"Gengwei Compilation" is a collection of short stories written by the Ming Dynasty novelist Lu Cang, which records many anecdotes and strange events of the Ming Dynasty, and most of the content is mainly absurd and bizarre. Although "Gengwei Compilation" is a strange novel, it also records many strange real people and real events. For example, the "Case of the Demon Man" in the ninth volume of the book records the story of Sang Chong, the first demon of the Ming Dynasty, who practiced magic at the age of 13, harming 99 women, and was ordered to be executed by Ling Chi at the age of 24.
Sang Chong, whose original surname was Li, was the nephew of Li Dagang, the eastern capital of Wenshui, Lijiawan, Shizhou, Taiyuan Province, Shanxi, who was sold by his parents as a righteous son by his parents as a righteous son when he was a child, so he changed his name to Sang Chong. Later, after Sang Mao's death, Sang Chong lived with his uncle Li Dagang, because he had no one to discipline him since childhood, he developed a bad habit of good and bad work, and spent all day on the streets doing nothing.
When Sang Chong was 13 years old, he met a man named Gu Cai, who was omniscient in piano, chess, calligraphy, needlework, needlework, and female red, and was especially good at men and women's clothing. It's just that this Gu Cai's misconduct is not a good person, he often dresses up as a woman, in the name of teaching needlework and female red, to deceive women's trust, so as to mix into the boudoir and commit evil. At that time, women attached great importance to chastity, afraid that things would spread out and ruin their reputations, and Gu Cai was precisely looking at this idea of women, so he repeatedly succeeded.
Sang Chong took Gu Cai as a teacher and learned from him the know-how of dressing up as a woman, and also learned some needlework and female red, such as embroidering purses, cutting patterns, sewing hats and shoes and other crafts. Since the age of 13, Sang Chong has been practicing the magic of dressing up as a woman, he shaved the sweat and hair on his face, and his thick eyebrows were also repaired into willow eyebrows, and then he put on a wig bun and smeared grease on his face, like a young girl of a wonderful age. Two years later, Sang Chong bid farewell to Gu Cai and began to walk alone in the rivers and lakes, starting his own journey of evil.
Whenever Sang Chong went to a place, he first lied that he was a good family woman living in a certain place, and because her husband was not welcomed by her family after her husband's death, she had to flee abroad and make a living as a teaching female worker. Because Sang Chong described his life as very pitiful, it was easy to get people's sympathy, and he took this opportunity to approach the target and sneak into the boudoir to do evil in the name of the professor needle and thread female red.
In ancient times, the defenses of men and women were extremely strict, and the women who were victimized by Sang Chong, in order to keep their honor, did not dare to expose Sang Chong afterwards, and could only let them leave freely. In this way, Sang Chong used this means to do many evils in 45 prefectures and counties such as Datong, Pingyang, Taiyuan, Baoding, Shuntian, Jinan, and Dongchang, and harmed 99 women. For ten years, Sang Chong gained both fortunes, and not a single one of them lost his hand, until the last time he committed evil, he was exposed on the spot and escorted to the government.
In July of the thirteenth year of Chenghua, when Sang Chong was about to inflict evil on the 100th victim, the limit of this evil person finally came. On the evening of this day, Sang Chong came to the high-ranking member's foreign home in Nie Village, Jinzhou, falsely claiming to be the concubine of Zhang Lin, a Zhaozhou native, and ran away from home because he could not bear the scolding of his in-laws' family, and asked the high-ranking member to send kindness and let her spend the night at home. Gao Yuanwai was kind, and seeing that Sang Chong's life was so pitiful, there was no doubt that he had him, so he took Sang Chong in.
Sang Chong chose to spend the night outside the high-ranking official's house in order to take the opportunity to get close to the daughter of the high-ranking member, and the high-ranking person's family was well-off, and he could also take the opportunity to make a fortune after winning. But what Sang Chong did not expect was that Zhao Wenju, the son-in-law of Gao Yuan, was not a good person, and he saw that Sang Chong was a helpless "weak woman" who actually sneaked into Sang Chong's room in the middle of the night to take advantage of the opportunity to commit violence. After a fight between the two, Zhao Wenju found something strange, it turned out that this Sang Chong was not a woman at all, but a male body.
After dawn, the high-ranking expatriate Ding escorted Sang Chong to The Gate of Jinzhou, and after some severe torture, Sang Chong, who could not survive, had to explain the evil things he had done. The prefect of Jinju saw that Sang Chong was really guilty of a terrible crime, and immediately ordered someone to escort Sang Chong to the capital, and wrote to the emperor requesting that he "aggravate the crime". After the review by the Inspectorate, it was also believed that Sang Chong's crime was extremely evil and should be punished with capital punishment, so the 24-year-old Sang Chong was executed by the emperor's order Ling Chi, ending his life of sin.
Because Sang Chong's behavior was too unbelievable, he was called the first demon of the Ming Dynasty by the people of the time, and there were many accounts of Sang Chong in the works of the Ming and Qing dynasties. In addition to the Gengwei Compilation, this case is also mentioned in the Liaozhai Zhiyi and the Records of emperor Ming Shizong. The most worthy of consideration in this case is that although Sang Chong deserves to die for his sins, the depth of the harm of feudal etiquette is also evident from this.