南嶽總勝集 3.16

3.16

Shen Taizhi's style name was Guangxiang. His ancestors were originally from Luoyang; having held office beyond the lakes, they had resided generation after generation in Changsha, and later dispersed to the four quarters. He was admired from near and far. Taizhi divined a residence at Liutang in Renfeng Village of Shaozhou. For several generations, his family had cultivated benevolence and compassion. From youth, he lived secluded and apart, not mingling with relatives or friends; he loved reading and was always pure and frugal. He traveled and rested at Nanyue, inquiring into matters of immortals. One evening atop Zhurong Peak, he encountered a Realized Person, who transmitted to him the arts of the golden elixir and fire dragon. He refined the elixir north of Yunshan atop Mount Yehu for accumulated years. The great medicine having been completed, his merits and practices were both fully accomplished; he was able to mount the void and roam in spirit, his appearance and disappearance displaying ample marvelous signs, unfathomable to mortals. On the sixteenth day of the eighth month, the *wuyin* year, being the twenty-sixth year of the Kaiyuan era, Emperor Minghuang decreed to his close ministers, saying: "Last night, during the Mid-Autumn night, I slept and dreamt that a divine being told me: 'At Yunshan in Shaozhou of Hunan, there is a man of the Dao who has refined the elixir and attained immortality. If you receive him with courtesy, he can serve as a refuge for the state.'"