The Story 故事

原文：

中山有虎，食人无数。有妇人为虎所噬，其魂不散，附于虎身。虎自此行止不由己，妇人驱虎至其夫所设陷阱处。虎坠坑中，众人杀之。虎死，妇人之魂乃散。里人曰："死犹不忘报仇，烈妇也。"

On Zhongshan Mountain there was a tiger that had killed and eaten countless people. Among its victims was a woman whose spirit refused to disperse. It attached itself to the tiger's body.

From that moment, the tiger could no longer control its own movements. The woman's spirit drove it — step by step, day after day — toward a trap that her husband had dug.

The tiger fell into the pit. The villagers killed it.

When the tiger died, the woman's spirit finally dispersed. The village elder said: "Even in death she did not forget her vengeance. A woman of fierce loyalty."

文化注释 Cultural Note This story inverts the typical relationship between predator and prey. The tiger, which has consumed the woman's body, becomes the vessel for her spirit — she possesses the thing that killed her. The detail that the tiger "could no longer control its own movements" (行止不由己) suggests that the woman's will is stronger than the tiger's instinct. In the moral framework of the Yijian Zhi, righteous anger (义愤) can transcend even death.

Revenge from Beyond 死后复仇

The Chinese literary tradition is full of ghostly revenge, but this story is unusually physical. The woman does not merely haunt or curse — she drives the tiger. She uses the beast's own body as a weapon against it. The revenge is not symbolic; it is mechanical, methodical, and complete.

Hong Mai's phrasing is deliberately terse. There is no dialogue, no interiority, no description of the woman's feelings. We do not know if she is angry, or sad, or simply determined. The story moves with the relentless logic of a fable: a woman is killed; the woman kills the killer; the circle closes.

文化注释 Cultural Note The phrase "死犹不忘报仇" (even in death she did not forget her vengeance) echoes the famous line from the Zuo Zhuan: "鬼犹求食" (even ghosts seek food). In the Chinese cosmological system, the dead do not simply vanish — they persist as long as they have unfinished business. The woman's spirit disperses only when the tiger is dead, suggesting that qi (气, vital energy) is held in place by purpose, not by biology.