Chen Yanzhong of Duchang was a man of blunt honesty who loved what was right, careless with his money and free in his manner.
There was once a grandee named Dang who came from Hebei and lodged in the same village of West Chen. He had to travel to the capital for an official appointment and had no funds for the journey. Yanzhong gave him a hundred strings of cash, and boarded his aged parents and little ones in his own house, treating them like his own flesh and bone. This was his way with men in extremity.
In the tenth month of the third year of Qiandao he died of an illness. The night before the end he told his father in a dream: “Yanzhong cannot serve you to the end of your days. I have received appointment as earth god of Jianju Abbey.”
His father did not believe it. Then his son dreamed the same thing.
More than a year passed, and he came again in dream: “I have been earth god of Jianju for a full year now, and the building is ruinous. Whenever it rains my face streams and I can get no rest; there is hardly a whole spot on my body. Please have it repaired for me.”
The next day father and son talked it over together, went to the abbey and looked — and believed. And they rebuilt the shrine entirely new.
