This story is from Strange Tales from Make-Do Studio. Sun of Luoyang married a magistrate's daughter, who died of illness just twenty days later. Grief-stricken, Sun was visited one rainy day by an unassuming girl named Lü Wubing. She expressed admiration for his fortitude and offered to serve as his maid.
Impressed by her simplicity, diligence, kindness, and literacy, Sun took her as his concubine. A year later, he married a woman named Xu, who bore him a son named Ahjian. Ahjian grew to love Lü Wubing more than his own mother. When Ahjian was three, Xu fell gravely ill. On her deathbed, she begged Sun to make Wubing his wife, a promise he tearfully made.
However, his family elders forbade it, compelling him instead to marry Wang, the short-tempered daughter of an official. Wang frequently abused Wubing and Ahjian, plunging the household into discord. To escape the shrewish woman, Sun left home.
Eventually, Wubing could endure no more. She fled with Ahjian. Later, she found Sun to reveal the family turmoil and his son's whereabouts. As she wept while telling her tale, she suddenly fainted and collapsed. When Sun rushed to her aid, he found only her empty clothes on the ground—she had vanished. He then realized Lü Wubing was a ghostly incarnation.
In her memory, Sun erected a tombstone inscribed: "Tomb of Lü Wubing, my ghost wife."