Taizong’s soul drifted hazily out of the palace. As he floated along, a company of imperial guards seemed to invite him on a hunt, but after Taizong had gone happily along with them for a good while, they suddenly vanished, leaving the emperor alone and disoriented amid a deserted landscape. “Great Emperor of the Tang!” a voice suddenly called out to him from some distance away. Following the direction of the voice, Taizong saw a man kneeling by the side of the road. Though he was dressed like an official—black gauze cap, silk robe, rhinoceros horn belt, white-soled boots—he had an unearthly look: a halo of light and mist surrounded him. He was carrying the Ledger of Life and Death. “Forgive me for not picking you up from your palace,” the man apologized as Taizong approached.
“Who are you?” the emperor asked. “And why are you waiting for me?”
“Two weeks ago,” the man explained, “a ghost dragon came to my court in the Palace of Hell to file suit against Your Majesty, on account of your having broken a promise to save him from execution. The Minister of Hell therefore sent his ghostly constables off to arrest you and try you in the Court of Hell. I would have escorted you down myself, but I got a little held up in the office. Hence my lateness—my apologies.”
“Your name and rank?”
“My name is Cui Jue. On earth, I served your father as a county magistrate and then as vice president of the Board of Rites. Since starting in Hell, I’ve been a judge on the Capital of Death circuit.”
“Enchanted.” Taizong smiled, pulling Cui Jue to his feet. “My minister Wei Zheng told me all about you and asked me to pass on a letter.” He fished it out of his sleeve and gave it to Cui Jue, who read out the contents:
I, Wei Zheng—who does not deserve your esteem—bow to my sworn brother, Cui Jue. I miss you and your conversation greatly; logistical obstacles—the fact that the worlds of Light and Darkness are separated by a gulf as wide as the heavens—have regrettably made face-to-face meetings hard to arrange of late. In the years since you died, I have prepared a few unworthy fruits and vegetables as sacrifices to you; I wonder if they have been to your taste. I am honored that you have deigned to visit me from time to time in dreams, and was delighted to learn of your infernal promotion. I’m writing now to inform you of the sudden demise of our brilliant emperor Taizong, whom I expect you will meet when his case comes up for review before the Court of Hell. In recognition of our friendship in the mortal world, I’d like to ask you the small favor of revoking His Majesty’s death. Thank you for your time and consideration. Yours, etc., etc.
“Since my death, Wei Zheng has taken excellent care of my children and, moreover, written me an exquisitely polite letter,” mused Cui Jue. “Please consider your death annulled forthwith!” Just as Taizong was thanking him, two flag-waving young men in blue robes approached, trilling out an invitation from the King of the Underworld for Taizong to visit the infernal palace. Taizong and Cui Jue followed the young men into a huge metropolis, past a golden-lettered welcome sign that read the capital of darkness: a fine city. Rather awkwardly, they passed on the street Taizong’s father, Li Yuan, and his two brothers, Jiancheng and Yuanji. Painfully aware that while still the crown prince, Taizong had killed both of them in an ambush at the palace gate in order to blackmail their father into abdicating the throne to him, Jiancheng and Yuanji set upon Taizong. Only the intervention of a blue-faced, bucktoothed demon drove the vengeful brothers away.
After a few miles, they reached the Palace of Hell. It was a magnificent, green-tiled building, shrouded in crimson mists. Its doors had white jade sills and were fringed with scarlet silk lanterns. To the left and right of the entrance, respectively, a horde of bull- and horse-heads watched over the palace’s comings and goings. As Taizong took this all in, the Ten Kings of the Underworld—with a tinkling of jade girdles and wafting of infernal incense—swished out to bow to their guest. “Your Majesty is the emperor of all men in the World of Light, while we are merely the kings of ghosts in the World of Darkness. After you—we insist.”
“No, no—after you,” countered Taizong. Eventually, after much demurring, he accompanied the kings into their reception hall, and all took their designated seats.
The Minister of Darkness began by ascertaining from Taizong the facts of the case of the unfortunate dragon. “He had committed a capital crime,” Taizong self-justified, after explaining how Wei Zheng had executed the beast in his sleep. “It’s not my fault it ended badly for him.”
“The dragon’s execution was preordained in his book of death and we’ve already sent him on to his next reincarnation. But even though all this was clearly stated in the terms and conditions of his birth, he still insisted on suing you down here for negligence or perjury or some such, which then required you to die so you could appear in the Court of the Underworld—process is process. Terribly sorry for the trouble.” Cui Jue then consulted the section in the Ledger of Life and Death specifying the lifespans of kings. On reading that Taizong was originally due to die in his thirteenth—the current—year on the throne, Cui Jue changed his death date to the thirty-third year.
“Following a thorough and rigorous case review,” King Yama told Taizong, “you’ve now another twenty years to live. Please return to the World of Light at your earliest convenience—Cui Jue and our Minister of Defense will escort you.”
Seeing as he was there anyway, Taizong asked about the longevity of his family. “They’ve nothing to worry about except for your sister, who’ll be paying us a visit very soon.”
“Could I send you a token of my esteem after I return to my palace?” Taizong asked. “Some fruit, perhaps?”
“We’ve plenty of melons of various sorts,” considered the kings, “but we have a hankering for pumpkins, as it happens.”
“Consider it done.” They all bowed to one another and went their separate ways.
Taizong noticed that the Minister of Defense seemed to be taking him a different way from the one he’d come in. “Are you sure this is right?” the emperor asked Cui Jue.
“There is a road into Hell, but no way out,” the judge replied reassuringly. “You can leave only on the Wheel of Transmigration, so that’s where we’re headed. We thought we’d take you on the scenic route, to show you some of the sights of Hell as we go.” After a few miles, they crossed the precipitous Mountain of Shade, crawling with ghosts and goblins, and garlanded with pitch-black demonic exhalations and monster-harboring thickets of thorns. They next came to a sprawl of government departments, all sites of indescribable grotesquerie echoing with cries of agony.
“What happens here?” asked Taizong.
“This is the Eighteen-Story Hell,” explained Cui Jue. “It’s a merciless honeycomb of torture chambers, injustice cells, and fiery pits. There’s something for every sinner: liars, flatterers, swindlers, unfilial children, bullies, murderers. There’s tongue-pulling, skin-shredding—and -peeling, for those gluttons for punishment out there—bone-exposing, tendon-severing, freezing, pounding, crushing, grinding, mutilation, evisceration, boiling oil, and of course oodles of blood. Does that answer your question?”
Taizong was too horrified to speak.
They now came to three parallel bridges. The first, made of gold, they led Taizong over. The bridge to one side was made of silver; a number of respectable, honest-looking individuals were walking across. The bridge on the other side was wreathed in howls and whimpers; icy winds and tides of blood churned around it. “What’s that?” Taizong asked.
“The Bridge of No Alternative,” Cui Jue replied, “where the barefoot, wild-haired souls of the damned have to cross. Underneath it runs the bone-chilling River Rancid. The bridge is several miles long and suspended a hundred feet above waves a thousand fathoms deep, but is only as wide as the span between thumb and index finger. No handrail, of course. Or lifeboats patrolling the waters below. The river’s depths are populated by fiends hungry for humans—including a breed of iron dogs and brass serpents with a particular yen for women who bad-mouth their in-laws.”
Taizong was, once more, speechless with terror.
Presently, Taizong and his guides reached the City of the Dead, where a crowd of broken ghosts—some with severed limbs, some headless, some with their backs snapped by the rack—clamored around Taizong: “Save us!” He tried to hide behind Cui Jue.
“These are the impoverished hungry ghosts of miscellaneous princes and gangsters,” the judge explained, “who led wicked lives and currently have no hope of reincarnation because no one looks after their memory on earth. I can get you past them only if you give them some money.”
“But you see that I came empty-handed,” objected Taizong.
“A man in your world, Liang Xiang from Kaifeng in Henan, has deposited thirteen vaults of gold and silver in Hell. If you tell the infernal bankers who you are and I vouch for you, they’re sure to advance you a loan, which we can give to the hungry ghosts.”
Taizong promptly signed a chit, borrowed a roomful of gold and silver, and distributed it among the ghosts. “Let the emperor through,” instructed Cui Jue. “When he returns to the world of the living, he’ll hold a grand mass to enable your souls to be reborn. So I’ll have no more trouble out of any of you.” The ghosts obediently retreated, and Cui Jue led Taizong on.
A good way farther on, they reached the forking of the Six Paths of Karma. An infinite river of humanity—religious and secular—and of animals, birds, and ghosts flowed into the Wheel of Transmigration. The emperor looked questioningly at Cui Jue.
“When you return to life, do remind your fellow mortals about the Six Paths of Karma. The virtuous will become immortals, the loyal nobles. The filial will be blessed, the principled wealthy. The just will be reborn as humans, the cruel as demons.” After leading the emperor up to the path of nobility, Cui Jue kowtowed in farewell. “Our Minister of Defense will accompany you a little farther. Don’t forget about the mass to redeem those hungry ghosts. Your World of Light can be at peace only when the cries for vengeance down here have been stilled. Repent of your own wickedness and order your people to do good, to safeguard your dynasty and empire.” Taizong promised faithfully, then the Minister of Defense helped him mount a black-maned chestnut horse and they galloped up to a riverbank. “Hurry back to Chang’an, while you still can,” the minister urged him. When Taizong refused to move—he was staring, as if mesmerized, at a pair of golden carp—the minister grabbed one of his legs and yanked him into the river, whose fast-flowing current took him directly back to the mortal world.
In the palace at Chang’an, meanwhile, a crowd of officials and the palace women were gathered around the coffin of the emperor, discussing when to crown the prince emperor. “I wouldn’t do anything too hasty if I were you,” advised Wei Zheng. “News of the emperor’s death will destabilize the empire. And anyway, I’m sure His Majesty will return to life in a day or so. Trust me—I know what I’m talking about.”
Just as one of Wei Zheng’s colleagues was countering that spilled water was lost forever, a cry came from inside the casket: “You’re drowning me!”
The entire court fled for cover except for Wei Zheng and three ministers who plucked up the courage to engage with the coffin. “Is there something bothering Your Majesty? Coffin drapes not to your liking perhaps?”
“What did I tell you?” exclaimed Wei Zheng. “He’s coming back to life!”
The lid was lifted to reveal the emperor sitting up inside, still shouting about being drowned. “Don’t worry, Your Majesty,” the brave ministers reassured him. “We’re here now. What’s wrong?”
“The Minister of Defense in Hell just now pushed me into a river while I was watching two golden carp,” he explained. Wei Zheng quickly ordered some medicinal broth and rice porridge. A couple of portions later, the emperor—after three days and nights of being dead—felt quite himself again.
The next day the courtiers swapped their mourning clothes for their usual red, black, purple, and gold court outfits, and listened admiringly to the emperor—magnificent in a dark yellow robe—recount his time in the underworld. Seized with a new determination to rule virtuously, Taizong then declared a general amnesty for the empire’s prisoners and granted all those under sentence of death a year’s stay of execution, to give them time to go home and put their affairs in order, before returning to the execution ground to receive their just deserts. Taizong then legislated for the welfare of orphans and married some three thousand palace women to military officers. He also issued an edict informing his subjects about the inevitability of retribution for villainy and rewards for good works; and the empire became a universally better place.
Next, Taizong refunded the roomful of gold and silver that he had borrowed from the gentleman of Kaifeng. He turned out to be a humble water-seller who donated all his surplus income to alms-giving or burning paper money—that was how he had built up such an extraordinary fortune in the netherworld. Taizong then advertised for a volunteer to deliver the promised pumpkins to Hell. A few days later, a man called Liu Quan—from a wealthy family of central China—came forward. Not long before, he had scolded his wife for her indiscretion in giving a monk a gold hairpin at their front door, and she had promptly hanged herself in shame and anger, leaving behind a pair of grief-stricken young children. Liu Quan was so remorseful that he was more than happy to leave this world to become an infernal fruit courier. Following the emperor’s instructions, he placed two pumpkins on his head and some money up his sleeve and swallowed poison.
Soon enough, his soul reached the Gate of Ghosts, the pumpkins still on his head. “Who dares approach?” roared the sentry.
“I come on the orders of Taizong of the Tang, to deliver pumpkins for the delectation of the Kings of Hell.” Now all smiles, the demonic doorman ushered him into the Palace of Darkness, where Liu Quan presented the pumpkins “as a token of the emperor’s gratitude for his holiday in Hell.”
A delighted King Yama beamed. “Your emperor is a man of his word!” He then politely asked Liu Quan about himself. On hearing Liu’s tragic story, the ministers of Hell immediately had Liu’s wife, Li Cuilian, shown in. While the couple had a touching reunion, King Yama consulted the Ledger of Life and Death and discovered that an administrative error had been made, for both Li and Liu were supposed to live to ripe old ages, and quickly asked a clerk to restore them to life.
But there was a hitch, the minion revealed: “Because Li’s been dead too long, her soul no longer has a body to go back to.”
“Not a problem,” determined King Yama. “The emperor’s sister Yuying is due to die at any moment now. Cuilian can take her body.” And the administrator led Liu Quan and his wife away, to implement this technically complex reincarnation procedure.