Lord Han of Qiaoyang had a refined face but a taste for martial pursuits, and spent his days galloping and trying out swords for pleasure. Before he rose to office he took a sturdy servant and travelled to the Five Peaks.
Caught in snow midway, he put up in a ruined temple. After the first watch the snow and moon shone together; Han went and stood under the eaves, and looking round at the white world said, “A very world of glass.”
Suddenly a dark wind came from all sides, and a ferocious ghost strode in with its head high. Han drew his sword to meet it. His servant was terrified and dropped to the ground like a dog, hugging his master’s left leg with both hands.
The ghost began to grow: at first level with the eaves, then some three zhang above them. Looking up, the servant saw his master’s appearance change too — a black face and red beard, standing erect — and his body grew as well, three zhang above the ghost again.
The ghost shrank at once and fell to the ground in obeisance. “My lord is a true hero. Every man’s spirit stands ten zhang tall, rich or poor; but commit one shameful act and it shortens by a foot. So among the shapes that people the visible world, the best fall short of five feet, the next three or two, and the worst lie flat like three-inch awls. You alone have kept your original spirit. The one who will stand on the earth and prop up the sky hereafter — who else but you? Take heart!”
With that it was gone. The servant saw his master as he had always been, and described what he had witnessed; Han himself was entirely unaware.
Later Han rose to commander-in-chief, and died in battle suppressing bandits; he is worshipped as a martyr to duty. The portrait he left, Subduing the Ghost, shows a scorched, curly-bearded figure that was not his real face — yet when villagers have a haunting they bring it out to suppress them, and the ghosts invariably flee. To this day he is called a second Zhong Kui.
