None took any permanent harm from it, but her latest lover, Zou Xiaofan, is deathly ill, and by demanding she "prove" her love for him at such a time forces her to choose between her immortality and his life.

He has only waited as long as he has in order to pass to the next fox to achieve immortality (her) his insight into its secret; that it is, in fact, worthless, and that true advancement can only come by returning to the wheel of rebirth.

A message from her dead lover's shade conveyed to her by Guan Shi Yin, goddess of mercy, convinces Springfox she might exorcize her inconvenient feelings by redeeming Zou Xiaofan's soul.

By means of Heaven's efficient bureaucracy she discovers it is located in the Hell of Hungry Ghosts, to which she travels in the company of her longtime friend Wildeye, a Daoist reprobate who has also achieved immortality.

Charles de Lint in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction compares the author's work to that of Thomas Burnett Swann, as "[t]hey share a similar sensibility in how they approach the figures of myth and folklore: the otherworldly beings are down-to-earth — sometimes even lusty — but they never lose their magical sense of wonder."