Original Text
There was a man from Yishui who was conscripted into the army at the end of the Ming dynasty and sent to Liaoyang. Just as Liaoyang city was being overrun, he was killed by the chaotic soldiers; though his head was severed, he did not die. At night, a man came holding a register and called out the names of the ghosts in order. When he reached this man's name, he said that he should not have died, and ordered his attendants to reattach his head and send him back. So they took the head and placed it on his neck, and together they supported him, hearing only the rustling of the wind as they walked for some time, then set him down and departed. The man looked around and recognized his own hometown. The magistrate of Yishui, hearing of this, suspected that he had deserted and returned. He had him arrested and interrogated, and upon hearing his story, did not believe it. Moreover, examining his neck, he found no scar, and so prepared to execute him. The man said, "My words have no proof, but I beg you, sir, to temporarily imprison me. The matter of the severed head may be false, but the fall of Liaoyang city cannot be false. If Liaoyang city remains intact, then I will accept punishment without delay." The magistrate accepted his plea. After several days, news of Liaoyang's fall arrived, and the timing matched exactly what the man had said, so the magistrate released him.
Commentary
This is a story from the Ming dynasty about a man from Yishui who, having been conscripted into the Liaoyang army, narrowly escaped death.
Liaoyang and Yishui are separated by ten thousand li, and in this age of advanced information technology, news of a city's fall can be transmitted in the snap of a finger, the speed of information far outstripping that of human travel. But in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the speed of information spread was far slower than human travel, so whether a certain man from Yishui was a true deserter or a false one could only be left to his own claims.