Xu Zhenren, originally a native of Dongting Mountain, Suzhou, whose parents worked as farmers. It is said that on the eve of Xu Zhenren's birth, his mother dreamed of a handsome Taoist man, straddling the green dragon to the door of his house, bowing down at her knees and pleading: "I have unfinished business in my past life, and I am willing to live with my aunt for eleven years." His mother pushed back, "Our family is poor and cold, so how can we be a family that provides immortals with the Tao?" ”
The Taoist said, "If it comes, it will be at peace." After a while, only the sound of a dragon's loud groaning was heard, and his mother suddenly woke up from the dream, at this time, only to see the whole house full of strange fragrances, a baby crying and crying, Xu Zhenren was born. When Xu Zhenren was a child, he looked like a good boy, but his personality was stupid and rude, and he was very naughty and did not like to read.
When Xu Zhenren was three years old, his father died. Xu's mother asked her eldest son to go to Sichuan with the merchants to learn to do business, but this time, he never came back, nor did he hear from him, and Xu's mother was very worried in her heart. When Xu Zhenren was six years old, one summer, he was chilling under a big tree, and when he saw the sharecroppers pedaling water wheels to irrigate the crops very hard, he played with the shape of grass tied into adult shapes on the reels of the water wheel.
Unexpectedly, the water wheel actually turned, and soon the ridge was filled with water. The neighbor begged him to help the straw man tread a water wheel, but he was not happy to force him to do it while he was happy. Although he was stupid and naughty, he was filial by nature, and every night he always sang some small rural songs to his mother to comfort her loneliness and make her happy.
Occasionally he also made three or four small straw men into grass and put them on the ground, and he shouted a few times, and the little grass people could stand up and dance, or do various performances, sometimes some somersaults, sometimes swings, sometimes two people lifting a person, sometimes one person walking on two people's backs, as if pulling a puppet show. When my mother saw all this, her heart was naturally troubled and eliminated a lot. Gradually, the townspeople knew that he had a strange personality, but some people suspected that he was playing tricks, and there was nothing strange about it.
When Xu Zhenren was eight years old, his eldest brother finally wrote a letter, and he could send a little money home to support his mother and raise his younger brother. At the end of that year, his mother began to make soup cakes to eat at the New Year, so she ordered Xu Zhenren to burn a fire under the stove. While her mother was steaming and making cakes, Xu Zhenren was chatting with her in front of the stove, while playing with the grass dragon in his hand, the grass dragon was more than a foot long, and the dragon head, dragon horn, dragon claw, and dragon tail were all ready.
When the mother saw it, she laughed and scolded: "Silly boy, you are greedy again!" Forget about the fire, if the cake is not steamed, see how I beat you! Listening to his mother's reprimand, Xu Zhenren ate and laughed incessantly. When the first two cages of soup cakes were steamed, Xu Zhenren stood at the edge of the tank containing the soup cakes and pestered his mother to eat them, saying that he wanted to taste the taste. The mother scolded: "Little fool, all day long, you only know how to play and eat, you don't want to think about how hard your eldest brother is running around outside." Such a delicious thing, your eldest brother may be able to eat it? But you are happy at home alone, and you don't want to learn from your big brother to stand on your own. ”
Xu Zhenren smiled and replied, "What's so hard about this?" I immediately sent soup cakes to my eldest brother to taste. The mother said, "Crazy talk again, your brother is thousands of miles away from here, how do you send it?" Can the pie fly on its own? Xu Zhenren said, "This is easy." "Motherhood is crazy, so she doesn't take it to heart." Unexpectedly, when sleeping at night, Xu Zhenren actually disappeared, and her mother was very surprised, and then looked at the doors and windows of the house without any traces of opening, and even the shadow of a person in the house could not be found.
Strangely enough, the grass dragon by the stove did not know where to go, and she cried sadly all night. The next day, the neighbors learned of this and came to comfort them, and it was the three poles on the day, when they suddenly saw Xu Zhenren smiling and giggling from outside the door. He took out two underwear from his arms and handed them to his mother, saying, "The eldest brother is very good in Sichuan, and he wants me to greet you on his behalf." When I was about to return, he took out these two underwear and asked me to take them home as a watch. When the mother said crazy things again, she didn't want to see that these two underwear were indeed sewn for his eldest son when he left home that day, and he couldn't help but be a little suspicious.
It turned out that last night Xu Zhenren really went to deliver soup cakes for his brother, he brought five soup cakes, secretly rode on the grass dragon to fly in the air, and arrived in Shuzhong in an instant. When dawn had not yet broken, when four pheasants were crying, his eldest brother was riding a horse with a lantern to check the accounts of other stores, and the two met on the way. The eldest brother, because he had been away from home for many years, did not know who the person was at first, only to hear him shout that he was the elder brother, and after some careful interrogation, he realized that it was his own brother, but he felt very strange that his brother had come like this.
Xu Zhenren said: "I rely on my old mother every day, miss my brother very much, and today I specially came to visit my brother and sent the soup cake that my mother just made for my brother to eat." Then the soup cake was served. The eldest brother was very surprised and took the soup cake, which was still hot, fragrant and soft. The eldest brother ate the soup cake and said, "This is really the taste of the hometown soup cake, but the hometown is thousands of miles away from here, how did you come here?" The brother took Xu Zhenren to the shop and wanted to keep him for a few days to say goodbye.
But Xu Zhenren whispered to his brother, "I came here by magic, and if the sun rises, I won't be able to go back." Why not take something and bring it back to my mother as a keepsake? The elder brother handed over two pieces of underwear sewn by his mother's hand to the younger brother, and Xu Zhenren rode home on the grass dragon. After this incident, the townspeople gradually became suspicious that Xu Zhenren was an immortal, but some people still thought that this child would just play a little trick and did not believe in any immortals.
Another year passed, and the real person was nine years old. On the day of the Lantern Festival, Xu Zhenren played with the children of the neighbors, sitting by the stove that burned the roots of the tree, simmering chestnuts and laughing at the same time. He suddenly dozed off, but soon woke up, smiled and said to his friends, "The lights in Shandong Licheng are really beautiful!" The children laughed at him and said, "You went in a dream, didn't you?" Xu Zhenren said, "If you really want to go to Licheng, what is so difficult about it?" ”
When the children thought about the rumors about him, they wanted to know about Xu Zhenren's immortality to the end, and they all said that they must go with Xu Zhenren. Xu Zhenren said, "It is not difficult for you to go, but you must obey my orders." The crowd said, "Of course." So, Xu Zhenren took out his grass dragon, pulled it to a length of more than a foot, and then told everyone to close their eyes and sit on the grass dragon together. One of the five people was older, nineteen years old, cunning by nature, xu Zhenren knew a little about his temperament, and especially cared for him not to open his eyes.
After a while, Xu Zhenren felt out a copper coin and handed it to this person, saying, "You take a breath at it, drop it, and you will get several dollars." The man fumbled the copper coin in his waist pocket. The five children sat on the grass dragon and felt steady, without any sense of shaking, and for a moment they could only hear the sound of the wind in their ears, just like the sound of the warriors marching in a hurry, and like the sound of waves rushing into the sea.
After a while, I felt that the wind had stopped, Xu Zhenren told everyone to open their eyes, and sure enough, they saw a fire city, full of brilliant lights, fire trees and silver flowers, various flower lanterns hanging on the shelves decorated with dragons, and bridges made of lights, which made people dizzy. The streets were filled with laughter and laughter, and young girls sang to the beat. There are many tourists like a herd of ants, listening to their voices are all Shandong accents, everyone is sure that this is indeed Licheng.
Everyone was wandering and playing, the interest was strong, and suddenly they heard more drums, Xu Zhenren said: "It's not early in the day, let's go back quickly!" Then the crowd still closed their eyes and followed his instructions to sit on the grass dragon. Not wanting to go halfway, the cunning man was upset and said to himself, "Is it really flying in the air now?" He quietly opened his eyes to peek, but as soon as he opened his eyes, he immediately fell to the ground, but he didn't know where it was, and asked repeatedly, it turned out to be in Yangzhou City.
He remembered Xu Zhenren's words and couldn't help but feel remorse. When it was dawn, he took out the money that Xu Zhenren had given him, tried to throw it on the ground in one breath, and sure enough, he got several dollars, which he used to buy food to fill his hunger, walked all the way back to his hometown, and when he reached the door of the house, he went to find the money that Xu Zhenren gave him, but it was gone. Later, some people from my hometown who went to Licheng to do business came back and talked about the scene of the Lantern Festival lantern market in Licheng that night, which was completely consistent with what everyone saw. After the news spread, the townspeople felt that Xu Zhenren was a strange person.
This winter, his mother was worried about her eldest son and was restless. Xu Zhenren said, "Let me go and take my eldest brother home." Although the mother knew that Xu Zhenren had special functions, she still didn't believe it very much, only when he said crazy things. In the blink of an eye, Xu Zhenren disappeared, and the next day, Xu Zhenren's brother did return home. My mother was very surprised and asked him about the scene when he returned home, and he said: "Yesterday evening, my brother suddenly came to Sichuan to visit me, and I was very strange and asked him: "Why are you here again?" "He said, 'I'm here to pick up my brother and come home to see my mother for the time being.'"
I said that the road is far from going back, and I don't have much savings this year, and it is not easy to go back once, otherwise I would have gone home earlier. My brother smiled and said, 'Don't worry, we'll be home soon.' He told me to ride on his back and repeatedly told me to close my eyes. It was four o'clock in the morning, and I just felt the wind whistling in my ears, my skin as cool as cold dew, and I was like a galloping horse, and like a bird flying fast, and in the blink of an eye, the wind stopped, and we landed on the ground. My brother told me to open my eyes and said to me, 'Brother, let me go home for the time being, and I'll stop by to visit a good friend and then I'll go back.' With that, he took the grass dragon in his hand and headed west. I was still dissatisfied, so I looked for my way home. Now that I see my mother, I still suspect that I am dreaming. ”
A few days later, one night, the eldest brother was chatting with his mother, when he overheard a rapid knock on the door, and when he opened the door, it turned out that Xu Zhenren had returned, and he said: "Brother's clothes and other miscellaneous items are outside the door, and we quickly move them into the house." "After the things were moved into the house, my brother counted them one by one, and sure enough, there were not many pieces." The eldest brother said: "My brother is really confused, I have only lived at home for a month, and I plan to find a passenger ship to return to Sichuan to do business."
Now that you have brought all these things back and let me sit at home and eat the mountains and skies, how will our family live in the future? Xu Zhenren said, "It's very easy." The next day, Xu Zhenren secretly taught his brother some spells to get money, and told his brother: "With this spell, at most, you can get 200,000 taels of silver, so that the family can live and feed, and too much money will bring disasters." ”
Later, the Xu family gradually built buildings, bought fields, ate and wore very richly, the old mother enjoyed her old age in peace, the family lived happily, and the eldest brother no longer went out to do business. However, Xu Zhenren's behavior has changed, he can't leave the door all day, often sitting alone in a room, like a wooden chicken, quietly moving. Sometimes people from the township came to him to ask him about the auspiciousness, and he just clapped his hands and laughed wildly, and did not say a word.
In the autumn of the following year, thieves were rampant in the Taihu Lake area, and they gathered to do evil, the thieves' warships flew back and forth, almost all the people along the lake were burned and robbed, and the neighboring villages planned to organize township groups to carry out armed vigilance. On this day, Xu Zhenren had just walked out of the room, and someone in the township came to ask him to help train the township regiment, and he said, "I'm just a child, who knows anything about military training?" "When the visitors knew that he had a spell, they begged bitterly, and one of them even cried so much that he cried.
Xu Zhenren smiled: "I also know that running a township regiment is an old way to prevent thieves, but you farmers don't know the art of war, and often panic before you see the robbers, and when you see the thieves, you scatter and flee, which is simply to invite thieves to attack." The reason for this is that the people do not obey orders and do not abide by the strict military discipline of rewards and punishments. What is the use of training it in such a township regiment? Everyone thought that Xu Zhenren was right, so they tried to ask him to think of other ways to defend against thieves, he said: "This is not difficult." ”
Xu Zhenren had planted five hundred straw men, each about three feet long, all holding bamboo poles. He instructed the people to place the straw men at the gates of each traffic road, and then ordered everyone to go home and close the door and sleep. In the middle of the night, the thieves did come again, and people did not go out, only to hear a fight and shouting outside. At dawn, when I got up, the thieves had fled without a trace, but I saw that the bamboo poles of the straw people were stained with blood on their heads, and then I saw the floating corpses of the thieves on the lake. Strangely enough, from then on, thieves never dared to come here to do evil deeds.
One morning, Xu Zhenren got up early, and after taking a bath, he first met his mother, and then invited his eldest brother to come, respectfully saluted them, and cried: "After several years of separation between our mother and son brothers, now the family is finally reunited, and it is time to enjoy the joy of heaven." Unexpectedly, the gods summoned me back, and they were not allowed to delay for a moment. What to do, what to do? As soon as the words fell, he lay down and did not move, his brother rushed forward to check, his body had become stiff, there was no breath, and his mother and brother were suddenly grief-stricken.
If you calculate carefully, Xu Zhenren was exactly eleven years old this year, which was completely consistent with what his mother had said in the dream on the eve of his birth, and he knew that Providence was difficult to violate. The Xu family solemnly handled the funeral for Xu Zhenren. On this day, someone from the neighbor's family returned from Yangzhou and brought a straw to the Xu family, and heard that Xu Zhenren had died.
He said, "Xu Zhenren is probably really an immortal." The day before yesterday he met me in Leitang, Yangzhou, where he was weaving straw on the side of the road and selling it to children to wear, and the size of the straw was exactly the size of the children's heads, and I laughed at him naughty again, and he saw me from afar and greeted me loudly and said, 'Do you want to go home?' You brought this grass to my brother. 'Is he really going to die?' Everyone looked at this grass fence carefully, and sure enough, out of Xu Zhenren's hand, they hurried to dig up Xu Zhenren's tomb to see what was going on, and the coffin opened, only to see that the clothes and hats were still there intact, but the corpse was missing, and the situation was as if they knew that they had shed their shells.
After a few years, when there was a great drought in the Suzhou area, Xu Zhenren's brother took out the grass dragon left by his brother and said to the townspeople: "We pray for this grass dragon, maybe there will be a spiritual experience." "They brought the grass dragon to the altar, prayed a little, and saw a steady stream of clouds coming out of the grass dragon's mouth, more and more, and in a moment the sky was full of thick clouds, and in an instant a timely rain fell from the sky, and the rain on the ground was three feet deep. The crowd was ecstatic and shouted, "Enough, enough! Just listening to a thunderbolt, the grass dragon suddenly took off into the air and flew away with the clouds.
References 《Night Rain Autumn Lights》