Painted Skin

The Demon Behind the Mask

A demon wears a painted skin to enchant a scholar, who loses his heart before a madman revives him.

Wang Sheng takes in a beautiful woman who, he discovers by spying, is a demon wearing a painted human skin. The demon tears out his heart, and only a mad beggar’s contemptuous spit can restore him to life. The tale’s moral is stitched into its title: beauty may be only a painted skin over a hidden horror.