Legend had it that Emperor Ming of Han, Liu Zhuang, dreamed one night of a divine being twelve feet tall, with a golden body and white light suspended above his head, flying toward him from the western sky. Not knowing whether this portended good fortune or ill, he assembled his ministers to interpret the dream. Upon learning that the divine being was the great sage of the West-the Buddha-Emperor Ming sent Cai An and seventeen others to India to seek the Dharma. Thus She Moteng and Zhu Falan willingly crossed the shifting sands, traveling ten thousand miles to spread the Dharma in the Central Land, and thus the first Buddhist temple in the Central Land came into being: White Horse Temple in Luoyang.
Zhu Falan, an eminent monk from central India, was a teacher of Indian scholars, widely learned and gifted with a powerful memory, able to recite a million words of scripture. When he passed away at White Horse Temple, he left a prophecy: should great turmoil engulf the Central Plains, Buddhist practitioners could seek refuge from the flames of war in the land of "two fires and one blade" and propagate the Dharma there.
During the War of the Eight Princes in the Western Jin, nearly all the Buddhist temples in Luoyang were destroyed, and the monks scattered. A monk at White Horse Temple discovered Zhu Falan's last words while looking through the scriptures and declared that "two fires and one blade" formed the character "Shan." As word spread among the monks, several eminent monks led their disciples south to settle and gather in Shan County in Kuaiji Commandery. Zhi Mindu was also an eminent monk of the Southern Crossing. The Buddhist temples in Shan County were all built during that period; among the famous ones were Hidden