There is a man named Shi Min, I do not know where he came from, he has been wandering the world for many years. His Taoist skills were mysterious and unfathomable.
In the year of Changqing, he was a guest in Wanling County. There was a man named Lei who had been a general of Xuancheng. One day, he and several friends met in a villa in the south of the county to drink wine, and Shi Min was also present at that time. The houseboy of Lei’s family caught a fish several feet long with a net and brought it to the villa. On that day, Lei Sheng and his guests were all drunk. All the guests had dispersed, but only Shi Min was still staying in the villa of the Lei family.
The fish was already rotten and inedible by the next day. The boy wanted to throw the fish away, but Shi Min said to him, “Although this fish is rotten, I have a good medicine to bring it back to life, so how can I throw it away?” Lei Sheng laughed and said, “Sir, you are talking nonsense, even if you have good medicine, how can you bring this rotten fish back to life?” Shi Min said, “Then you will see how it was revived!”
So Shi Min pulled out a small pocket from his clothes, and there were several pills in the pocket, and he poured the pills on the rotten fish. In just one meal, the fish was fresh and moist as before, and in a short while, it shook its fins and scales, like swimming in a torrent. Lei Sheng was so amazed that he thanked Shi Min and said, “You can say that your Taoist skills are divine! We are like the deaf and blind people in the world, and we are like the toad in the well compared with the flying bird in the cloud.
Lei Sheng had been ill for many years, so he asked Shi Min for an elixir, hoping to relieve his long-lasting illness. Shih Min did not agree and said, “My elixir is the most pure and clean, but you are a worldly person who does not know moderation and indulges in hobbies. The internal organs of the body are fishy and stinky. If you ask for my elixir and eat it in your stomach, then the dirty qi in your internal organs and the power of the medicine will attack each other, just like the battle between water and fire, and your life will not be protected.
Shi Min said again: “It is not difficult to become a god. It is only that people are mostly tied up by the mundane, like apes in the threshold and birds in the cage, with the empty desire to fly and soar, how can they become immortals?”
(Source: Taiping Guangji)
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