Scholar Mu was a man of Changsha. His family was so poor that he had no padded clothes for the winter. One evening, as he sat alone in the cold, a woman came in, splendidly dressed but dark-skinned and ugly. She smiled and said, "Aren't you cold?" Startled, Mu asked who she was. "I am a fox immortal," she said. "I pitied you, so lonely and bleak, and came to keep your cold bed warm with you." Mu was afraid of her because she was a fox and repelled because she was ugly, and he cried out loudly. The woman set a silver ingot on the table and said, "If you will be good to me, this is yours." Mu was delighted and gave in. His bed had no mattress or quilt, so she spread out her own robe. Near dawn she rose and told him, "With what I gave you, hurry and buy soft silk for bedding; use the rest for padded clothes and food, and that will be enough. If we can stay together for good, you need never worry about being poor." Then she left. Mu told his wife, who was just as pleased and at once bought silk and sewed it up. When the woman came that night and saw the bedding all new, she said happily, "Your good wife has worked hard!" and left gold to reward her. From then on not a night passed without her coming, and each time she left she gave them something. After a little over a year the house had been repaired and kept spotless, everyone inside and out was dressed in embroidered brocade, and the family had become as rich as any landed gentleman.
Then the fox's gifts grew smaller, and Mu began to tire of her. He hired a sorcerer, who drew a talisman on the door. When the woman came, she bit it in two and tossed it away. She came in, pointed at Mu, and said, "Of all the ingrates and turncoats, you are the worst! But what can this do to me? If you are sick of me, I'll simply go. But now that our bond is broken, everything you got from me must be paid back!" And she stormed off. Frightened, Mu told the sorcerer. The sorcerer set up an altar, but before he had finished laying it out he suddenly crashed to the ground with blood streaming down his cheek; when they looked, one of his ears had been cut off. Everyone panicked and fled; the sorcerer too ran away, clutching his ear. Stones as big as basins came hurtling through the room, and not a door, window, pot or steamer was left whole.
Mu hid under the bed, curled up, sweating and shaking. Soon he saw the woman come in carrying a creature with a cat's head and a lapdog's tail. She set it in front of the bed and urged it on: "Heh-heh! Go chew the scoundrel's feet." At once the creature bit into his shoe, its teeth sharper than a blade. Terrified, Mu tried to draw his legs up out of reach, but he could not move his limbs. The creature chewed his toes with a crisp, crunching sound. In unbearable pain, Mu begged for mercy. "Bring out all your gold and pearls and hide nothing," said the woman. Mu agreed. She said, "Ho-ho!" and the creature stopped. Mu could not get up, so he just told her where things were. She went and ransacked the places herself, but apart from jewelry and clothes she found only a little over two hundred taels of silver. She thought it too little and said again, "Heh-heh!" and the creature began chewing again. Mu wailed and pleaded to be spared. She gave him ten days to pay her six hundred taels. Mu promised, and she picked up the creature and left.
A long while later the household gradually gathered again and dragged Mu out from under the bed. His feet were dripping with blood, and he had lost two toes. They looked around the room: every valuable was gone, and all that remained was the tattered quilt he had owned in the old days. They covered him with it and laid him down. Afraid she would return after ten days, they sold the maidservants and pawned their clothes to make up the sum. On the appointed day the woman did come; they hurried to hand it over, and she left without a word. After that she never came again. Mu's injured feet took half a year of doctors and medicine to heal, and the family was as poor as it had been at the start.
The fox then went to a family named Yu in a nearby village. Yu was a farmer of modest means, yet within three years he had bought himself an official rank by donating grain, his fine houses stretched one after another, and half the rich clothes he wore had once belonged to the Mu family. Mu saw this but did not dare ask about it. Once, out in the fields, he met the woman on the road and knelt stiffly by the roadside. She said nothing, but wrapped five or six taels of silver in a white kerchief, tossed it to him from a distance, turned, and walked straight off. Later Yu died young, but the woman still came to his house from time to time, and each time gold and silk would go missing. When Yu's son saw her arrive, he bowed to her and prayed from a distance: "Though our father has passed away, we are all like your own sons. Even if you won't look after us, how can you bear to sit by and make us poor?" The woman left and never came back.
