Expecting to win the king's favor, the
abbess put the most unpleasant tasks on the girl. But again the gods
assisted her and made her work light, so that her tasks were always well
done and the young woman was cheerful.
One day the report came to the king that his daughter was associating
with a young monk discussing heterodox doctrines and that she had given
birth to a child. This news so enraged the king that he burned the
monastery, killing many monks. The princess was captured and brought
before him. Inasmuch as she was obdurate, the king ordered her to be
executed. The executioner's sword, however, broke into a thousand pieces
without doing her any injury. The king then ordered her to be strangled.
A golden image sixteen feet high appeared on the spot. The princess
laughed and cried: "Where there was no image, an image appeared. I see
the real form. When body flesh is strangled, then appear the lights of
ten thousand roads." She went to purgatory and purgatory at once changed
into paradise. Yama, in order to save his purgatory, sent her back to
the world. She appeared at Puto, an island off the coast of Chekiang
near Ningpo. Here she rescued sailors and performed many miracles for
people in distress.
In the meantime the father, who had committed many sins, became sick.
His allotted time of life had been shortened by twenty years. Moreover,
an ulcer grew on his body for every one of the five hundred monks he had
killed when he burned the monastery.
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