画皮

This is a story from Strange Tales from Make-Do Studio.

One day a scholar named Wang Sheng in Taiyuan met, on his way out, a beautiful girl. He brought her back to be kept in his study. The girl asked him not to tell anybody. Days later, Wang met a Taoist priest, who asked, "Did you have any peculiar encounter?" "No," Wang firmly denied. "But you have an evil air in your face," the priest said with a worried look. "And your blook is about to be drained（喝光，耗尽） by a moster."

Back home, before he entered the room, Wang looked into his study through the window lattice（晶格） . He saw a fierce-looking devil was painting a hide. Upon hearing his footsteps the devil hurriedly draped（用布帘覆盖） the hide and became the beautiful girl again. Frightened almost to death, Wang broke into a run, but it was too late. The devil caught him, cut open his chest and ate his heart.

Wang's wife saw this. The grieved woman fled to seek help from the priest. To see if the woman was sincere about saving her husband, the priest made fun of her. He even bid the woman to eat what he had vomited. To save her husband, she endured everything. The priest laughed before he left. Back home, she felt like vomiting. Something from her mouth dropped into her husband's cut chest. Slowly, her husband regained his life.