During the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, there was an official of the Ministry of Personnel named Huang Zhiyun somewhere in the capital. He was a sixth-rank chief in the Ministry of Personnel. Although he was a small official, he had great power. His grandfather was an official in the imperial court earlier, but later he offended a minister and was impeached and lost his official position. After that, he used half his life savings to buy a house in the capital and settled all six members of his family in it. There, Huang Zhiyun was his grandson.
Therefore, Huang Zhiyun received a good education since he was a child. Growing up in such a family, he himself was naturally interested in studying to gain fame. In addition, he had been smart since he was a child, and it was not troublesome to study. When he was more than ten years old, I can already memorize the Four Books and Five Classics. When he was sixteen years old, he took part in the children's examination, passed it in one attempt, and became a scholar. After that, he continued to work hard and passed the provincial examination when he was twenty-four years old and became a civil servant. This is much better than his peers. At the age of thirty, he passed the Jinshi examination, ranked 30th in the second class, entered the Hanlin Academy to study, and after leaving the academy, he went to work in the Ministry of Civil Affairs. His official career was very smooth.
Huang Zhiyun is an upright and honest man. In addition to writing poems and painting, he also has a hobby that is like plants. He keeps many potted plants and plants many trees at home. Every autumn, there are jujube trees at home , pear trees, and persimmon trees are full of fruits with beautiful colors and very pleasing to the eye. But it was also because of this that Huang Zhiyun encountered the most memorable incident in his life.
That was when he was promoted to cabinet bachelor. Because the number of people in his family was increasing, the house could no longer accommodate him. For the convenience of work, he rented a house on Yama Temple Street in the east of the capital. There was a courtyard in the courtyard. Huang Zhiyun liked the jujube tree very much when he saw it. He asked the family about it because the tree looked old. The family told him that the jujube tree should be more than a hundred years old and it was an ancient tree. .
But it was this ancient tree that caused Huang Zhiyun to encounter a magical thing. One bright moonlit night, when Huang Zhiyun looked up in the room, he suddenly saw a woman in red sitting on the diagonal branches of the jujube tree with her legs down and her head turned towards The moon doesn't care about people at all. Huang Zhiyun felt very strange. There was absolutely no outsider in his house, so he went out and approached her. As soon as he got close, she disappeared; when he stepped back and looked, she was still in the same place. After
he was once just two people, one standing under the tree and the other in the room. The people in the room saw the hands and feet of the person under the tree, but the person standing under the tree saw nothing. When I saw the woman in red, I looked down at the ground. There was a shadow on the tree but not on the woman. Throwing tiles and stones at them, there was no obstacle. Hit it with firecracker and it will disappear; once the fireworks pass, they will return to their original shape. Huang Zhiyun felt scared and asked the owner of the house. The owner said: Ever since I bought this house, this strange thing has happened. But it won't harm anyone, so everyone is in peace. After listening to the owner's story, he realized that there was such a thing about the ancient trees in the house. This really opened his eyes. He had never believed in ghosts and gods, but now he had to believe it.
Huang Zhiyun looked at the monster in the yard, neither moving nor speaking, sitting silently on a branch. He really didn't know why. I was worried that it would cause trouble, so I moved to another place. Later, the owner cut down the tree, and the geek never appeared again.
