In his youth, during the time when Shi Shangshu of Qingzhou was but a young man, there flowed a great river outside the city gates, a waterway that never ran dry, even when the heavens withheld their rain.

The magistrates had captured scores of bandits and executed them by the riverbank. The spirits of the dead, however, refused to depart, gathering in force to wreak havoc; whenever a traveler passed that way, they would drag them into the water to drown.

One day, a certain commoner found himself surrounded by these water ghosts, his life hanging by a thread, when suddenly the spectral host scattered in sheer terror, crying out, "Shi Shangshu is coming!"

Moments later, Shi Shangshu indeed arrived. The citizen rushed forward to lodge his complaint, detailing the wicked deeds of the vengeful spirits.

Shi Shangshu then took lime powder and inscribed characters upon the wall. The message read: "Listen closely, all of you. In life, your deeds were lawless, drawing down the wrath of the thunder; your wicked schemes resulted in the axe and the blade upon your persons.

Now that you are ghosts, you should cast aside your malicious thoughts and hasten to repent; cleanse the blood from your skeletal frames, and escape this mire of damnation.

You suffered extreme punishment, yet even after death you refuse to mend your ways, swarming in great numbers and committing endless villainies.

Stuffing your ears with yellow clay, you stubbornly persist in malice; in broad daylight you act as fiends, blocking the passage of all travelers.

Do you not realize that even a three-foot grave mound is subject to governance? How then can the boundless expanse of this world allow your wantonness? I hereby command you to conceal yourselves and vanish, cease your stubborn delusion.

The bones beside the River Wuding await their destined reincarnation; those souls lost in dreamland must return to their ancestral soil.

Should you tread the same path again, regret will be beyond remedy!

From that day forward, the hauntings ceased entirely, and the river itself gradually withered away to nothing.