Fang Zizhang was grain officer at Kuaiji and had rented a private house to use as his office.
When the rice was cooked in the kitchen and the maid lifted the steamer, suddenly a third of it would be gone. Then the same thing began to happen to the cooked dishes. They watched for it in secret and saw nothing at all. The mistress suspected the maid of stealing and giving it to someone, and had her whipped again and again — and still could not get at the fact of the matter.
An old woman who used to come to the house met something there: one leg, hopping. She had no time to see what it looked like; she came out frightened and told Zizhang. Zizhang thought it very strange, and planned to move out to avoid worse trouble.
Then, walking by chance into a small room in the neighbour’s house, he noticed a curtained shrine-niche of great richness and cleanliness. He went to look at it. There was nothing painted on the scroll but a single enormous foot. No likeness, nothing else.
He asked the neighbour about it, and the man was evasive and would not answer, quite at a loss what to do with himself. And Zizhang understood that this was the thing that had been stealing his rice.
There was a gentleman of the prefecture, the commandant Yao, who was expert in the registers of the law and skilled at dealing with spirits. Zizhang told him the whole story.
“That is called the One-Legged Five-Pervader,” said Yao. “It belongs to the class of mountain sprites. Do you wish it dealt with?”
“It has happily committed no great offence,” said Zizhang. “There is no need to punish it severely. I only want it to stop coming about and not to trouble me again. That will be enough.”
So Yao sent a flying talisman with an injunction on it.
From that time there was silence, and it did not come again.
