For several days in a row, Elder Quinn had been absent-minded. Every night, he was haunted by nightmares—dreams in which the dead woman came back to life, crying endlessly and speaking to him.
Elder Quinn couldn't eat or sleep well. He thought about going to Emerald View Pavilion, but gave up after considering it. The money he had was nearly spent that night—he needed to figure out a way to get more.
Four days passed in a blur. On the fifth day, Elder Quinn felt as if his head would split open, so he went to see a doctor. The doctor couldn't find anything wrong and prescribed some medicine. Elder Quinn took it and went to sleep.
In his dream, he again saw the dead woman, but this time there was also a baby. The infant was terrifying. The woman poured out her grievances—she said she'd been drowned by her husband and his lover. Her husband, afraid of trouble from her family, constantly beat and kicked her. In the end, he and his lover drowned her in the Haunted Lake. When her husband married her, he received a generous dowry, and her family had warned him not to take a concubine.
The woman then said that if he didn't help her, she'd haunt Elder Quinn for the rest of his life. Elder Quinn kept shaking his head in the dream, refusing to get involved. Then the infant whimpered, stretched out its hands, and strangled Elder Quinn by the neck.
When he woke up, it was morning. Elder Quinn swallowed nervously. As he left the inn, the owner told him there were marks on his neck that looked like a child's handprint. Elder Quinn was so frightened he nearly wet himself. He fetched a basin of water and saw, sure enough, a baby's palm print on his neck.
The more Elder Quinn thought about it, the more uneasy he felt. He recalled what the Taoist had said: when he carried the corpse, he was weak and his yang energy was low, having gone days without a proper meal. It was noon, and he was deep in the forest, near cold water—an area thick with yin energy. Normally, it would take time for the woman to accumulate enough resentment to become a ghost, but Elder Quinn's weakness let her latch onto him right away. At night, she'd follow him, and once her resentment peaked, she'd kill him.
The more Elder Quinn thought, the more terrified he became. He immediately rented a horse and rushed back to town. Sure enough, in a rundown teahouse, he found the old Taoist.
Elder Quinn knelt before the Taoist, kowtowed and begged for forgiveness, saying every good word he could think of. He handed over his last bit of money—there was almost nothing left. But the old Taoist took only half and told Elder Quinn to get a good night's sleep, then go to the lake shore that evening.
When night fell, Elder Quinn trembled as he made his way to the lakeside. There wasn't a soul in sight. He kept calling out softly, when suddenly someone patted his back. Elder Quinn was so frightened he fell to the ground and wet himself—it was the old Taoist.