Nie Yinniang was the daughter of Nie Feng, a senior general of Weibo during the Zhenyuan reign of the Tang. When she was ten, a Buddhist nun came begging at Nie Feng's house, took a liking to Yinniang, and said, "Would the commander let me have this girl to teach?" Nie Feng flew into a rage and cursed the nun. The nun said, "Lock her in an iron chest if you like, commander. I'll still steal her away." That night, sure enough, Yinniang vanished. Nie Feng was horrified and had people search everywhere, but there was no trace of her. Whenever her parents thought of her, they could only weep together.
Five years later, the nun brought Yinniang home and told Nie Feng, "Her training is complete. You may take her back." And in a flash the nun was gone. The family wept and rejoiced at once. When they asked what she had learned, she said, "At first only reading scriptures and chanting spells, nothing else." Nie Feng didn't believe her and pressed her hard. Yinniang said, "If I tell you the truth, I'm afraid you won't believe it. What then?" "Just tell me the truth," said Nie Feng.
She said, "When the nun first took me, I didn't know how many miles we traveled. In time we came to a great stone cave, hollowed out some dozens of paces deep. No one lived there; there were a great many apes, and the pine moss hung thick and dark. Two girls were already there, both also ten years old, both clever and lovely, and they ate no food. They could fly up and down sheer cliffs like nimble monkeys climbing trees, never slipping. The nun gave me a pill and had me always carry a precious sword about two feet long, so sharp that a hair blown against it would be cut through. I followed the two girls climbing, and gradually felt my body grow light as the wind. After a year, I could stab apes and never miss once in a hundred. Later I stabbed tigers and leopards, cutting off their heads and bringing them back. After three years I could fly; she had me strike at hawks and falcons, and I hit every one. The blade of my sword wore down by five inches. Birds in flight never knew I was coming. In the fourth year, she left the two girls to guard the cave and took me to a city, I don't know where. She pointed out a man and counted off his crimes one by one, saying, 'Bring me his head, and don't let anyone notice. Steady your nerve, and it will be as easy as striking a bird.' She gave me a ram's-horn dagger with a blade three inches wide. In broad daylight I stabbed the man in the middle of the city, and no one saw. I put his head in a bag, took it back to our lodging, and dissolved it into water with a drug.
"In the fifth year, she said, 'A certain great official is guilty; he has harmed many people without cause. Go into his room at night and bring me his head.' Again I took the dagger and entered his room, slipping through the crack of the door with nothing to stop me, and lay hidden on a beam. Only at dusk did I get his head and come back. The nun was furious. 'Why so late?' I said, 'I saw him playing with a little child, such a lovely child, that I couldn't bear to strike right away.' The nun scolded me: 'From now on, when you meet such people, first cut down what they love, then finish them.' I bowed and thanked her. The nun said, 'I will open a place at the back of your head to hide the dagger, and it will do you no harm.' When I need it, I draw it out. She said, 'Your art is complete. You may go home.' And so she sent me back, saying that only after twenty years would we meet again."
Hearing this, Nie Feng was terrified. After that, Yinniang would disappear every night and return at dawn. Nie Feng no longer dared to question her, and because of it he no longer cherished her much. One day a young mirror-polisher happened to come to the gate, and she said, "This man can be my husband." She told her father, who dared not refuse, and so she married him.
Her husband could only polish mirrors and had no other skill. Her father provided them generously with food and clothing and had them live in a separate house. A few years later her father died. The military governor of Weibo gradually learned of her strange gifts and, with gold and silk, took her into his service as one of his personal attendants. Several more years passed. In the Yuanhe reign, the governor of Weibo fell out with Liu Changyi, military governor of Chen-Xu, and sent Yinniang to take Liu's head. She took leave of her commander and set out for Xu. Liu, who had a gift for divination, already knew she was coming. He summoned one of his officers and ordered him to go early the next morning to the north of the city and wait for a man and a woman riding donkeys, one white and one black. At the gate, if a magpie chattered in front of the man, and he shot at it with his pellet bow and missed, and the wife snatched the bow from him and killed the magpie with a single pellet, the officer was to bow to them and say, "My master wishes to meet you, and has sent me this far to welcome you." The officer followed his orders and met them. Yinniang and her husband said, "Lord Liu truly is a divine man. How else could he have seen through us? We wish to meet him." Liu received them warmly. Husband and wife bowed and said, "We have wronged Your Excellency and deserve ten thousand deaths." Liu said, "Not at all. Each serves his own master; that is only natural. What difference is there now between Wei and Xu? Please stay here, and have no doubts." Yinniang thanked him. "Your Excellency has no one capable at your side. We wish to leave them and come to you, for we admire your divine insight." She knew the governor of Wei was no match for Liu. Liu asked what she needed, and she said, "Just two hundred cash a day is enough." He granted her request. Then the two donkeys suddenly disappeared; Liu sent people to look for them, but they could not be found. Later, he secretly looked in the couple's cloth bag and found two paper donkeys, one black, one white.
A month or so later, she said to Liu, "They don't know yet that I've stayed. They're bound to send someone after me. Tonight, let me cut off some of my hair, tie it with red silk, and leave it by the Wei governor's pillow, to show that I'm not coming back." Liu agreed. At the fourth watch she returned and said, "The message is delivered. The night after tonight he is sure to send Jingjing'er to kill me and take Your Excellency's head. I'll do everything in my power to kill him; please don't worry." Liu was broad-minded and generous and showed no sign of fear. That night the candles burned bright. After midnight, sure enough, two pennants appeared, one red and one white, fluttering as if striking at each other around the four corners of the bed. After a long while, a man fell out of the air, his head severed from his body. Yinniang appeared too and said, "Jingjing'er is dead." She dragged the body out below the hall and dissolved it into water with her drug, leaving not a hair. Then she said, "On another night he will send Kongkong'er the Wonder-Hand. Kongkong'er's magic is such that no man can see how it works and no ghost can follow his tracks. He can pass out of emptiness into darkness; he is a master of vanishing without form or shadow. My skill cannot reach his level; this time it all rests on Your Excellency's good fortune. Just wrap your neck in Khotan jade and cover yourself with your quilt. I will turn into a tiny midge and slip into Your Excellency's belly to listen and wait. There is nowhere else to hide." Liu did as she said. At the third watch, as he lay with his eyes closed but not yet asleep, he heard, sure enough, a sharp clang at his neck, very loud. Yinniang leapt out of Liu's mouth and congratulated him: "Your Excellency is safe. This man is like a swift falcon: if one strike misses, he soars away, ashamed of missing. In less than a watch, he is already a thousand miles off." Afterward they examined the jade and found, sure enough, the scratch of a dagger, several tenths of an inch deep. From then on Liu treated her more generously still.
In the eighth year of Yuanhe, Liu left Xu for the capital to attend court, and Yinniang did not wish to go with him. "From now on," she said, "I will wander the mountains and rivers and seek out the masters of the Way. I ask only for a nominal stipend for my husband." Liu kept his word. After that, little by little, no one knew where she had gone. When Liu died in office as a commander of the imperial guard, Yinniang came once to the capital on her donkey, wept bitterly before his coffin, and left. In the Kaicheng reign, Liu's son Zong was appointed prefect of Lingzhou. On the plank roads into Shu he met Yinniang, looking just as she had in the old days. She was very glad to see him, and still rode her white donkey as before. She said to Zong, "A great calamity hangs over you, sir. You should not have come here." She took out a pill and had Zong swallow it, telling him that next year he must quit his post at once and go back to Luoyang; only then would he escape the disaster, for her pill could protect him for just one year. Zong didn't quite believe her. He offered her silks and brocades, but she accepted none of them; she simply drank until she was tipsy and left. A year later Zong had not resigned, and he died in Lingzhou, just as she had said. After that, no one ever saw Yinniang again.
