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| At the foot of the Shaohua Mountain a hunter found two men lying
under a tree looking listless. They could barely get to their feet when
he greeted them. "Why have you wandered to this place?" he asked.
"We were both seduced by a fox-woman," replied one of them. "One day I lost my way in the mountain and went to request a night's stay at a house. A very attractive girl of that family made passes at me when no one was looking. Unable to resist her charms, I made love with her, but we were soon found out by her parents. They scolded me harshly and threatened to give me a beating, so I fell on my knees to beg for mercy. Then I overheard them chattering away as if trying to make a decision. To my big surprise the following day they offered to acknowledge me as their son-in-law on one condition: As the girl was working as a hired hand for a family up in the moutnain, she would go there for a five-day shift and then return home for a five-day stay with me. I thought the arrangement reasonable and accepted it without difficulty. Half a year later I began to feel weak and sapped. One night I coughed so badly I couldn't fall asleep, so I took a walk in the woods. Suddenly I heard the voices of a man and a woman teasing with each other and went over to have a look. I saw a house with a rock in front of its gate, and on that rock sat a man with my wife in his arms--they were watching the moon together. I could hardly contain my rage and rushed over to pick up a fight. The man, also looking very angry, shouted at me, "How dare you scoundrel covet my wife!" He came straight toward me. Fortunately he was also quite sick. In the tangled fight we both fell on the ground. All this time the woman just sat there watching and chuckling to herself. "Stop fighting, the two of you!" she said at last. "Let me tell you the truth. Actually I have been sleeping with you in turns on the pretext of working for another family in order to give each of you five days for rest and recuperation, so that you will have enough vital energy for me to soak up. Now that you know the secret, and both of you are drained and therefore useless to me, let's call it a day and part company." With this she suddenly vanished. We tried to get out of the mountain but lost our way. Then we crumbled to the ground, too hungry and tired to go on. Fortunately you have come to save us." The other man's story was roughly the same. After hearing them out, the hunter offered them some of his field rations. Somewhat recovered, they took him to the dwelling place of the fox-woman to take a look. When they got there, both cried out in surprise,"There used to be an earthen wall, wooden beams and pillars, and windows and doors that could open and close--all of those were not phantoms but a physical reality. How did it turn into an earthen cave? The ground in the courtyard used to be flat and tidy; why is the ground outside the cave so rugged? What's more, such a small cave could only hold the fox-woman herself; how did we manage to live inside? Were we also turned into phantoms?" Then one of them caught sight of some broken pieces of porcelain scattered on the cliff facing the cave. "I broke it when I was climbing the stairs," he said. "There is only a cliff without a path. How was I able to go up and down there?" The two men walked around looking dazed and feeling as if they were in a dream. The more they thought about what they had gone through the more they hated the fox-woman, so they asked the hunter to go deep into the mountain to hunt and kill her. "A chance meeting followed by a happy marriage is too much of a bargain," said the hunter. "In such cases one will surely get more than one bargains for, just as a fish will swallow the hook along with the bait. Think about your own mistake. What's the use of venting your hatred on the fox?" Rendered speechless, the two men gave up the thougt of seeking revenge. |
