In the Eastern Han Dynasty, an old man came to sell medicine in the city of Runan. His medicine could cure all kinds of diseases and get rid of them. When selling medicine, he told people who bought the medicine that they would vomit something after eating the medicine and would be well after a few days, and it all came true. And his medicine probable not two prices, every day there is a very substantial income. But the old man only left himself a small amount of money every day, the rest were handed out to the poor in the streets. People often saw a gourd hanging above his seat. The strangest thing is that after sunset, the old man disappeared, only to see the gourd hanging in an empty house, no one knows where he went.
Then a local official once discovered the old man’s secret. It turns out that every sunset, the old man jumped into the gourd. This man knew that the old man was not a normal person, and every day he diligently swept the floor for the old man and brought him food, and the old man accepted it without ceremony. As time went on, the old man saw that he did not slacken off and never dared to ask for anything, so he felt that this man really had the heart to seek the way. One day the old man told him, “When no one is around after dark, come to me quietly.” When he went to see the old man at night when no one was around, the old man said to him, “If you see me jump into the gourd, you follow suit and you can follow me in.” The old man leaped and disappeared. He followed the old man’s instructions also leaped, and indeed unknowingly into the mouth of the gourd.
Into the gourd, only to find that the original gourd is a vast world, inside the colorful and glorious pavilions, winding corridors. Dozens of attendants followed the old man around. The old man said to him, “I am originally an immortal, but I came to earth temporarily because of my relegation. You are a person who can be taught before you have the fate to meet me.” This man then worshiped the old man in the gourd as his teacher.
One day, the old man came to him and said he had brought some wine to drink with him. The man sent some men downstairs to fetch the wine, but the wine could not be lifted in any way, and even after calling dozens of people to help, it did not work. The man had to tell the old man. The old man himself went downstairs and took the wine upstairs by gently lifting it with one finger. The young official drank with the old man until dawn, and although the wine seemed small, he could not finish it. The old man said, “I’m leaving in a few days, will you come with me?” The man said, “I am determined to go with you, but I don’t want my family to find out, what should I do?” The old man said, “That’s easy.” The old man brought a green bamboo staff and gave it to him and instructed him, “Go home and lie down pretending to be sick, and the day after tomorrow put this green bamboo staff on your bed, then don’t speak and come out immediately.” The man did as he was told. As a result, instead of seeing the bamboo staff, his family found him dead in his bed, and they had no choice but to bury him.
The man followed the old man and arrived at a place in a trance. The old man put this man in the middle of a group of tigers, who grinded their sharp teeth hideously and opened their bloody mouths to him to bite him, but he didn’t move at all. The next day, the old man was locked in a stone house, the stone house above the grass rope tied to a boulder, many snakes are chewing grass rope, the boulder is shaking, he is still calm and collected. The old man smiled and said, “It seems that you are indeed a malleable talent.” Then he took out a big plate of maggot-crawling feces for him to eat. He smelled a foul odor and could not eat it. When the old man saw him like that, he sighed and said, “After all, you will not become a god, but a king on earth, living for hundreds of years.” –The stinky thing was an immortal medicine, an illusion to test whether the man’s heart was firm.
The man failed the test and was very disappointed, but did not know how to go home. The old man gave him a bamboo stick and said he could ride it to go home. He rode on the bamboo stick, and as if in a flash, he opened his eyes and saw that he was already at his doorstep. The bamboo staff turned into a green dragon and flew away. When he walked into the house, his family thought they had seen a ghost in the daytime and were terrified. After he explained, and opened the grave to see, the coffin really only a bamboo staff.
He thought he had left home for only one day, but when he asked his family, he realized that a year had passed. Although this man did not become a god, but learned some of the world’s small ways, can help the world to save people, but also able to travel a thousand miles a day.
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