When Lord Zhu Huiyin was governor of eastern Guangdong, travelling merchants kept filing complaints of murders with no culprit and no trace. Men who had journeyed a thousand li died and no body was ever seen; several traders setting out together would vanish without a word. The cases piled up one upon another, and none could be traced. At first, when a complaint came in, the officials concerned would still send out warrants for an arrest; but once the complaints grew too many, they simply set them aside and asked no more. When Lord Zhu took office he went through the old cases one by one: the dead named in the complaints numbered no fewer than a hundred, and as for those who had come from a thousand li away with no one to speak for them, there was no telling how many more. Shocked and grieved, he racked his brains and could not sleep. He consulted all his subordinates, but they had few ideas to offer. So he purified himself, bathed and burned incense, and sent a formal dispatch to the City God. Then he retired to sleep in fasting, and in a haze he saw an official come in holding a court tablet. "What office do you hold?" Zhu asked. "I am Liu, the City God." "And what have you to say?" The god replied: "Snow hangs at the temples; clouds rise at the sky's edge; wood floats on the water; a door is set in the wall." With that, he withdrew.
When Zhu woke, he could not unravel the riddle. He tossed and turned all night until suddenly it came to him: "Hanging snow means *old*; rising clouds mean *dragon*; wood on water makes *boat*; a door in a wall makes *household*. Doesn't that spell 'Old Dragon boat households'!" For to the northeast of the province lie Xiaoling and Languan, where the waterway springs from Old Dragon Ford and runs on to the South Sea, and the great merchants from beyond the mountains usually entered Guangdong this way. Lord Zhu sent out military officers with secret instructions to seize the men who poled boats at Dragon Ford. One after another, more than fifty were taken, and all confessed without being put in irons. These bandits, it turned out, worked under the guise of a ferry: they lured travellers aboard, then either slipped them a knockout drug or burned a stupefying incense, so that the travellers sank into a stupor; then they cut open their bellies, stuffed them with stones and sank them to the bottom of the river. Never was a wrong more cruel! After the cases were cleared, people near and far rejoiced, and the songs praising him filled a whole collection.
