The Tortoise Spirit

By the right bank of the Xun River there lived a man named Shen Yan, who in his youth had studied the Confucian classics and gone several times to the provincial examinations, only to fail each time. He abandoned all thought of office, built a hut by the water's edge, and made his living by fishing. Yan was a man of quiet integrity, who quarreled with no one; the villagers called him "Honest Shen the Simpleton."

In the year Guichou, the summer floods came sudden and fierce, and the river overflowed its banks. Yan went out in his little skiff and drew up a giant tortoise, its shell like a basin, marked with cloud-and-thunder patterns, weighing some dozens of catties. Yan rejoiced and meant to sell it at market. The tortoise raised its head, opened its eyes, and wept, as though pleading. Yan's heart softened. "Do you too cling to life?" he said, and cut the line to set it free. The tortoise lingered, then drew with its claw in the sand three figures like the character "west," bowed, and slipped beneath the waves.

An old neighbor chided him: "Foolish boy, that money might have bought rice—what good is letting it go?" Yan only smiled.

The next year, rains fell for ten days on end, and the mountain torrents came rushing down; houses were swept away. Yan clung to a beam, drifting, when a huge shape broke the waves and came to him—the very tortoise he had freed. It bore him on its back a full li and set him down beside an old mound upon high ground. Yan had scarcely caught his breath when he looked back and saw his home swallowed by the flood.

The tortoise crouched beside him and slowly spoke in human words: "Master, you once spared my life; now I repay you. Yet the danger is not spent—in three days this mound too shall fall. Remove yourself to the old locust tree east of the village, and you will be safe." With that it drew once more in the sand to show the way, and vanished.

Yan did as he was told and moved his wife and children east. Sure enough, on the third day the western mound collapsed, crushing scores of homes. The villagers marveled and asked how he had known; Yan told them all.

From then the tortoise came now and then, sometimes bearing lotus seeds as a gift, sometimes lying before his step on moonlit nights as if listening to him read the Book of Changes. Yan fed it rice in return. So passed ten years.

Then one evening, beneath wind and rain and a darkened sky, the tortoise came, its shell-patterns brighter than ever, and said: "My span draws to its end; I come to take my leave." Yan wept and asked where it would go. "Back to the deep," it said. "In your later years the villagers will honor you—only take no unjust gain, and you shall keep your life whole." Then it wound its way into the water and was seen no more.

The next day Yan found upon the bank an empty shell, its markings clear as ever. He carried it home and hung it in his hall. He lived past eighty, and when neighbors quarreled they came to him for judgment; all called him "Old Tortoise."

The Chronicler of the Strange would say: Even a creature knows to repay a kindness, yet men so often betray it—why? One moment of mercy from Honest Shen the Simpleton spared a life at the butcher's block, and the tortoise answered with ten years of company and a single rescue in the hour of flood. Is this not the meaning of "a branch returned for a gift of jade"? Those who receive bounty and forget it—before this tortoise, can they feel no shame? The tortoise's years, though long, must end; but the goodness in a human heart may outlast all generations. Behold the empty shell hung in the hall: it is set there not merely to record a wonder, but to mend the world.