Meng Shen's family is the post road official of the hot spring post 100 miles away in Chang'an City, and the family house is at the entrance of Yushan Village near the post road. In the past few days, people in the area of the hot spring station have been spreading a terrifying strange story. It happened in a small inn owned by a man named Wang Yun.

Wang Yun is 50 years old this year, and he has a son named Wang Zheng, who helps his father take care of business and serve merchants on weekdays, and is quite diligent and filial.

In the evening, after dark, not long after the inn closed, a lone woman suddenly came to call the door. Wang Zheng opened the door to see, the woman wore a yellow dress, wrapped in a white headscarf, and begged Wang Zheng that she was a good woman, and went out to Chang'an with her husband, and her husband died of illness there a few days ago, she had no children under her knees, so she could only stop her husband in the local funeral, and go back to her hometown to find her relatives at home, so that she could go back to collect her husband. Now passing by here, I want to find a place to stay, but I don't have much money on me, and I hope the store will be accommodating.

Wang Zheng asked the woman to enter the house, lit the lamp and took a closer look, the woman was only in her 20s, and her appearance was very beautiful. Wang Zheng called his parents, and Wang Yun was kind-hearted, so he said: "It's getting late, and it's very dangerous for a woman to go out alone, so there's no problem staying overnight." If you are afraid, go to my wife's room and sleep with her. The woman agreed gratefully, and after eating, she followed the king's wife.

The king's wife was doing needlework under the lamp, so she asked the woman to do it with her, but the woman's skill was exquisite, and in less than an hour the two men's garments were ready, and the stitches were so fine that they were not much better than the tailors in the city. The king's wife couldn't help but have a lot of liking for the woman, so she joked: "Since you don't have a close relative, and you are so clever, it is better to stay and be my daughter-in-law." ”

Unexpectedly, the woman smiled and said, "I was born in a lonely fate, and now I am willing to obey your arrangement." ”

Wang's wife was very surprised, but she felt happy, so she came out and told Wang Yun. Wang Yunzheng was worried that his son had not yet continued the incense, so he happily agreed, and let the woman and Wang Zheng have sex that night, which was considered a marriage intention.

Wang's wife specially prepared another table of meals in the kitchen, so that her son and new daughter-in-law ate and drank the wine. Before entering the cave room, the woman warned the Wang family that she had heard that there had been a lot of thieves in the area recently, and they had to lock the door of the house. Wang Zheng agreed, and Wang Yun and his wife also closed the door and went to sleep.

However, in the middle of the night, the king's wife dreamed that Wang Zheng was kneeling beside the bed with a cloak and crying, saying, "Mother, there is no door god in our house, the ghost has come in, and the child is about to be eaten." ”

Wang's wife was awakened and felt that her heart was beating very hard, so she woke up Wang Yun, and after telling her about it, she said that she wanted to go to her son's room to have a look. She lit a candlestick, walked to her son's room with a candlestick, and listened to it for a while, but there was no sound inside, and she called the names of the two again, still as quiet as death.

Wang's wife suddenly felt bad, and hurriedly called Wang Yun, and the two of them slammed open the door together, only to see that the candles in the room had not been extinguished, and a black long-haired monster lay on a pool of blood and clothes, and jumped out of the window with a roar when someone broke in. And poor Wang Zheng has a scattered skeleton and hair left, and the new wife he just got is missing.

The old couple of the Wang family fainted on the spot, and after waking up, they cried until dawn, attracting the surrounding neighbors, and someone went to report to the government, and Meng Shen knew about it in this way.

There was a lot of talk about it: some said that it was a wild beast that ran into the house through the window, ate Wang Zheng, and took the bride. Some people even say that the woman of unknown origin is a monster in human skin, and she uses beauty and magic to deceive the three members of the Wang family, otherwise why would she tell everyone to close the door before entering the house? Not just to eat people undisturbed? If it weren't for the king's wife waking up from a dream of her son crying, when the monster finished eating her son, I'm afraid she would have eaten the couple.

Soon after this incident, it was the Cold Food Festival, and Meng Shen's mother, Meng Li, wanted to go to the nearby Zhuangzi to sweep and offer water and rice for her ancestors.

Meng Shen and his mother went out early in the morning, and only stopped at the foot of a hillside called Xujiapo in the afternoon to take a rest, Meng Shen was serving his mother to eat some pastries, when suddenly he heard a small cry from nowhere.

It turned out that behind a bush on the left side of the road, there was a new grave, and in front of the grave stood a young and beautiful woman dressed in plain white, who was weeping there, and her body like a weak willow seemed to be overwhelmed and about to fall down at any time.

Meng's mother was a kind-hearted person, so she sent Yahuan over to inquire. The woman also knew the number of etiquette, and hurriedly came over to say goodbye, saying that because her husband was sick and newly mourned, there were no relatives to take refuge in her hometown, and when she worshipped, she thought that she was lonely and helpless since then, and she had no place to rely on, so she couldn't help but feel sad and couldn't think of bumping into your lady.

When Meng Mu heard her pitiful, she couldn't help but feel compassion and said: "Seeing that you are also a person who knows etiquette and etiquette, if you are really lonely, it is better to follow me to be a servant, so that there will be a place to go after all." The woman bowed down in gratitude, and said something that she was willing to follow her lady in return. Meng Shen watched silently.

Meng's mother only had one maid ring in her car, but it was still spacious, so she let the woman get in the car and ride with her. When they arrived at Lijiazhuang that night, the Meng family and his party were arranged to live in a house cleaned by their mother's family.

However, the car stopped outside the gate, when the woman got out of the car, she suddenly looked up and saw the wooden sign of the two door gods hanging at the head of the door, and immediately hid back in the car with a pale face.

Meng Mu said straight, this is a trivial matter, and asked someone to turn over the wooden sign of the god, and if you can't see it.

When the woman saw that the door god was turned over, she immediately smiled happily, and flattered Meng's mother diligently before and after the saddle, so that Meng's mother was very happy, and at night let the woman sleep in the same room with her personal maid, and said that she would prepare the fruit for the sacrifice to go to the ancestral tomb early the next morning.

However, when she got up the next day, only the woman went out of the door to freshen up, and Meng's mother asked strangely, and the woman said that Yahuan had a typhoid fever emergency at night, and she was covering herself in the quilt with chills and fever, and Mrs. should not visit to avoid contagion. As he spoke, he also made a gesture to bring a bowl of hot water into the house, as if he was going to take care of the girl ring to drink.

When Meng's mother heard this, she didn't ask much, and because she was busy with the cold food and sacrifice, she took the other family members and the woman out together.

However, Meng Shen felt that something was wrong, and when he participated in the ancestor worship, he found an excuse to come back an hour earlier and listen outside the room where Yahuan and the woman lived. There was no sound inside, but there was a strange smell of blood wafting out, and I felt bad in my heart, and when I broke through the door, I saw a large pool of blood on the bed, and only a set of clothes and a pile of long hair and broken bones were thrown into the bedding.

He immediately understood that the woman was probably the monster who ate Wang Zheng the day before yesterday, and it was also a trick to win people's kindness by incarnating as a young orphan girl, and now she was actually bumped into by his family!

He wanted to rush to expose the banshee's plot in public, but then he was concerned about the safety of his mother, so he calmed down and decided to think of a plan to deal with the monster more safely without frightening his mother.

When he was distressed, he happened to have two cousins in his mother's family who were about the same age as himself came to look for him, they were also men who had practiced martial arts since childhood, Meng Shen asked for their help, heard what Meng Shen said, and went to see the corpse of Yahuan, the two young people were also very shocked, but Zheng Zheng men were not afraid of danger, they both felt that they should eliminate harm for the people.

The elders of the sacrificial sweep will be back soon, and an elderly cousin said, "The Taigong in the ancestral hall has been cultivating for many years, so you might as well ask him." ”

Meng Shen listened to his cousin's words and ran to the ancestral hall to find the prince, it is said that he is 101 years old this year, and when he was young, he entered the South Mountain to follow the hidden Taoist priest to practice for decades, and then only because the dust is not over, he came down the mountain to marry a wife and have children, but he rarely sees a living person on weekdays.

Meng Shen went to explain the intention, Taigong closed his eyes and thought for a long time, and then pinched his fingers and calculated, and said: "That is a female jackal demon who has practiced for a hundred years, relying on the newly dead woman in the grave as a human body, but she doesn't think about the positive result of cultivation, and actually does evil deeds to this point, but you are all mortals, you can't fight her head-on, just drive her away." Then he took out a wooden talisman with a charm carved with cinnabar, and said that when he hit her with the wooden talisman, she would be able to reveal her original form.

Meng Shen got the hint, returned happily, and his cousins were in full swing, Meng Shen combined what he saw yesterday, and said: "That trollie ghost seems to be very afraid of the door god, and the god is the god who captures the demon ghost, we might as well use the power of the door god." From there, the plan was drawn up, and a tenacious net was found to arrange it.

In the evening, Meng's mother and his party came back, Meng Shen and other young sons also pretended to be out to play, just came back, the two groups of people met unexpectedly outside the gate, Meng Shen went to help his mother get out of the car, and the woman who had been serving Meng's mother had not left, suddenly saw that the door god sign that had been turned over on the gate was corrected again, and he was so frightened that he hugged his head and curled up under the wheel. Meng's mother was surprised, and Meng Shen hurriedly comforted her mother and asked her to hurry into the house, where he would cook.

At the same time, he took out the wooden talisman from his clothes and threw it at the woman, who let out a scream as if she had been burned. Many people who didn't know the truth were frightened, and Meng Shen next to him saw that Professor Taigong's method worked, and immediately pulled out the saber at his waist, preparing to resist when the monster resisted, but the woman's fierce eyes with a pair of fine light and exposure swept people over, jumped up like a beast, rushed out of the crowd and escaped from the encirclement in a blink of an eye.

Meng Shen wanted to catch up, but worried about the safety of his family, so he had to go back to explain everything to his mother first, and his mother was sad and scared when she learned that her personal maid had died innocently and tragically, so she asked Meng Shen to ask the princess of the clan again, what if the woman returned with a grudge. Meng Shen went to the ancestral hall to find Taigong again, and Taigong twisted his beard and said with a smile: "The two immortals of Shen Tu Yulei patrol the world every night, this ghost has been exposed, and the immortals will catch it, and mortals don't need to worry." ”

Meng Shen returned home suspiciously. Unexpectedly, it rained in the spring thunderstorm at night, and the next day the clouds stopped raining, and people found that an old tree outside Lijiazhuang was split by a thunderbolt, and there was a long-dead woman's body in the tree, and there was a jackal that was chopped to death next to it.