On the road from Liaocheng to Linqing, there is a large tomb. It is said that in the early years, this big tomb housed foxes who had cultivated immortality for generations. Every full moon night, people can see the old fox leading his sons and grandsons to kneel in a row and worship the moon.
It was a time of chaos and all living beings were suffering. Legend has it that local people would go to the tomb to pray sincerely during weddings, funerals, and weddings. They would also ask the fox fairy to borrow some pots, pans, tables, chairs, and benches for emergency use. They would return them to the tomb after each borrowing was done. No matter how hard you try, it never works.
Once, a family became evil-minded after using the Fox Fairy's belongings and did not want to return them, so they hid the things privately and refused to return them. On the third day, an old man with white hair, blue eyes and big pointed ears came to the door of this family. He sat down on the big stone at the door and opened his mouth to curse. Naturally, the family stayed behind closed doors. They cursed like this for several days. One day, just after dawn, the family lit a fire and burned the big stone at the door until it was hot. The old fox didn't know where he was when he came. As soon as he sat down, he was so hot that he howled strangely and disappeared.
The family thought that they would get away with it and everything would be fine. Unexpectedly, the next day, a malignant sore the size of a bowl appeared on the man's head. It oozed pus and was painful. The man had no choice but to seek medical advice everywhere, but nothing could relieve him at all. In desperation, he had no choice but to go to the temple to find a Taoist priest for help. The Taoist priest divined a fortune for him and asked him: "Did you offend the Fox Fairy?" The man could only tell the whole story, and the Taoist priest gave him three talismans. , told him: "Go out tomorrow morning and burn one of these three talismans. Walk 200 steps eastward to burn one, and walk 200 steps south to burn another. You must remember to do as I say, otherwise the consequences will be disastrous. !” The man took the talisman and thanked him.
Early the next morning, the man went out and burned the first talisman. He secretly planned to walk another two hundred steps east and south, which was really troublesome. Fortunately, he burned all the talismans at once. Strangely enough, by noon the malignant sores on his head had healed and there were no traces left. The man was overjoyed, thinking that now the foxes would never be able to do anything to him again.
After nightfall, people around him heard the pitiful and painful howls of foxes jumping up and down from the big tomb. They had been making noise for nearly a night. Early the next morning, I saw fox corpses strewn around the tomb. All the fox fairies were dead. From then on, people had no place to borrow anything.
In the family that borrowed things from a fox and refused to return them, the man of the house accidentally drank fake wine and was poisoned, blinding his eyes. He was frightened and cried all day and night, and soon died. Not long after, his wife died inexplicably. One of the two sons was dragged away and his whereabouts are unknown, and the other was run over by a carriage and left dead in the street. Within half a year, the family was considered extinct.
Nowadays, the big tomb is still on the roadside, and the legend of the Ghost Emperor is still there, but the fox fairies who were willing to help others have long been nowhere to be found. There is an old saying that "poor mountains and bad waters breed unruly people." Sometimes material poverty can inspire greed and evil in human nature, which ultimately harms others and ourselves, and the gain outweighs the loss.