Tales of the Taoist Immortals Read Online Free

emperor immediately took off his crown and his shoes, went down on his knees, and begged the lords of heaven to save his diviner.
    Chang Kuo appeared and said, “Sire, this man knew the consequences when he revealed the secrets of heaven.”
    The emperor begged, “It was my fault that he died. Let me take the punishment.”
    Moved by the emperor’s integrity, Chang Kuo allowed, “I will see what I can do.” He threw some water on Fa-shan’s body, and the diviner immediately sat up.
    Not long after this incident, Chang Kuo asked for permission to leave the palace. The emperor sent him off with gifts of cloth and gold and two assistants. Kuo declined the cloth and gold but took the assistants. At the foot of Mount Heng, Kuo sent one of the assistants home and took the other with him into the mountains.
    A year later, the emperor tried to invite Chang Kuo back to the palace. However, when the imperial messenger arrived at Kuo’s retreat, the master stopped his breath and died. Weeping, Kuo’s assistant lit the funeral candles and put his master’s body in a coffin.
    After the emissary had gone, the lid of the casket flew open. The assistant peeked in and, to his shock, found that Kuo’s body had disappeared.
    When news of Chang Kuo’s “disappearance” reachedthe capital, the emperor ordered a shrine to be built on Mount Heng to honor the bat-spirit immortal.

     
    C HANG K UO L AO lived during the T’ang dynasty (618–906 CE ). He wrote a treatise on astrology titled Chang Kuo Lao hsing-tsung (Chang Kuo Lao’s Astrological System). This system of celestial divination is still used widely by Chinese seers today.

5
    The Immortal with the Iron Crutch
    T’ieh-kuai Li
     

 
     
     
     

     

 
     
    T’ieh-kuai means “Iron Crutch,” and Li got this nickname in an extraordinary way. He was an adept in the arts of longevity and spirit travel; it is said he learned them directly from Lao Tzu himself. Tall, handsome, and charismatic, Li was proud of his good looks and youthful vitality, which he maintained as a result of his practice.
    One day, Li was invited to a gathering of immortals on Mount Hua. Before he sent out his spirit, he told his servant, “I will be leaving my body for seven days. Make sure that nothing happens to it while my spirit is gone. If I don’t wakeup after sunset on the seventh day, you can burn my body, gather your belongings, and go home.” With that, he closed his eyes, laid down, and sent his spirit to Mount Hua.
    Six days passed, and Li had not returned. On the morning of the seventh day, the servant received a message from his brother, telling him that their mother was severely ill and would die soon. Li’s servant was caught in a dilemma. “I need to go home and see my mother before she dies,” he said to himself. “But the master told me to watch over his body for seven days.” He fretted for a long time and then decided, “Today is the seventh day and my master has not returned. It probably won’t matter whether I burn the body now or wait till after sunset.”
    The servant built a pyre, placed Li’s body on it, and set the wood on fire. After making sure that the body was burned to ashes, he packed his belongings and went home.
    That evening at sunset, Li’s spirit returned. When he saw the funeral pyre outside his house, he sighed and said, “It is the will of heaven.”
    At that time, Li had not attained immortality and still needed a human shell to complete his cultivation. Fluttering around the town, his spirit found a beggar who had just died. The beggar was crippled and ugly, and, under normal circumstances, Li would have been too vain to choose so grotesque a shell. But he was desperate. If his spirit did not enter a body soon, he would lose his chance to complete his cultivation. So Li’s spirit hastily entered the body of the crippled beggar. From that time on, Li appeared as a crippled beggar leaning on an iron crutch.

     
    Not much is known about T