Xiao Ran, Wu Man, and Golden Toad Son all jerked their heads up and stared at the big monk, bewilderment written across their faces.
"You're called Lu Zhishen?" Golden Toad Son asked, eyes wide. "The one from Shuibo Liangshan?"
"That's me. I'm Lu Da. But Shuibo Liangshan is complete nonsense. I read that book, and it lumped me together with that Song Black Face. It was downright infuriating. If I'd really gone up to Liangshan, the first thing I'd have done was smack that Song Blackie dead with my spade."
The big monk introduced himself, then took another long swig of wine and wiped his beard. "Most of that book was made up, but some of it was true. I did kill Zhen Guanxi, and there was Iron Buddha Cui Daocheng. I beat up Yang Zhi, and Hu Yan Zhuo and Guangguo Master Deng Yuan were in there too. But things didn't happen the way the book said. Clearly, some storyteller had turned my life into a tale to spread it around and earn his promotion."
There had been people who entered the sect since ancient times, and among them were storytellers, whose path to advancement lay in spreading stories.
But there weren't that many good stories to tell, and making them up wasn't easy either. So they simply took the stories of other entrants, adapted them to the times, and told them as their own. It worked remarkably well.
And so, many different versions of these tales spread.
Bit by bit, from here and there, the stories were pieced together.
The Four Great Classical Novels were much the same.
Without the inventions of those who came before, writing the Four Great Classical Novels later on wouldn't have been so easy.
Still, this was quite a shock to Xiao Ran