Liu the Fourth, a scholar of Luchong in Duchang county, Nankang, died suddenly in the eleventh month of the fourth year of the Shaoxing reign. Two bailiffs led him into the underworld, into the hall of the King of Hell.
Looking up from the courtyard he could see the dais steps were about ten feet high, and the King sat leaning on his armrest, and before him stood a great tablet in green characters reading: Gong the Minister knows this.
Liu thought to himself: in the world there is no such surname as Gong — and had not yet spoken when the King looked round at his attendants and said there seemed to be the breath of the living about the place.
A bailiff pressed Liu: “What were you saying just now?”
Liu dared not answer and said he had not opened his mouth. Pressed again and again he had to say what he was thinking, and the bailiff cursed him: “You must not leak this. This is the Right Minister Hong of Raozhou, who is now the King of Hell.”
Presently the King ordered a bailiff to take Liu back. On the road he passed several prisons and saw the anguish of the condemned, and was terrified out of his wits. The bailiff lifted his sleeve to cover his face, and he could see nothing. Thirty-odd li later the bailiff let go.
Separately there were eleven halls, towering. A monk sat high with hands clasped, and before him was a black light, a table with one sheet of white paper spread on it, and on the paper several worms wriggling.
The monk came down from his seat, took a ring of the Sutra of Fulfilment, shook it and made it sound, and asked Liu: “What good deeds did you cultivate in life?”
Liu said: “Nothing worth recording. I could only hold the Gaowang Guanyin Sutra.”
The monk said: “That alone is enough. Let you go. You have been here three days already, and I fear your wife has wrecked the house. Go back quickly.”
The bailiff led him on, crossed two streams, leapt, and he woke.
In the second month of the following year Liu’s neighbour Ye Baisi came to the Surveillance Commission to file a complaint, and lodged at Huang’s inn, and told people this. I have not been able to examine it myself.
I note that the Hong family descended from Gonggong, and so in the Zuo Tradition there are Gong Hua of Jin and Gong Liu of Lu, both read as Gong. It was only in the Han that water was added on the left side.
