Once a year, the New Year Festival is to be celebrated; this is also the time for young maidens to meet potential husbands. Not wishing to spoil her own daughter's chances, the stepmother forces her stepdaughter to remain home and clean their cave-house. After her step-family has left for the festival, Ye Xian is visited by the fish's spirit again. She makes a silent wish to the bones and Ye Xian finds herself clothed magnificently, in a gown of sea-green silk, a cloak of kingfisher feathers and a pair of tiny golden slippers.