Volume One: "Young then, in a thin blue robe" - Whose son sought the Dao with a devoted heart?

Without seeking the great Dao to escape delusion, how could even a man of worthy talents be a true man?

A hundred years flashed like sparks from stone; a lifetime floated like a bubble on water.

-"Awakening to Truth"

"I beg you, immortal master, to accept this humble youth, if only provisionally, among your disciples!"

"Your ties to the mortal world remain unbroken. You have no affinity with the immortal Dao. Please leave!"

"Boo-hoo-hoo..."

"Please take me as your disciple, great master!"

"This humble Daoist has no affinity with you."

"Ah..."

"Daoist master, how about taking me on as your apprentice?"

"All places are filled."

"Oh."

"Old man, be my master."

"No. When you go to the general store later to sneak a look at the owner's daughter, check whether the sandalwood I ordered has arrived."

"All right. But whenever I see a pretty girl, I get terribly forgetful..."

"Scram!"

Such were the everyday conversations between young Zhang Xingyan and the old Daoist Qinghe over the past several years.

Zhang Xingyan was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, with delicate features and two round, jet-black eyes that marked him at a glance as lively and irrepressible. He had grown up in a farming household. His parents were honest, simple mountain folk who lived off the mountain at the foot of Horseshoe Mountain, outside Raozhou City beside Poyang Lake.

Compared with other impoverished farm boys, young Xing Yan had nothing particularly remarkable about him. If one insisted on finding a difference, however, there was one point worth mentioning:

Although the Zhang family lived in hardship, Xing Yan's parents had seized an opportunity to let him study poetry and the classics under old Master Ji at the Ji Family School in Raozhou City. Too poor to pay tuition in silver, the couple could only squeeze a little grain from their own mouths and frequently deliver seasonal mountain delicacies and wild vegetables as the old master's teaching fee.

The name Xingyan had been bestowed on him by this elderly scholar at the Ji Household's school. Before that, there had been no Xingyan in the world, only the Zhang family's little Goudan-"Dog's Egg." When Goudan was seven, his father, Old Zhang, happened to be working as a temporary laborer for the venerable patriarch of the Ji Household, one of Raozhou's prominent Lineages. Despite being called Old Zhang, Goudan's father was actually in his prime then. But the ceaseless toil of farming folk had aged his looks, so everyone found the name Old Zhang natural enough.

Now, while doing this temporary work, Old Zhang happened to hear that the school's old Master Ji was both learned and kindly. Gathering his courage, he obtained an introduction from Old Sun, the Ji Household's coachman, and went to the school to ask the elderly gentleman to give his son a respectable formal name.

Hearing the farmer's anxious, deferential request, the kindly Old Scholar Ji put on no airs. He merely asked pleasantly what requirements the man had for his son's name. Old Zhang had never expected the gentleman to seek his opinion in choosing a name and was quite overwhelmed by the favor. Having been granted this precious opportunity, Goudan's father scratched his head, thought for a while, and answered respectfully:

"Begging your pardon, Master Ji, we farming folk always feel the sun sets too soon. We just wish we could spend less time sleeping, so we'd have more daylight to work and could turn over a few more acres. Besides that, I hope my son will grow up better at talking, so when he helps me sell mountain produce, those smooth talkers won't bully him quite so badly..."

Hearing Old Zhang's requirements, Master Ji actually froze for a moment, unable to produce a polished answer as readily as usual. "Quick of wit; a composition ready while one waits beside a horse"-those words had been his first teacher's assessment of an exercise he wrote in his youth, and the old scholar had prided himself on them ever since. It seemed the gentle, refined gentleman seldom encountered requests like Old Zhang's.

Seeing him fall silent, Old Zhang and Old Sun, standing below him, hardly dared breathe for fear of disturbing his thoughts.

The elderly gentleman deliberated at length, turning the matter over and over. He had to satisfy this farmer's practical wishes, avoiding airy words such as "wealth," "nobility," "purity," and "brightness," as well as difficult, obscure characters for transplanting herbs, water plants, or luxuriant foliage. Yet the name still had to roll readily off the tongues of these illiterate farmers. This was certainly no task to finish while someone waited beside a horse.

After shuffling through combinations for some time, Master Ji finally settled on the characters "xing," meaning "awake," and "yan," meaning "speech," before sweat could gather at his temples! Hearing the name, Old Zhang felt as though he had acquired a priceless treasure and immediately presented the gentleman with a basket of loquats freshly picked on Horseshoe Mountain. Thus, in his seventh year, little Xing Yan completed his transformation from Goudan to Zhang Xingyan.

The illiterate Old Zhang found further inspiration in this naming affair and pleaded stubbornly for Master Ji to let Xing Yan sit in on lessons and acquire some learning. He did not want his son to grow up as illiterate as himself, unable even to manage his children's names. Though a farming household had little money, if Master Ji would kindly take little Xing Yan in, Old Zhang would certainly offer fresh fruit and produce throughout the seasons. Mountain fare might be humble, but it could at least give the gentleman a change of taste.

For some reason, hearing Old Zhang's plain description suddenly made Master Ji feel thoroughly sick of the rich fish and meat served at home. The fruit and mountain delicacies promised by Xing Yan's father greatly tempted him, and, quite unexpectedly, he agreed to Old Zhang's request.

Admitting a child from such a poor household to a distinguished Lineage's private school might have seemed somewhat beneath scholarly dignity. But Master Ji was himself a highly respected elder of the Ji Lineage. With his learning and reputation, no one dared question his decision.

Even the old gentleman himself had not imagined that accepting Xing Yan as his pupil would later become an extraordinary stroke of fortune, envied by countless celebrated scholars. Once Zhang Xingyan's name spread across the four seas, Master Ji began to forget his own teacher's old assessment and instead praised his discerning eye for Zhang Xingyan to everyone he met. Even in advanced age, as his forgetfulness grew steadily worse, he remembered every amusing anecdote about his prized pupil with perfect clarity!

Indeed, Master Ji later even changed his courtesy name-something people of that era rarely altered-from "Mingchang" to "Mingyan." From then on, he flew into a temper whenever anyone called him Ji Mingchang. Naturally, the old gentleman had a deeper purpose in making this change: whenever he introduced himself at a philosophical gathering, he could detain his listener and recount the origins of his courtesy name.

As for young Xing Yan, although he had entered the private school and could now study, he was still a child of a poor household. Unlike his wealthy classmates, he could not spend all day lounging about the schoolrooms or amusing himself with cockfights and dog races. While attending lessons in Raozhou City, he also had to sell fruit, pheasants, rabbits, and other mountain produce for his family. At noon and in the evenings, he worked as a waiter at the Rice Fragrance House at South Market Crossing, earning a paltry few coins to pay for brushes, ink, paper, inkstones, and other school supplies.

The immortal master, great master, Daoist master, and old man whose designation had changed four times in Xing Yan's appeals at the start of this account was a Daoist named Qinghe. He purchased Poyang Lake specialties in Raozhou for the Shangqing Palace, the renowned Daoist order on Mount Luofu in Xunzhou.

Qinghe was already well advanced in years and had been born with a skinny frame. Because he seldom groomed himself, his few sparse wisps of beard had grown longer and longer, attaining considerable proportions over the years. When they drifted in the breeze, he did possess something of an immortal's airy bearing.

Despite his age, Qinghe still performed duties little different from a servant's. As Xing Yan understood it, this must have been because the old Daoist was rather stupid and could not master the Shangqing Palace's lessons, so he had been sent to run errands in the marketplace. Although their tireless daily wrangling over apprenticeship had made them as familiar with each other as could be, this subject was like a vicious dragon's forbidden reverse scale. The moment Xing Yan mocked him about it, Qinghe erupted in fury and insisted on seizing the boy to set him straight:

"I, the great master Qinghe, came to Raozhou City because our Shangqing Palace places particular emphasis on cultivating the Dao through engagement with the world. There was simply no position on Mount Luofu more worldly than this one. So my appointment to Raozhou's Good Karma Office came only after fierce competition, after I surpassed countless outstanding fellow disciples and finally won it!"

To make the mischievous boy accept this explanation, Old Qinghe invariably added that he had once been a senior Daoist at the Shangqing Palace's Tianyi Scripture Pavilion. He had sought a posting to Raozhou City only to advance his cultivation further.

Although Qinghe always looked immensely pleased with himself when he said this, had the boy been a few years older and a little more worldly-wise, he would have noticed that the old man's expression was never entirely natural.

Still, although judging Qinghe by his appearance would inevitably have placed him among the decrepit elderly, his mind was nimble and his understanding of worldly affairs thoroughly polished. He never let his status as a religious man constrain the way he handled matters. In the old Daoist's own righteous words, this was his "Dao of engaging with the world"!

Whether Qinghe had actually been assigned this job because he had failed at cultivation or not, Xing Yan certainly believed his skill at "engaging with the world" had reached the perfection of a furnace blazing pure blue. Indeed, he frequently schemed to get the boy to handle assorted chores for the Good Karma Office along his way.

It seemed the world-renowned Shangqing Palace truly was extraordinary. Was Old Qinghe not a perfect example of its ability to put every talent to proper use? This only deepened young Zhang Xingyan's admiration and longing for the Shangqing Palace! As the verse went:

A little lad with lofty aims longed to learn immortals' ways and climb into the clouds;

The sun rose three poles high, yet still he slept, delighted every day within his dreams!

In truth, for Xing Yan, seeking immortality and yearning for the Dao were at most grand-sounding excuses for pestering the old Daoist to accept him as a disciple. His real reason was that he had reached an age of rapid growth, and his appetite had increased enormously. Though his family lived off the mountain and his parents scrimped and saved, they still could not support it.

Moreover, he had nowhere to stay in Raozhou City and had to travel a long way each day to reach his home outside the city. His legs had become exceptionally strong as a result, but for a boy like Xing Yan, keeping this up day after day was no easy matter.

Thus, if he could worm his way into the Good Karma Office, he would at least have somewhere to stay. Unfortunately, though he knew Old Qinghe very well and could occasionally stop for a meal at the "Mount Luofu Shangqing Palace's Raozhou Good Karma Office," Qinghe was not its sole keeper. Under him were two young Daoists, Jingchen and Jingming, neither of whom had a kind face for Xing Yan.

Perhaps their annoyance at Xing Yan's borrowing lodging was understandable. Though these two Daoists ranked low, both had gone to considerable trouble to enter the Shangqing Palace, that aloof and world-renowned Daoist order. Each had hoped to learn a few Daoist arts and return home in glory. Instead, for no apparent reason, they had been dispatched far away to do menial chores. For devoted seekers of the Dao, this was no different from banishment to a penal frontier. To make matters worse, they could hardly even write home about it. Their bellies were full of grievances.

Thus, although Daoism valued serenity and nonaction, all that accumulated ill fortune made it impossible for them to show much kindness to a freeloading lay boy like Xing Yan. Meanwhile, after these years of experience in school and the marketplace, Xing Yan was no longer the ignorant mountain child he had once been. He understood perfectly well the two servant Daoists' unfavorable opinion of him.

That made him all the more determined to press Qinghe into accepting him as a disciple. Every day sooner he joined the generation whose names began with "Jing" was a day sooner he could rightfully eat, drink, and lodge for free at the Good Karma Office!

Unlike Jingchen and Jingming, little Xing Yan thought these Daoists at the Good Karma Office were already living in paradise. They had no worries about clothing or food, no suffering from rain or scorching sun. All they did was spend their days chatting and wrangling, and receive donations from admirers of the Dao. At most, they walked around a few street corners to buy miscellaneous supplies-and even such easy work could be shared among three people in rotation. What leisurely lives!

Compared with the various part-time jobs Xing Yan had held, this was heaven against earth! Yet the two young Daoists still spent every day with furrowed brows and miserable faces. They were steeped in blessings without knowing it! Xing Yan often pondered such matters during the long journey home each day.

In fact, young Zhang Xingyan could hardly be blamed for thinking this way, for he lived in an era when the people suffered considerable hardship while Daoism flourished.

The realm had only just been pacified. After years of warfare among rival powers, the population of the land had dwindled drastically. From the lower and middle ranks of the scholarly Lineages to the common people at the bottom, everyone still shuddered at the memory of days when surviving till evening was uncertain at dawn. Now the whole realm longed for stability. From imperial kin and noblemen to ordinary citizens, all had tired of war's clamor and begun to heal the wounds left by years of conflict. Amid this great tide of the times, Daoism, which opposed armed conquest and advocated serenity and nonaction, began to stand out among the various religious schools.

At that time, the entire nation admired Daoism. Not only did incense offerings at Daoist temples increase daily, but worldly writers and celebrated scholars also made close study of Daoist scriptures a fashionable pursuit. Many renowned Daoist scholars emerged from the learned circles of that age.

Against this backdrop, the vogue for pure conversation on Daoist metaphysics flourished beyond imagining. Such discussions were also called "subtle discourse," "pure discourse," "pure discussion," and "pure debate." Exploring Laozi, Zhuangzi, and the Book of Changes, together known as the "three mysteries of Daoism," became the fashionable subject of these gatherings. Celebrated scholars versed in the three mysteries not only displayed quick wit and eloquence in conversation but also wrote books, expounded doctrines, and achieved distinction in scholarship. The world called them Metaphysicians.

Yet although the title "Metaphysician" inspired deep respect then, it was not easily earned. These pure conversations on Daoist metaphysics often continued all night, hence the saying "subtle discourse until dawn." Some scholars became so absorbed in debate that they forgot both sleep and food; as one account put it, "attendants brought their meals, which cooled and were reheated three or four times." A few went further still, pondering through entire nights to devise winning arguments until they fell ill from exhaustion-or even died.

Xing Yan's teacher, old Master Ji, was something of a celebrity among local Literati Circles. Amid this nationwide surge of Daoist learning, he naturally could not escape the fashion. Whenever inspiration struck, he would launch into lengthy discussions of metaphysics between lessons.

Given the boy's knowledge and interests then, however, he truly could not understand what his enthusiastic teacher was saying. He merely stared blankly at the old gentleman's mouth, opening and closing as though it would never stop, and prayed that class would end soon:

Can I still make it to my shift at the Rice Fragrance House? If I'm late, that fat bookkeeper will scold me again. And that iron rooster, Manager Liu, will seize the chance to dock my wages...

Countless distracting thoughts crowded into Xing Yan's head, shifting like white clouds into gray dogs. Not one had anything to do with the subject being discussed in the classroom.

Thus, while Master Ji's tongue blossomed lotuses at the front of the room, expounding mystery upon mystery, his pupil Zhang Xingyan sat straight and solemn below, his spirit roaming ten thousand miles away.

Occasionally, however, a story in Master Ji's lectures was less dull than the rest and happened to catch Xing Yan's attention. Once the old gentleman mentioned Kuang Jia, a son of the Wei Household east of Raozhou City. Frail yet fond of discussing metaphysics, he had challenged Xie Kun, a celebrated scholar from the Wei River region. In the ensuing all-night debate, the visiting Xie Kun refuted him so thoroughly that Kuang Jia foamed at the mouth, suffered a recurrence of an old illness, and died!

Watching his teacher relate this tale with a tragic air of "the wind sighs mournfully; the Yi River runs cold," little Xing Yan grew thoroughly alarmed. Though he still intended to keep trying to get into Old Qinghe's Good Karma Office, he resolved to be very careful in future: he must never again spend an entire night chatting and trading verbal blows with the old Daoist!

Since Daoism was fashionable and admired by officials and commoners alike, the number of people eager to join it grew enormously. With demand so strong, idle opportunists naturally arrived to join the excitement.

Thus, over several decades, a bewildering assortment of Daoist sects arose throughout the land. Utmost Light, Complete Emptiness, Primal Nothingness, Original Beginning, Return to Oneness, Wheel of Emptiness-their names grew ever emptier and ever more mysterious. But among these sects of uneven quality, where fish and dragons mingled, the truly renowned and flourishing ones remained the three ancient, deeply rooted great Daoist orders:

The Wondrous Radiance Palace on Mount Weiyu, the Shangqing Palace on Mount Luofu, and the Celestial Master Order on Mount Heming.

The Wondrous Radiance Palace had mostly female Daoists, while the Shangqing Palace revered the Upper Clarity Scripture and the Jade Emperor Scripture. The Celestial Master Order was also called the "Way of the Celestial Master" and the "Five Pecks of Rice Faith." Said to have been founded by Celestial Master Zhang Daoling, it had the broadest following and greatest influence of the three Daoist Orders.

Unlike the Wondrous Radiance Palace, which focused on women, and the Celestial Master Order, which appealed to the masses, Qinghe's Shangqing Palace was comparatively aloof. One of the three great orders, it based its cultivation primarily on Daoist classics such as the Jade Emperor Scripture and the Upper Clarity Scripture. Its name, Shangqing-Upper Clarity-came from reverence for the three patriarchs known as the Three Pure Ones.

Whether by design or by planting a willow without intending it to grow, the Shangqing Palace's lofty reputation won the favor of scholar-officials. The imperial household granted it a thousand qing of fertile farmland, and the mountainous territory surrounding Mount Luofu, spanning five hundred li, was officially designated its private property. In contrast, the Celestial Master Order, better known among the impoverished common people, found little favor in Literati Circles.

If one carefully traced their origins, the Shangqing Palace and the Celestial Master Order actually shared considerable history. It was said that they had originally been one order, but doctrinal disagreements in a later generation caused an internal dispute. Zhang Daoling's descendant Zhang Qing, the fourth Celestial Master, then moved the order to Mount Heming and called it the Celestial Master Order. The followers and elders who remained founded the Shangqing Palace, establishing a separate school thereafter.

For most poor commoners, the Shangqing Palace of that era undoubtedly symbolized a paradise of plentiful clothing and food. Anyone who could form a connection with it would enjoy a lifetime free of worry. Never going hungry for an entire lifetime was an extraordinary prospect to most impoverished people then-perhaps a delight they could only dream of by falling asleep inside another dream!

Even as an uncomprehending child, Xing Yan had recognized the hardships of life. Once old enough to understand, he had to find his own means of eating. For little Xing Yan, who spent his days scrambling for food and clothing, setting his sights on the "Shangqing Palace's Raozhou Good Karma Office" was perfectly natural.

Unfortunately, precisely because of its lofty reputation, the Shangqing Palace had always selected disciples very strictly. Perhaps it also feared being unable to feed too many mouths, for it ordered its members to enforce stringent admission rules. Hence the conversations between Xing Yan and Old Qinghe at the beginning: much the same in substance over the years, but steadily declining in formality.

After all these years of persuasion, Xing Yan remained a mortal of the dusty world. The only result was that he had become well acquainted with the old Daoist Qinghe.

On this particular day, after completing his customary daily attempt to secure an apprenticeship, Xing Yan went to work at the Rice Fragrance House, two streets away. Along the way, he also fulfilled another daily duty: sneaking a couple of looks at Li Xiaomei, the daughter of the proprietor of Li's General Store, on the corner of East Gate Street.

The boy could hardly be accused of precocity for this. People generally married young then, and some boys of fourteen or fifteen, like Zhang Xingyan, already had wives and children. Xing Yan's family was simply too poor to afford a marriage. At his age, he had already developed a hazy attraction to girls, and Li Xiaomei was the lovely girl of his dreams. In his eyes, her skin was beautiful, her eyes bright and dewy, and she looked wonderful from every angle. Little wonder she was the undisputed foremost beauty of her age within two streets!

In truth, judged strictly, Li Xiaomei was merely a typical girl of the marketplace, youthful and lively in appearance, hardly deserving the word "beauty." But what did that matter? To a boy whose heart was first awakening to love, the girl he admired was the most beautiful of all.

Perhaps decades later, looking back on his youthful infatuation with some girl, he would find it utterly incomprehensible. But that was something for decades later.

As he passed Li's General Store, the boy did not forget Qinghe's request. After all, asking whether the goods had arrived would let him openly steal a few extra looks at Li Xiaomei!