Zhuang Yiyuan was in the north-east beyond the passes when he saw a hunter wearing a board clamped round his neck. Surprised, he asked him about it.
“There were two of us, my brother and I,” the man said, “riding out to hunt. We were crossing open country when all at once we saw a man about three feet tall, with a white beard and a cloth headband, who bowed to us in front of our horses.
“‘Who are you?’ my brother asked.
“He shook his head and said nothing. He only blew at my brother’s horse with his mouth, and the horse was so frightened it would not go on. My brother grew angry and drew an arrow and shot at him. The man bolted, and my brother went after him and was a long time coming back.
“I went to look for him. At a certain tree I found him fallen on the ground with his neck several feet long, and I could not wake him for calling. And while I stood there in a panic, out of the tree itself came the man in the headband, and he opened his mouth and blew at me too.
“I felt an itch in my neck past bearing. I scratched it — and it grew under my hand, writhing, as if it were turning into the neck of a snake. I clapped both hands to my throat, put the horse to a gallop and ran for home, and only so did I keep from dying. But the neck has withered since and will not hold itself up, and that is why I wear the board — and iron over the board.”
Some say that this three-foot man is of the order of Youguang and Bifang, the essences of water and wood, and that if you can call such a thing by its name it has no power to harm you. See the Baopuzi.
