During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, there was an imperial nobleman named Li Qiwu who served as the Yin of Henan. This official position was the chief executive of Henan County, which not only matched his identity very well, but also li Qiwu's true talent.
Li Qiwu promoted benevolent government in Henan Yin,served well, and did not have the arrogance of the imperial family and nobles, but had the dusty demeanor of a high-ranking person and a gentleman, and recommended meritocracy, which had a good reputation in the folk.
Unfortunately, Li Qiwu befriended Li Shizhi, the right minister at the time. Li Shizhi was falsely accused and degraded by Li Linfu, and Li Qiwu was also implicated.
Fortunately, he was a relative of the imperial family, and with a good official reputation, he was only demoted to the position of Jinling Taishou, which is now the Qianjiang area of Hubei Province.
Li Qiwu was depressed and unhappy when he took up his post at Jingling, and although he was full of sorrow and indignation, he still handled official affairs conscientiously, and the governance of the Area around Jinling was quickly improved.
Three months after his arrival, the local gentry came to Li Qiwu several times to report that the land in the South Gate City Tower had been deserted for a long time, and the people intended to build a ancestral shrine there, and asked Taishou to be the master.
Li Qiwu originally attached great importance to public opinion, and naturally had no reason to refuse, and approved this application very happily.
On this day, Li Qiwu sat idly in the Taishou official residence and read a book, and then remembered his unfair encounters, and even sighed for a long time, and could not read a word.
Suddenly, the door came to report that white smoke had risen from the upper floor of the South City Gate, and the strange thing was that the white smoke was still written in the sky, "If the history of thorns is not changed, it will die", and it refused to disperse for a long time.
Li Qiwu was complaining about himself, full of resentment and had nowhere to vent, but when he got this report, he was immediately furious and said loudly: The eldest husband is worthy of heaven, down is not ashamed of the people, what is there to be afraid of? Even if I were a god, it wouldn't make me change my existing decisions.
Therefore, Li Qiwu immediately ordered the left and right to immediately look for the source of the white smoke, and as soon as he found it, he would dig it immediately. It is also said that most of the white smoke coming out of the ground is the work of white snakes, and let everyone not be sloppy.
Soon, everyone determined where the white smoke came out, just under the stairs of the city tower. Li Qiwu personally came to the scene, dispatched a small group of soldiers, and at the sound of an order, he began to dig up.
After digging down for a mile or so, the small hole with white smoke gradually became larger, and finally it became a cave the size of a bucket, and it was not known how deep it was, but the more it was dug in, the bigger it became, and some soldiers began to be afraid.
Li Qiwu personally went down to the cave to check it out, sniffed carefully with his nose for a while, said that there must be a big snake inside, turned his head and ordered everyone to come out quietly.
After reaching the ground, Li Qiwu immediately ordered his subordinates to find ten large iron pots, each filled with tung oil, and burned them under fire.
At the same time, people were also arranged to stare at the mouth of the cave, about an hour or so, and sure enough, there was a white snake probing the brain at the bottom of the cave.
When I got the news, the tung oil in the ten iron pots had already boiled away, and Li Qiwu let everyone carry it and pour it into the hole.
I could only hear the bottom of the cave overturning the river and the sea, and at the same time screaming like muffled thunder, and even the city walls were shaking.
The tung oil of the ten iron pots was poured out, but there was not much to see at the bottom of the pit, but the screams in the depths of the cave continued continuously, and it lasted for almost a whole day before it gradually stopped, and finally returned to silence.
The next afternoon, Li Qiwu led people to the mouth of the cave to take a look, and there was a large white snake exposed at the bottom of the pit, with a body almost the thickness of a bucket, his stomach turned to the sky, and his whole body was burned with boiled tung oil, and he was already too dead to die.
Therefore, Li Qiwu ordered the people to go down with a knife, cut the dead snake into pieces, and then fill it with a mixture of quicklime and loess.
Since then, nothing strange has happened in the Jingling area, and Li Qiwu has not received any retribution.
On the contrary, a few years later, as the Anshi Rebellion drew to a close, Li Qiwu was also promoted, leaving Jingling to serve as fengxiang jiedushi, and finally jing zhaoyin.
The White Snake warned Li Qiwu with the practice of emitting white smoke, originally intending to scare him back to his life and not to excavate the area around the South City Tower and disturb his cultivation.
Unexpectedly, when he encountered Li Qiwu's hard stubble, not only did he not believe in ghosts and gods, but instead inspired his determination to fight and swept the cave and ploughed the court to destroy the white snake. This result may not have been expected by the White Snake.