ing very awkward when we saw a man in a black hat and gown who turned out to be the judge Cui Jue. When he had shouted at my dead brothers and driven them away we gave him Wei Zheng’s letter. As he was reading it some servants in black holding banners led us in and took us to the Senluo Palace, where the Ten Kings of Hell were all sitting. They said that the dragon of the River Jing had falsely accused us of deliberately killing him after we had promised to save him, so we gave them a full account of what we told you about before. They said that the case had now been settled between the three orders, and ordered that the Registers of Birth and Death be brought at once so that they could see how long we were due to live. Judge Cui handed up the register, and they saw in it that we were due to reign for thirty-three years, which meant that we had another twenty years of life in front of us. They told Marshal Zhu and Judge Cui to escort us back. We took our leave of the Ten Kings and promised to send them some pumpkins and fruit as a mark of our thanks. After leaving the Senluo Palace we saw in the underworld how the disloyal, the unfilial, those who do not observe the rules of propriety, wasters of foodgrains, bullies, cheats, those who use false measures, adulterers, robbers, hypocrites, deceivers, debauchees, swindlers and the like undergo the agonies of being ground, burnt, pounded and sliced, and suffer the torments of being fried, boiled, hung in mid-air, and skinned. There were tens of thousands of them, far more than our eyes could take in. Then we went through the City of the Unjustly Slain where there were countless ghosts of the wrongly killed, and all of them, the chieftains of the sixty-four groups of rebels and the spirits of the seventy-two bands of rebels, blocking our way. Luckily Judge Cui acted as our guarantor and lent us one of the hoards of gold and silver of a Mr. Xiang of Henan, with which we were able to buy them off and continue on our way. Judge Cui told us that when we returned to the world of the living we had an inescapable obligation to hold a Great Mass to enable all those forlorn ghosts to be reborn, and with these instructions he took his leave. When I came out under the Wheel of the Six Paths of Being Marshal Zhu invited us to mount a horse. This horse seemed to fly to the banks of the River Wei, where I saw a pair of fish sporting in the water. Just as we were enjoying this sight the marshal grabbed our legs and tipped us into the water, and with that we returned to life.”

When the ministers had heard this they all congratulated him and they compiled a record of it; and all the prefectures and counties of the empire sent in memorials of felicitation.

Taizong issued a decree of amnesty for all the convicted criminals in the empire and ordered inquiries into the cases of all those held in jail on serious charges. The inspectors submitted to the throne the names of more than four hundred criminals who had been sentenced by the Ministry of Punishments to beheading or strangulation, and Taizong gave them a stay of execution, allowing them to go home to see their families and give their property to their relations; on the same day the following year they were to report to the authorities for their sentences to be carried out. The criminals thanked him for his mercy and withdrew. He also issued a notice about charity for orphans and released three thousand women of all ages from the palace to be married to members of the army. From then on all was well within and without the palace. There is a poem to prove it:

Vast is the mercy of the great Tang Emperor;

He surpasses Yao and Shun in making the people prosper.

Four hundred condemned men all left their prisons,

Three thousand mistreated women were released from the palace.

All the officials of the empire proclaim the monarch’s long life;

The ministers at court congratulate the Great Dragon.

Heaven responds to the thoughts of the good heart,

Its blessing will protect his seventeen successors.

When he had released the women from the palace and let the condemned men out of prison he issued a notice that was posted throughout the empire. It read:

“Great are Heaven and Earth;

Sun and Moon shine clearly.

Although the universe is vast,

Earth and sky have no room for evil plots.

If you use your wits and skill to cheat people,

You will get retribution in this life;

If you are good at giving and ask for little,

You are sure to find a reward before your future life.

A thousand cunning plans

Cannot compare with living according to one’s lot;

Ten thousand kinds of robbers

Are no match for those who live frugally and accept their fate.

If you are good and merciful in thought and deed,

What need is there to bother to read the scriptures?

If your mind is full of malice towards others,

To read the whole of the Buddha’s canon would be a waste of time.”

From then on everyone in the country did good deeds. Another notice was issued calling for a worthy man to take pumpkins to the underworld, and at the same time Yuchi Jingde, the Duke of E, was sent to Kaifeng in Henan to visit Xiang Liang and pay him back a hoard of jewels and a hoard of gold and silver. Some days after the notice had been issued a worthy man called Liu Quan from Junzhou came forward to deliver the pumpkins. He came from a family worth ten thousand strings of cash. When his wife Li Cuilian had taken a gold pin from her hair to give as an offering to a monk at the gate, Liu Quan had cursed her for being a loose wife who would not stay in the women’s quarters. Li Cuilian, bitterly resenting this, had hanged herself, leaving a little boy and girl who had been crying night and day ever since. Liu Quan, unable to bear it any longer, wanted only to end his own life and abandon his family and his children. For this reason he had volunteered to deliver the pumpkins in death and came to the Tang Emperor with the imperial notice in his hand. The Emperor ordered him to go to the Golden Pavilion, where he was to put a pair of pumpkins on his head and some gold in his sleeve and drink poison.

Liu Quan drank the poison and died. In an instant his soul appeared at the Devil Gate with the pumpkins on his head. The demon officer at the gate asked, “Who are you, and how did you come here?”

“I have come on the orders of Emperor Taizong of the Great Tang to present some pumpkins to the Ten Kings of Hell.” The officer was only too pleased to let him in, and he went straight to the Senluo Palace, and when he was given audience with the Kings of Hell he presented the pumpkins to them and said, “I have brought these pumpkins a great distance in obedience to the decree of the Tang Emperor, who wishes to thank Your Majesties for their great mercy to him.”

“How splendid of the Tang Emperor to be as good as his word,” exclaimed the ten delighted kings as they accepted the pumpkins. Then they asked him what he was called and where he was from.

“I am a commoner of the city of Junzhou,” he replied, “and my name is Liu Quan. As my wife Miss Li hanged herself and left a boy and a girl with nobody to look after them I wanted to abandon my family and children by giving my life for my country, so I brought this offering of pumpkins on behalf of my sovereign, who wanted to thank Your Majesties for your great mercy.” On hearing this the Ten Kings ordered a search for Liu Quan’s wife, Miss Li. The devil messengers soon brought her to the Senluo Palace, outside which Liu Quan was reunited with her. They thanked the Ten Kings for their kindness and told them about the harsh words that had been spoken. On consulting the Registers of Birth and Death, the kings found that they were fated to become Immortals, so they ordered demon officers to take them back at once. The demon officers, however, asked in a report, “As Li Cuilian has been dead for some time her body has perished, so what is her soul to be attached to?”

“Li Yuying, the sister of the Tang Emperor, is due to die a sudden death today,” said the Kings of Hell, “so we can borrow her body to put Li Cuilian’s soul back into.” On receiving this order the demon officers took Liu Quan and his wife out of the underworld to be brought back to life. If you don’t know how they returned to life, listen to the explanation in the next installment.