”

“He’s the son of my daughter’s old nurse.”

The magistrate said with a nod, “Yes, I see the connection.” He called Ox Black to him and asked, “Where did you get the hairpins?”

At a loss for words, Ox Black tried to shift the blame to his mother by saying that his mother had given them to him.

Thereupon, the magistrate ordered that the nurse be brought to him under guard. “This case of seduction and murder can be traced to you,” announced the magistrate. “And I want the truth from you!” He ordered sharply that she be put under torture.

Unable to bear the pain, she confessed, but only partially: “The young mistress was very close to Young Master Du. That evening, she arranged to elope with Master Du, scaled the wall, and jumped. That much I know, but I know nothing about what happened after she jumped.” (MC: Evil women harm people to this extent.)

Turning to Squire Ma, the magistrate asked, “Do you know of any Mr. Du?”

“Yes. Mr. Du is a nephew of mine. He did make a marriage offer several times, but I turned him down because of his family’s poverty. I had no knowledge of any secret communication.”

The magistrate then summoned Young Master Du. The young man, for all his secret trysts with his beloved, had not the slightest idea of what had happened, although news about the girl’s flight from home and her murder did reach him, much to his inward chagrin.

“How did you make the elopement appointment with Miss Ma, an appointment that led to her death?” asked the magistrate.

“We’re cousins. We did exchange letters frequently, but there was no appointment for elopement. Who delivered the message? Are there witnesses?”

And so the magistrate had the nurse brought to face him. The nurse could provide no further information beyond the young man’s liaison with the young mistress. As for the elopement appointment, since Mr. Du was entirely innocent, she did not prevail.

Having heard about the missing items, Mr. Du spoke up again in his own defense. “Your Honor, if you could look into the whereabouts of the stolen goods, you’ll know that I’m not involved in any way.”

The magistrate gave himself up to thought: “This young man Du seems too frail and delicate to be a murderer, and that Ox Something is too uncouth to be a clandestine lover. Someone must have pretended to be Du.” (MC: This magistrate does have a sharp mind, and yet he did the monk an injustice. This goes to show that the monk’s karmic sins caught up with him.) Both Ox Black and the old nurse were put under torture. In resignation, the old woman confessed that, out of greed for the girl’s money, she had instructed her son to pass himself off as Du and meet the girl at the appointed hour but that she was ignorant of what happened later.

However, Ox Black continued to profess his innocence and said, pointing to Mr. Du, “Since he’s the one the girl was supposed to meet, this whole thing had nothing to do with me.”

Suddenly, the magistrate recalled the monk’s confession. “Didn’t the monk say the other day that he had seen a man in black taking the girl away that night? Let me have him brought in to identify the man, and everything will be clear.” So he ordered that the monk of the eastern hall be brought to court.

Upon the monk’s arrival, the magistrate said, “You said that when you were in the cowshed that night, you saw a man in black stealing some things and taking the girl away. If you see this man now, will you be able to recognize him?”

“It was a snowy night with the moonlight as bright as day, and I’ve been practicing meditation for so long that I’m keen of eye. If I see him, of course I’ll be able to recognize him.”

The magistrate called Mr. Du forth and asked the monk, “Is this him?”

“No. That man was of a strong build. Definitely not this soft and scholarly type.”

Ox Black was then called up. Pointing to him, the magistrate asked again, “Is this him?”

“Yes!”

With a scornful smile, the magistrate addressed Ox Black as follows: “Your mother spoke the truth after all. If you’re not the murderer, who is? And some of the stolen goods are right here. What more do you have to say for yourself ? It’s too bad the monk was beaten and stayed in jail for a while in your stead!”

The monk said, “What I’ve gone through is all predestined. I have no complaints. Luckily, the Buddha’s Heaven is near, and Your Honor in your divine wisdom has established my innocence.”

The magistrate ordered that the squeezer be applied to Ox Black and said, “You could have fled with the girl. Why did you have to kill her?”

At this point, Ox Black gave up and confessed: “At the beginning, she thought I was Mr. Du. By the time we arrived at the well, she realized I wasn’t him. She screamed, so I killed her.”

“Why did you carry a knife at that late hour?” asked the magistrate.

“I always carry sharp tools with me on my frequent visits to the wrestling halls. What’s more, when I do things at night, I need to guard against being jumped in the dark.”

“I just knew that Mr. Du had not done this,” the magistrate commented.

After all the facts of the case had been established, the nurse was beaten to death. (MC: Death is not enough to pay for their sins.) Ox Black, charged with rape and murder, was to be executed after all the stolen goods were recovered, Mr. Du and the monk were both released. Everyone left the court, but of this, no more.

The monk of the eastern hall, after being beaten and jailed for crimes that he never committed, returned to his temple and engaged the monk of the western hall in a long conversation. The monk of the western hall said, “Nothing happened that night when we were both at our studies. Why did you see all those things that led to so many trials and tribulations?”

“I have no idea,” said the monk of the eastern hall. After returning to his own cell, he plunged into thought and concluded that all the shocks and misery he had experienced were attributable to inadequacies in his cultivation of his spirit. He made his confessions to the statue of the Buddha and prayed that he would be enlightened as to the cause of what he had gone through. After sitting still for three days and three nights on his prayer mat, he suddenly saw the light when he attained the state of Void. The truth was that Miss Ma had been a concubine of his in their previous incarnations. In a moment of unprovoked suspicion and jealousy, he beat her and locked her up, thus committing an injustice. In his current life as a monk, his sin could have been expunged through his assiduous spiritual cultivation, but the sobs he heard that night saddened him and disturbed his peace of mind. As a consequence, earthly temptations arose to torment him with gruesome sights and sounds and force him into the cycles of retribution (MC: Those who practice spiritual cultivation, be warned!), from which he was not released until he repaid his debts by going through the same travails. After he gained an understanding of this cycle of cause and effect through his meditations, he committed himself unflinchingly to his faith and, like the monk of the western hall, never went down the mountain again. Later, he achieved nirvana while sitting in a lotus position with joined palms. There is a poem in testimony:

No life is free from the bond of karma;

Only the enlightened understand the Void.

If no mundane thought raises its head,

Debts from previous lives vanish of their own accord.