On the twenty-seventh day of the third month of the first year of Qingyuan, a great thunderstorm struck Ganzhou.
Zhang Lüxin, the assistant magistrate of Ganzhou, having been relieved of his post, was at a farewell feast given by his colleagues in the Jinghui Hall of the county office. In the late afternoon, a dozen or so fireballs suddenly appeared in the courtyard, spinning up and down — a fearsome sight. Those seated all rose and said: “When the thunder is swift and the wind violent, one must change one’s ways; this is no occasion for us to feast.” And they scattered and went home.
At dusk the sky cleared, and word came that a clerk in the county marketplace, nicknamed Beisan, had been struck dead by lightning; on his left ribs were three vermilion seal-characters.
At the same time, Liu Zhao, a clerk in the provincial surveillance office, was at home eating his evening meal when he too saw fireballs rolling and leaping in the hall and passing straight into his younger brother’s room. The brother, also a lowly clerk, was just climbing into bed to check a leak in the roof. His sister, in the room, saw more than ten gods in vermilion robes, each a zhang tall, glaring and pacing; she was terrified out of her wits and screamed for help with all her strength. One god seized her brother by the topknot and dragged him out, saying: “It is not your affair — stand off a zhang and it is done.”
Then the thunder-axe shattered the tiles and rafters from the ridge of the roof, pinioned the brother to the threshold, and shattered his skull. Shortly after, a maid also died in the kitchen. So there were three who died together.
