Many years had passed. The seasons turned in endless cycles, yet something always remained unchanged.
Now summer had arrived.
Summer always seemed melancholy, hot and noisy.
The sky was clear and cloudless, tranquil beyond compare, while all manner of insects chirped outside.
The sun cast forth a fierce white light, and the air carried an uncomfortable heat, exuding the scent of summer.
Xuanjing Mountain was steep and perilous, so ever-changing clouds often flashed past its summit, displaying their grandeur beneath the sunlight.
The mountain god of Xuanjing Mountain was named Niu Huang. He possessed fifth-rank cultivation and was a famed great power in the surrounding region.
He often instructed the others around Xuanjing Mountain not to climb it, for doing so would disturb the goddess upon the mountain.
It was said that a goddess lived upon the mountain, with short hair and rosy cheeks, light gleaming in her sidelong glances, radiant as white silk beneath the moonlight.
Many years ago, in Wu County, there had been a man named Zhang Zhi whose wife had fallen gravely ill. Seeking divine aid, he secretly climbed Xuanjing Mountain and saw a woman standing at the southeastern corner of a cliff atop the mountain.
He went over, only to discover that there was merely a stone there, shaped somewhat like a person.
Zhang Zhi was utterly disheartened, so he could only say to the stone, "You have a human form. Could you be an immortal? If you can cure my wife's illness, I will repay you handsomely."
That night, he dreamed that someone told him, "I will bless you."
Thereafter, his wife gradually recovered. Zhang Zhi thus built a shrine at the foot of the mountain and became a shaman there.
Legend had it that he later wrote a volume on the pulse meridians,