Mountain Gods and Earth Deities

"Do you really think everyone is destined to become an immortal?"

After the heavy rain, the mountain brimmed with lush green. A blue bird hid among the trees, grooming its tail feathers with its beak and glancing back every so often. Behind it, a wholly emerald-green mantis clung to a leaf, its back turned to the sunlight. It looked like a bamboo leaf, swaying gently in the breeze. Beneath the bamboo leaves, an early cicada, driven out by the damp after the rain, perched among the trees and sang at its leisure.

Old Deer Mountain God sat among the trees. With a casual point of his finger, he turned to his friend with a smile.

"Take that cicada in the mountain. Would you even notice it?"

The Earth Deity shook his head.

"Humans are the most gifted of all beings, specially favored by Heaven. They are unlike cicadas."

"But what difference is there between a cicada and a human?" Old Deer Mountain God said with a smile.

"The cicada in the mountain is witless and unaware. It cannot see the mantis hunting behind it, and the mantis cannot see the bird hiding in the woods... Or, even if it knew, what then? Would you or I save it? How could it save itself?"

"Mantises eat meat, and birds catch insects. It is simply their nature."

"Save one today, and there is tomorrow; save it tomorrow, and there is next year. The cycle goes on from generation to generation, and humans are no different. What a lamentable thing!"

"That is fate."

"It cannot be defied. It cannot be defied."

The Earth Deity listened, absorbed. Old Deer Mountain God had lived for eight hundred years, and understood the Dao far more deeply than he did.

Old Deer Mountain God touched only briefly on fate before turning the conversation back to the Dao.

"If you wish to defy fate and live beyond a hundred and twenty years, you must encounter the true teachings, seek the Great Dao, and set foot on the path to immortality."

"Is it really that easy?"

"You must cast aside worldly vanity and abandon delusions of wealth and status. You need superior innate talent and a heart free of desire. You must establish a foundation of virtue, perform a thousand good deeds, and receive the teachings of a renowned master."

"Only then may you knock on the gates of immortality."

"That is the proper path. The Great Dao."

In the bamboo grove, the blue bird cocked its head and groomed its feathers, watching the mantis move across a bamboo leaf. The mantis had eaten its fill and was basking in contentment. Neither creature knew that beneath the trees, a conversation about the Dao was taking place.

The Earth Deity sighed as he listened.

"Seeking immortality must truly be hard for mortals."

The Mountain God smiled. "Yet this is the Great Dao. Once attained, it is beyond the reach of mountain gods and earth deities like you and me."

"That lofty master was merely traveling through here. Though the young man's poetic talent is astonishing, and he speaks of immortals and gods as casually as if jotting down thoughts with an old friend, the master still won't take him as a disciple."

"That poet is only in his twenties. He hasn't seen through the glories of the world, and he still longs to enter officialdom."

"How could he enter the gates of immortality?"

The mountain path was slick and difficult to traverse. Li Bai's shoes were caked in mud, and they would be hard to scrub clean when he got home. He rested a hand against a tree trunk and looked up at the man walking ahead of him.

Dew fell on the man but left no trace. Though the mountain path was muddy, not a speck of it clung to his shoes. It was as if filth had a spirit of its own and shied away from him.

When Li Bai was young, he had read Ge Hong's Biographies of Immortals, written during the Eastern Jin dynasty. It said:

"To walk without touching the ground, to wear clothes untouched by dust, to remain unharmed by water and fire—this is called shunning dust."

That was probably what an immortal was like.

An immortal with such abilities stood right in front of Li Bai. He had wanted to bow and become his disciple, to learn the ways of immortals and ask about the Dao, but he had been refused.

The man had said his mind was not yet clear, and the time was not right.

What did it mean for the time to be right?

Fortunately, Jiang She had also said that although he would not take Li Bai as a disciple, they could travel together for a while and see the people of the world.

Li Bai's heart wavered. The encounter with an immortal was so extraordinary that it stirred waves within him.

After a while, he explained.

"The Lu Family the Deer Mountain God mentioned—was that the Lu clan at the foot of the mountain?"

"Today is the old lady of the Lu Family's seventieth birthday. Though the family has fallen on hard times these past two years, the old lady still has quite a few connections, and many guests have come to offer their congratulations. If you'd like to take a look, sir, I'd be glad to show you the way."

Jiang She asked as he threaded fish onto a willow twig.

"Do you have ties to the Lu Family?"

Li Bai admitted frankly, "I do. I came here last year and studied the Dao with Brother Meng and Danqiu Sheng. That was when I became acquainted with the Lu Family."

"But the Lu Family's Grand Matriarch keeps wanting to marry one of the women in her family off to me. I couldn't take the constant pestering, so I had no choice but to flee into the mountains."

Given Li Bai's family background,

though Tang law barred the sons of merchants from entering officialdom, he still wouldn't have looked twice at a wealthy family from a single county, much less considered marrying into one.

He had turned them down twice, and they still kept asking.

So he had run away.

Jiang She found that amusing. "That must have put you in a difficult position."

"It's nothing," Li Bai said. "The Lu Family has sold off almost all its fields and estates. The Grand Matriarch should have no time to concern herself with me."

"I heard from Brother Meng that the Lu Family's Grand Matriarch is advanced in years. During a drought some years ago, she opened the granaries and gave out grain to relieve the people's suffering, doing many good deeds. She is also highly regarded for her seniority. It's only in the past two years, as the Lu Family has declined, that she's become a little eccentric and taken to matchmaking. She isn't a bad person."

"Even though the Lu Family has little left, people still come to offer their birthday wishes and give them some support."

"The guests who've come to celebrate must think the same."

Meng Haoran was a local of Xiangyang, and his family had known the Lu clan for generations. The Lu clan of Xiangyang County was different from the Fanyang Lu Clan. The Fanyang Lu Clan was a renowned family throughout the realm, while the Xiangyang Lu clan was merely a local gentry family. It, too, had been in decline for years, a cause for regret.

Jiang She nodded.

He then asked, "Have you heard why the Lu Family is selling its land and fields?"

Li Bai replied, "When it first happened, I thought they were going to take the imperial examinations and submit recommendation scrolls in the capital. I figured they must have been short of money, so they were selling off their family property. But then they didn't pack up and head for the capital, which struck me as odd."

"Now I know—they've been bewitched."

As he spoke, curiosity surfaced on his face.

"What kind of evil spirit is so powerful that even the local Mountain God can't drive it out?"

"We'll see for ourselves." Jiang She gave a slight bow and smiled. "I'll have to trouble you further."

"Just call me Taibai, sir."

Li Bai was in high spirits, his voice brimming with respect and excitement.

"Then you needn't call me sir, either," Jiang She said with a smile. "I have no courtesy name, so just call me by my name."

At the foot of the mountain.

The Lu Family had fallen into decline, leaving only an empty old residence. Many of its vessels had been sold. Though the family had tried to hide its plight, the desolation and emptiness were plain to see.

The sight of a gentry family, prosperous for generations, reduced to a dwindling household made the local guests sigh.

"There used to be a celadon chicken-headed ewer sitting there. It was from the Jin dynasty. I asked the Lu master several times to sell it to me, but he refused every time," a guest murmured.

"Now it's gone."

"I heard they sold it to a shop outside town, and it ended up in a merchant's hands."

"Poor Lu Family."

"I heard they'd been here for hundreds of years. Their wealth had flowed down through the generations. They say they struggled to have children, but the Earth Deity watched over them, and their line never died out. They'd been wealthy for more than a dozen generations. What a pity."

"Has the eldest son's delusion still not been cured? The family fortune's been squandered. If he could at least pass the jinshi exam, that would be one thing. But if he keeps failing, then..."

"I curse the day that spendthrift was born."

Someone ground his teeth, as if he felt the loss personally.

After gossiping among themselves for a while, Gentry Wang—the same man who had first lamented the chicken-headed ewer—stepped forward and said:

"Enough, enough. Today is the Grand Matriarch's birthday, a joyous occasion. Let's not bring any of this up. We should go pay our respects!"

They tucked away their looks of sympathy and pity, lowered their heads to straighten their sleeves, and did their best to make the hosts feel at ease and keep the elderly Grand Matriarch of the Lu Family happy.

Meng Haoran and Yuan Danqiu stood among the guests.

Meng Haoran spoke quietly.

"The Lu Family is finished."

Yuan Danqiu was less tactful than he was, though he lowered his voice all the same. "No wonder the Grand Matriarch of the Lu Family has been trying to arrange marriages these past two years, wanting to marry her granddaughter to Taibai. He's always throwing money around and looks wealthy enough."

Li Bai really was rich.

"Once, when he traveled east to Yangzhou, he scattered more than three hundred thousand in gold within a year, giving it all to impoverished young gentlemen in need. This was how lightly Bai regarded wealth and how fondly he gave to others."

Letter to Chief Clerk Pei of Anzhou

In addition, people in the Tang dynasty mostly used the crossed-hands greeting, though the clasped-hands bow was also used.