The chapter opens with a description of the blood-beak crow, a symbol of evil. The story begins with the sight of the crow's beak, which is always hovering ominously over the place where it crosses the road. The narrator tells us that the story is about the crow, and that it is about a councilor who runs at the crows. The councilor is running for help when the crows attack him, and the councilor keeps crying for help. Finally, the councilor realizes that his master is on his way out of town and that the kid in the taoist's robe has come out. The mistress tells the councilor that he is out of luck, but the councilor doesn't want to help, because he's too busy with his shop. The man's mistress tells him that he needs to charge her fifty taels for the spirit-exorcising tools in the sachet. The woman tells the man that he should just rob her, because she's not going to help him with a kid. The bird's crow feast is over in two hours. When the councilor gets home, he finds that his wife has married another man and has a child with him. He's more and more unhappy with his son, and his mistress hates their guts after the deaths of her husband and her husband's son. So, the mistress decides to take revenge on the boy by having him marry another woman and have a baby with her. She's convinced that the boy's father was the one who murdered his wife. The three men come to the house and sit in the chairs in front of the councilor's window.