Fei Mi, whose style name was Cidu, was a commoner of Sichuan. He wrote the lines
The great river carries the water of the Han; a lonely boat takes up the failing spring
which the Minister Ruanting thought well of, and recommended him to a general named Yang Zhan.
He went with the army into Sichuan, and passing through Chengdu they lodged in the upper storey of the surveillance commissioner’s hall. It was commonly said that the building was haunted. Yang and his deputy Li would hear nothing of it, and made Fei sleep there with them. Fei could not rid himself of misgiving; he lit the lamp, laid hand to sword, and sat upright inside his bed-curtains.
After the third watch there was a clumping sound below, and a thing came up the stair.
By the lamplight he saw that it had a head and a face, but no brows and no eyes. It was like a length of dry firewood. It stood upright before the bed.
Fei drew his sword and struck at it. The thing gave back several paces, turned about and ran — and there, set upright in its back, was an eye a foot or more in length, shooting golden light at a man.
It moved across to where General Yang was sleeping. It lifted the curtain, turned its back, and shot the light at him.
And then, out of the general’s two nostrils, Fei saw two streams of white breath come, which met the light and held against it. The greater the white breath grew, the smaller the golden light became. It rolled away down the stair and was put out.
General Yang never knew anything about it.
Before long there was the sound of the stair again. The thing came back up and went to where the deputy general Li lay. Li was fast asleep, snoring like thunder. Fei took this for a greater hardiness than Yang’s, and thought him safer still.
Then he heard one great cry. He looked, and Li was dead, bleeding from the seven openings.
