Fei Changfang, a man in the Han dynasty capable of commanding ghosts and spirits, finally died in their hands after he lost his book of magic figures. Ming Chongyan of the Tang dynasty died with a sharp knife planted in his chest, believed to be a victim of some ghosts whom he had been subjugating to backbreaking labor. It is therefore not uncommon for a person with magic powers to fall victim to his own magic. A monk skilled at chanting magic words was once lured to the open country where hundreds of howling foxes leapt at him. Wielding an iron club, he struck down an old fox in the form of a man and broke out of the encirclement. Afterward he met the old fox on the road. The fox knelt and kowtowed, saying, "Since you spared my life last time, I have repented. I am willing to follow the laws of Buddha and become a monk." The monk put out his hand to touch the fox on the head, a gesture of initiating it into monkhood, but the fox suddenly threw something over the monk's face and fled by turning itself invisible. The covering, neither cloth nor leather, was colored like amber and as sticky as paint. The monk, who nearly died of suffocation, had the covering peeled off his face forcefully. His facial skin was torn off, and he passed out because of the terrible pain. After the wound healed, his face remained terribly disfigured.

The is another story about a roving monk who rented a house and styled himself a "Fox-Exorciser" with a notice pasted on his door. When a fox in human form came to entice him, the monk recognized it to be a fox and began chanting a Buddhist spell and shaking his bell. The fox fled in fright. About ten days later an old woman knocked on the door and told the monk that her house, which bordered on a graveyard, was disturbed by foxes every day. She asked him to subdue the foxes with his magic power. The monk took out a demon-detecting mirror, in which the old woman's reflection remained in human form, so he left with her. Having led him to an embankment, the old woman suddenly seized his bag and threw it into the river, then fled into a tract of sorghum fields. The monk was staring in dismay at the book of magic figures and ceremonial instruments in his bag floating down the river when a sudden attack of bricks and tiles gave him a bloody nose and a swolen face. Hastily he began to chant buddhist incantations to keep the fox at a distance, and took to his heels. The following day he left the place shamefacedly. Later it became known that the old woman was a local inhabitant. She had been bribed by the fox, who was her daughter's lover, and asked to steal the monk's book of magic figures.

The monks in the above two stories, both endowed with the power to vanquish foxes, ended up in defeat because the did not take ample precaution against the foxes' cunning schemes and fought single-handedly while the foxes had recruited cohorts. If a man without much magic power should rush into a confrontation with demons and evil spirits, he wouls surely have a less change of gaining a victory.