A fair maiden is a comely young woman. Delicate ladies are tender wives. Blossom‑like features are faces as lovely as flowers; moon‑bright beauty is complexions pale and radiant as moonlight. An iron net traps beasts so they cannot flee. A gilded hook catches fish and turtles so they cannot escape. Many chaste women are ensnared by libertines’ schemes or tempted with money. Some fall into these traps, are defiled, and lose their good name. To think on this fills one with righteous indignation.
Young wives, overcome by shame, resolve to hang themselves in despair; defiled beauties choose to cast themselves into rivers out of humiliation.
Young married women are young wives. Powder‑faced maidens are beauties. Once defiled and dishonored, they cannot bear to face the world and often hang themselves or drown themselves to escape public scorn.
Bitter resentment unappeased, they pour out their grief at the ghost‑gate. Wronged souls unvanquished, they carry their plaint before the netherworld courts.
To pour forth tears and grievances is to weep while laying one’s complaint. To file a plaint is to submit a formal accusation. The Ghost‑Gate is the gateway to the realm of the dead. The netherworld is the tribunal of Yama Kings. When a woman, dishonored and shamed, dies with unappeased grief, her pent‑up injustice turns into bitter wrath. She may become a vengeful ghost bent on seizing her defiler to avenge her wrong. Unless she weeps her plea at the Ghost‑Gate and lodges her suit before the netherworld, begging the King of Hell to grant her retribution, how can her fury abate? How can her grievance ever be redressed? Such aggrieved ghosts may bring their violators to hang themselves, or strike them down so blood gushes from every orifice. Accounts of such cases abound in strange anecdotes of imperial examinations through the ages.
The Fifth Hall of Yama King holds stern justice, which brooks no delay.
The Fifth Hall is the fifth tribunal of the underworld. “Stern justice” alludes to the unyielding laws of Yama King. When those guilty of lechery fall into the nether realm, the King of Hell rebukes them for the sin of licentiousness, the worst of all vices. He shows no favoritism and grants not a moment’s reprieve.
Brass hammers and iron guillotines rend flesh and blood streaming; sword trees and blade mountains leave bodies and souls shattered.
Bodies are battered to pulp with bronze hammers and sliced apart by iron guillotines — flesh and blood must gush and scatter without end. Sinners may further be cast upon sword‑lined trees and hurled onto mountains of blades. Their mortal forms scatter across hell, and their souls sink into the sea of suffering. Such is the fate of those given to lust and licentiousness; truly a pitiable end!
One wrong fleeting idea brings irredeemable guilt.