Original Text
Chen Huafeng was a native of Mengshan. One scorching summer day, unable to bear the heat, he lay down to cool off under a large tree outside the village. Suddenly a man ran over, his head wrapped in a kerchief, and hurried to the shade of the tree, where he leaned against a stone and sat down, fanning himself incessantly while sweat poured down like rain. Chen Huafeng sat up and said with a smile to the newcomer, "If you would remove that kerchief, you could cool down without even fanning." The stranger replied, "Taking it off is easy, but putting it back on is difficult." Chen Huafeng engaged him in conversation, and the man spoke with refined elegance. After a while, the guest said, "At this moment, I can think of nothing else but some iced fine wine—a single draught, cool and fragrant, flowing straight from the throat to the belly, would dispel half the summer's heat." Chen Huafeng laughed and said, "That wish is easily granted; I can fulfill your desire." Taking the man's hand, he added, "My humble home is quite near; pray, do me the honor of coming along." The guest smiled and followed him.
Upon arriving home, Chen Huafeng brought out fine wine stored in a stone cave, chilled to the point of numbing the teeth. The guest was greatly delighted and drank ten large cups in one go. By then, night had fallen, and rain suddenly began to pour from the sky. They lit a lamp indoors, and the guest removed his scarf, both sitting with legs stretched out in casual ease. As they spoke, Chen noticed that light occasionally flickered from behind the guest's head, which struck him as strange. Before long, the guest became utterly drunk and fell asleep on the bed. Chen took the lamp and stealthily peered behind the guest's ear, only to find a large hole, as wide as a cup's mouth, with several thick membranes spaced like window lattices; beyond the lattices, a soft piece of skin concealed what seemed to be an empty cavity. Astonished, Chen secretly pulled out the hairpin from his topknot and gently parted the soft skin to look inside. There, a creature shaped like a small calf flew out with his touch, piercing the window paper and vanishing. Chen was even more bewildered and dared not probe further. Just as he turned to leave, the guest awoke with a start and exclaimed in alarm, "You have seen my secret! You have released the cattle plague—what is to be done now?" Chen hastily bowed and asked for an explanation. The guest said, "Since matters have come to this, there is nothing left to hide. I will tell you the truth: I am the god of pestilence for the six domestic animals. What just flew out was the cattle plague, and I fear that all cattle within a hundred li will perish." Chen, who made his living by raising cattle, was terrified upon hearing this and quickly knelt, begging the guest to devise a remedy. The guest replied, "Even I cannot escape punishment for this—what remedy can there be? Only a powder of Sophora flavescens is most effective. If you can widely spread this prescription without selfishness, that will suffice." With these words, he thanked Chen and departed. He then scooped up a handful of earth and placed it in a niche on the wall, saying, "Using a little of this each time will also work." He clasped his hands in farewell and vanished.
Not long after, the oxen indeed fell ill, and a plague spread. Chen Huafeng, seeking only his own gain, kept the prescription secret and refused to divulge it. He passed it only to his younger brother, who tried it and found it effective. Chen himself, however, ground sophora root into powder and fed it to his oxen, but it had no effect at all. Of his forty oxen, nearly all died, leaving only four or five old cows, which were also on the verge of perishing. Distressed and at a loss, he suddenly thought of the soil from the niche, and though he doubted its efficacy, he decided to try it. After one night, the oxen all recovered. Only then did he realize that the medicine had failed because the immortals were punishing his selfishness. In the years that followed, the old cows multiplied, and the herd gradually returned to its original size.
Commentary
This is a fable about bovine disease, warning that people must possess a sense of public welfare and not harbor selfishness during times of plague. In his preface to the "Book of Medicinal Remedies," Pu Songling wrote: "Illness is something that people often encounter; in mountain villages, not only is there no place to seek a physician, but there is also no money to purchase medicine. I thought to collect folk prescriptions to aid the urgent needs of neighbors and villagers, and, unable to stop, I also took the 'Compendium of Materia Medica' and copied it, selecting neither lengthy formulas nor costly drugs, so that after consulting a prescription, a village boy could be sent to fetch the herbs." Such was Pu Songling's stance on human ailments, and naturally his attitude toward livestock diseases was the same. This tale reveals the folk veterinary customs of the Ming and Qing dynasties in rural areas; while the notion of the "Plague God of the Six Domestic Animals" is baseless, the idea that bovine distemper flew from the ears of that deity may not be entirely Pu Songling's romantic fancy, but rather a folk rumor about cattle disease from those days.