Empress Mao

Of the Mao family of Henei, loved exceedingly while he was a prince and made Empress on his accession, she is displaced in Cao Rui's affections by Lady Guo and then simply kept in ignorance: he forbids anyone to tell her about the spring feast in the Fragrant Forest Park, and after a month without seeing him she hears the music from the Blue Flower Pavilion. Her whole crime is one remark from a carriage the next day — 'Yesterday Your Majesty was walking in the north garden, and you had plenty of music too,' said she, smiling. He executes every attendant for having let her find out, and then 'an edict appeared forcing Empress Mao to commit suicide'.

She comes back. 'One night the Ruler of Wei was suddenly awakened by a chill blast that extinguished all the lights, but he saw the form of the late Empress Mao, with a score or two of other Palace attendants, coming toward the bed whereon he lay, and as they approached they demanded his life.' Cao Rui's death illness begins with that visitation — the attendants he executed in ch105 come back with her.