Sorcery with talismans is at its worst in Yunnan and Guizhou.
Fei Yuanlong, the provincial judge of Guizhou, was on his way to Yunnan when a servant of his named Zhang, riding ahead, suddenly shouted and fell off his horse. His left leg was gone.
Fei knew it was a sorcerer’s work, and posted a notice: a reward to anyone who could restore Zhang’s leg.
An old man came. “I did it. When Zhang was in the provincial city he leaned on his master’s power and threw his weight about far too much, so I played a nasty joke on him.”
Zhang begged as well. The old man opened his purse, took out a leg the size of a frog, breathed on it and spoke a spell, and threw it at Zhang — and the two legs were as before. Then he took the reward and went.
Someone asked Fei why he had not used the law on him.
“No use. When I was in Guizhou there was a bully whose record of offences was piled like a mountain. The yamen beat him to death and threw the body in the river. In three days he came back to life; in five he was committing crimes again. This happened several times over.
“We reported it to the governor. The governor was furious and obtained the imperial warrant, and he was beheaded, head and body parted.
“Three days later he was alive again, head and body joined, with a faint red thread at the neck, and offending as before.
“At last he beat his mother. And his mother came to court carrying a jar.
“‘This is my wicked son’s soul jar. Knowing himself guilty of the worst crimes, he drew his soul out beforehand, refined it, and stored it in this jar. What the authorities flogged and killed was his flesh and blood. It was not his soul. A long-refined soul repairs a freshly injured body in three days.
“‘Now his measure is full — he has struck his old mother, and his old mother can bear no more. I ask the court to destroy the jar first, and take a wind-wheel fan and scatter the soul; then punish the body, and perhaps my wicked son will really die.’”
The court did as she said and beat him to death.
And when they examined the corpse, it was rotting and stinking within ten days.