Chapter 12
The Tang Emperor Keeps Faith and Holds a Great Mass
Guanyin Appears to the Reincarnated Golden Cicada
When the devil officers left the underworld with Liu Quan and his wife, a dark and whirling wind blew them straight to the great capital Chang'an, where Liu Quan's soul was sent to the Golden Pavilion and Li Cuilian's to an inner courtyard of the palace, where Princess Yuying could be seen walking slowing beside some moss under the shade of some blossoming trees. Suddenly the devil officers struck her full in the chest and knocked her over; they snatched the soul from her living body and put Li Cuilian's soul into the body in its place. With that they returned to the underworld.
When the palace serving-women saw her drop dead they rushed to the throne hall to report to the three empresses that Her Royal Highness the Princess had dropped dead. The shocked empresses passed the news on to Taizong who sighed and said, “We can well believe it. When we asked the Ten Lords of Hell if young and old in our palace would all be well, they replied that they would all be well except that our younger sister was going to die suddenly. How true that was.”
He and everyone else in the palace went with great sorrow to look at her lying under the trees, only to see that she was breathing very lightly.
“Don't wail,” the Tang Emperor said, “don't wail; it might alarm her.” Then he raised her head with his own hand and said, “Wake up, sister, wake up.”
All of a sudden the princess sat up and called out, “Don't go so fast, husband. Wait for me.”
“Sister, we're waiting for you here,” said the Emperor.
The princess lifted her head, opened her eyes, and looked at him. “Who are you?” she asked. “How dare you put your hands on us?”
“It's your august brother, royal sister,” replied Taizong.
“I've got nothing to do with august brothers and royal sisters,” said the princess. “My maiden name is Li, and my full name is Li Cuilian. My husband is Liu Quan, and we both come from Junzhou. When I gave a gold hairpin to a monk at the gate three months ago my husband said harsh words to me about leaving the women's quarters and not behaving as a good wife should. It made me so angry and upset that I hanged myself from a beam with a white silk sash, leaving a boy and a girl who cried all night and all day. As my husband was commissioned by the Tang Emperor to go to he underworld to deliver some pumpkins, the Kings of Hell took pity on us and let the two of us come back to life. He went ahead, but I lagged behind. When I tried to catch him up I tripped. You are all quite shameless to be mauling me like this. I don't even know your names.”
“We think that Her Royal Highness is delirious after passing out when she fell,” said Taizong to the palace women. He sent an order to the Medical Academy for some medicinal potions, and helped Yuying into the palace.
When the Tang Emperor was back in his throne-hall, one of his aides came rushing in to report, “Your Majesty, Liu Quan, the man who delivered the pumpkins, is awaiting your summons outside the palace gates.” The startled Taizong immediately sent for Liu Quan, who prostrated himself before the vermilion steps of the throne.
“What happened when you presented the pumpkins?” asked the Tang Emperor.
“Your subject went straight to the Devil Gate with the pumpkins on my head. I was taken to the Senluo Palace where I saw the Ten Kings of Hell, to whom I presented the pumpkins, explaining how very grateful my emperor was. The Kings of Hell were very pleased. They bowed in Your Majesty's honour and said, 'How splendid of the Tang Emperor to be as good as his word.'”
“What did you see in the underworld?” asked the Emperor.
“I did not go very far there so I did not see much. But when the kings asked me where I was from and what I was called, I told them all about how I had volunteered to leave my family and my children to deliver the pumpkins because my wife had hanged herself. They immediately ordered demon officers to bring my wife, and we were reunited outside the Senluo Palace. Meanwhile they inspected the Registers of Births and Deaths and saw that my wife and I were both due to become Immortals, so they sent devil officers to bring us back. I went ahead with my wife following behind, and although I was fortunate enough to come back to life, I don't know where her soul has been put.”
“What did the Kings of Hell say to you about your wife?” asked the astonished Emperor.
“They didn't say anything,” replied Liu Quan, “but I heard a demon officer say, 'As Li Cuilian has been dead for some time her body has decomposed.' To this the Kings of Hell said, 'Li Yuying of the Tang house is due to die today, so we can borrow her body to put Li Cuilian's soul back into.' As I don't know where this Tang house is or where she lives, I haven't been able to go and look for her yet.”
The Tang Emperor, who was now very pleased, said to his officials, “When we were leaving the Kings of Hell, we asked them about our family. They said all its members would be well except for my sister. She collapsed and died under the shade of some blossoming trees, and when we hurried over to support her she came to, shouting 'Don't go so fast, husband. Wait for me.' We thought at the time that she was just talking deliriously after passing out, but when we asked her to tell us more her story tallied precisely with Liu Quan's.”
“If Her Royal Highness died suddenly and came to shortly afterwards talking like this, then it means that Liu Quan's wife must have borrowed her body to come back to life,” said Wei Zheng. “Things like this do happen. The princess should be asked to come out so that we can hear what she says.”
“We have just ordered the Imperial Medical Academy to send some medicine, so we don't know whether it will be possible,” said the Tang Emperor, who then sent a consort into the palace to ask her to come out. The princess, meanwhile, was shouting wildly inside the palace, “I'm taking none of your medicine. This isn't my home. My home is a simple tiled house, not like this jaundiced, yellow place with its flashy doors. Let me out, let me out.”
Four of five women officials and two or three eunuchs appeared while she was shouting and helped her go straight to the throne hall, where the Tang Emperor asked, “Would you recognize your husband if you saw him?”
“What a thing to ask! We've been married since we were children, and I've given him a son and a daughter, so of course I'd recognize him.” The Emperor told his attendants to help her down and she went down from the throne hall. As soon as she saw Liu Quan in front of the white jade steps she seized hold of him.
“Husband!” she exclaimed, “where did you go? Why didn't you wait for me? I tripped over, and all these shameless people surrounded me and shouted at me. Wasn't that shocking?” Although Liu Quan could hear that it was his wife talking, she looked like somebody else, so he did not dare to recognize her as his wife.
“Indeed,” said the Emperor,
“Sometimes mountains collapse and the earth yawns open,
But few men will shorten their lives to die for another.”
As he was a good and wise monarch he gave all of the princess' dressing-cases, clothes and jewelry to Liu Quan as if they were a dowry, presented him with an edict freeing him from labor service for life, and told him to take the princess home with him. Husband and wife thanked him before the steps and returned home very happily. There is a poem to prove it:
Life and death are pre-ordained;
Some have many years, others few.
When Liu Quan came back to the light after taking the pumpkins,
Li Cuilian returned to life in a borrowed body.
After leaving the Emperor the pair went straight back to the city of Junzhou, where they found that their household and their children were all well. There is no need to go into how the two of them publicized their virtue rewarded.