Prevod

In Qiongdu County there lived an old woman, poor and all alone. Whenever she ate, a little snake with horns on its head would appear beside her bed, and she took pity on it and fed it. As she fed it, it gradually grew until it was more than ten feet long. The county magistrate had a fine horse, and the snake sucked the life out of it. Enraged, the magistrate ordered the old woman to produce the snake. “It is under the bed,” she said. The magistrate had the ground dug up, but though the pit grew ever deeper and wider, nothing was found. Venting his anger on the old woman, he had her killed. The snake then spoke through a person it possessed, angrily rebuking the magistrate: “Why did you kill my mother? I shall avenge her.” After this, sounds like thunder and wind were heard every night. Some forty days later, whenever the townspeople met, they exclaimed in alarm, “Why have you suddenly got a fish on your head?” That night, the city and the land for forty li around it sank together and became a lake. The local people call it Sunken Lake. Only the old woman’s house escaped unharmed, and it remains to this day. Fishermen always take shelter there for the night, and whenever wind and waves arise, they stay beside the house, where all is calm and nothing threatens them. When the wind is still and the water clear, the city walls and watchtowers can still be distinctly seen below. Even now, when the water is low, local people dive down and retrieve old timbers, hard and sound, glossy and black as lacquer. Connoisseurs now make pillows from them and give them to one another as gifts.