Chapter 507: How Can One Obtain the Drug of Deathlessness?

People of the time said: Within the Pass, the land's hundred and two rivers and mountains count Mount Taihua and Mount Zhongnan the finest. Hua's excellence lies in its perilousness; Zhongnan's excellence lies in its elegance. This mountain stands steep and graceful, like a painted screen of brocade, rising southwest of Xianyang, famed for its abundance of medicinal herbs, rare birds, and strange beasts.

After Qin unified all within the seas and the fangshi of the eastern lands entered Qin, Han Zhong, Scholar Hou, and others came to Mount Zhongnan to survey it. Upon returning, they reported to Qin Shi Huang that when Laozi journeyed west and reached Qin, he had consumed dew and cinnabar herbs here, thus attaining a lifespan of a hundred years. Medicinal ingredients were easy to find nearby, making it an excellent place to build an altar and concoct elixirs.

Qin Shi Huang was skeptical but still allocated funds for them to erect a "Platform of Ingesting Substances." Every year, large quantities of cinnabar were shipped from Ba and Shu for these fangshi to mess around with.

One day, Scholar Hou, leader of the "Summoning Beings Through Sacrificial Stoves" school, was inspecting the dew and medicinal herbs his disciples had gathered from Mount Zhongnan when he heard that a visitor had arrived…

Scholar Hou came out to look and saw a figure in a cyan robe, back turned, hair fully black. When the man turned around, Hou was startled to realize his face was not young — at least fifty or sixty.

Scholar Hou burst out laughing. "I wondered who it was. So it's Lord Lu."

The visitor was indeed one of the leaders of the "Overseas Immortal-Seeking" school, Lu Ao of Yan, who by his own account was nearing seventy.

Both men were outstanding among the fangshi. Though rivals, they were also well acquainted. Scholar Hou invited Lu Ao inside and poured him some home-brewed Zhongnan fruit wine to entertain him.

Once seated, Scholar Hou teased, "Lord Lu, instead of going to Jieshi to seek the immortals Xianmen and Gaoshi, or searching for Penglai and Fangzhang, why have you come to Mount Zhongnan? Isn't this going south when you mean to go north?"

Lu Ao took no offense and cupped his hands gracefully. "Lord Hou, do not mock me. We immortality-seeking fangshi have idled in Xianyang all these years, unused by His Majesty. Where would we find the coin and silk, the men and hands, to seek immortals overseas?"

He surveyed the cinnabar temple that Han Zhong and Scholar Hou occupied and smiled. "Yet it seems Lord Hou fares no better. Your halls and temple chambers have long gone without repair — they've bred termites."

"Lord Lu has sharp eyes."

Scholar Hou did not deny it. "In the second pillar to the left of the entrance, a few termites have indeed appeared."

Scholar Lu smiled. "More than that. I hear that recently you and Han Zhong submitted a memorial claiming you needed to gather rare herbs from the border barbarians — also rejected, was it not?"

The implication was clear: your Overseas Immortal-Seeking lot are doing poorly, and our Summoning Beings Through Sacrificial Stoves school is faring no better.

Scholar Hou's face stiffened. "Did Lord Lu come here today just to mock me?"

"How could I dare, how could I dare."

Scholar Lu grew solemn. "Lord Hou, though you and I differ on how to attain longevity, all paths lead to the same end. You should understand that I, Lu Ao, and indeed all fangshi who advocate His Majesty seek immortals overseas, are friends to you, not foes. And at present, we share a common enemy — the spirit-mediums of Guanxi!"

This was what galled Scholar Hou the most. Their fangshi tradition, refined over a hundred years, had formed a rigorous theoretical system.

They wrapped themselves in the ethereal, mysterious rhetoric of Laozi and Zhuangzi, and borrowed the Yin-Yang school's "Greater Nine Provinces" and "Five Phases" theories to perfect their craft, making people believe them. Over the past century, they had fooled many a king. The traditional spirit-mediums of Qi, Chu, and the Central Plains were no match for them at all.

Thus, when they first came to Xianyang, Scholar Hou and Lu Ao had not taken the Qin spirit-mediums seriously in the slightest, each viewing the other as the greatest rival.

Who could have foreseen that just as the fangshi were on the verge of persuading Qin Shi Huang to seek immortals and concoct elixirs, the shaman-child of the Chen Bao Shrine would step forward? That gap-toothed old fellow recited half the *Biography of King Mu*, told a few legends of the Queen Mother of the West's realm, and Qin Shi Huang was captivated.

In Scholar Hou's view, the shaman-child's words held no technical substance whatsoever — any random disciple of his could have spun a better tale. To lose to such a man was a deep disgrace to the fangshi!

Lu Ao, however, stroked his beard and said, "I too racked my brains over this, unable to grasp why we lost to the shaman-child. Only recently did I come to understand…"

Scholar Hou knew Lu Ao to be learned and astute. He bowed with clasped hands. "I beg Lord Lu to instruct me."

Lu Ao said, "Lord Hou surely knows that His Majesty is an impatient man. Whenever a fangshi presents a drug, if it fails to produce the claimed effect, he deems it dishonest deceit — and death follows!"

This was the sword hanging over the fangshi's heads. That was why Scholar Hou and the others kept making demands of Qin Shi Huang, claiming that concocting an immortality elixir required all manner of rare and exotic ingredients — some found only in distant barbarian lands, existing only in legend, impossible to procure in less than several years or a decade.

There was no other way. Only by exaggerating the difficulty of producing the immortality elixir could the fangshi buy time and avoid failing their task and losing their heads en masse.

Of course, Scholar Hou himself firmly believed that he could turn stone into gold and indeed concoct an immortality elixir.

"It merely requires some rare materials, and considerable time… I have heard that several thousand li to the south, there is a lingzhi fungus half a man's height. If it could be gathered and brought back, the elixir would surely succeed!"

This had become his clever ploy to fob off Qin Shi Huang.

Lu Ao, however, pointed out the folly of this approach. "You have been concocting elixirs for five years, yet you always make excuses and delay, producing no drug. A thing cannot happen more than three times. After several such occasions, His Majesty naturally grew disappointed, and the coin and silk sent here dwindled by the day."

Having exposed Scholar Hou's weakness, Lu Ao then exposed his own.

"The same goes for us immortality-seekers. Though it is said that beyond the sea lie the three divine mountains of Penglai, Fangzhang, and Yingzhou, atop which dwell immortals and exist drugs of deathlessness — that if a man seeks and consumes such a drug, he may live forever without dying — this claim was once believed by King Wei of Qi, King Xuan of Qi, and King Zhao of Yan. They sent fangshi into the sea to seek them, and all failed. His Majesty, naturally, is also skeptical."

Most critically, those three kings had not lived long, making them poor exemplars of success. The fangshi could only claim their "virtue" had been insufficient, which was why they could not find the immortal mountains.

The implication being: Your Majesty, your achievements surpass the Three Sovereigns and your virtue exceeds the Five Emperors. So long as your heart is sincere, you will surely reach the immortal mountains and win the immortals' favor.

Yet even so, apart from boasting that he had seen immortals at sea as a child and eaten dates as large as melons given by them — which was why at seventy his hair was still jet-black — Lu Ao could offer no further promise.

Seeing is believing, hearing is empty — that was where they were at a disadvantage. In this age, seamanship was too crude. Even when fangshi put to sea, they only circled within sight of shore, lacking the ability to discover new continents.

"But the realm of the Queen Mother of the West spoken of by the shaman-child is different. The legend of the Kunlun Ruins is even older than that of the immortal mountains overseas. It is just as elusive and hard to trace as Penglai. Yet, alas, it is widely told that King Mu of Zhou met the Queen Mother of the West and received her bestowed immortal drug, living a long life of a hundred years."

Overseas immortal-seeking had no success story; the other side had one. The fangshi had already lost the first point.

"Furthermore, His Majesty's policy of western expansion has continued for over four years. Whether it was the Shuofang lands seized the year before last, the campaign against the Yuezhi of Hexi this year, the reports sent back by envoys from Wusun and Loulan, or the strange products brought back by merchants from the Western Regions…"

"Over these four years, almost every few months, His Majesty hears of something new. This makes him feel that the western matters recorded in the *Biography of King Mu* are substantive, and thus he believes the search for the Queen Mother of the West's realm is proceeding in an orderly fashion…"

The fangshi could produce nothing tangible, only knowing how to stall and fob him off, endlessly demanding this and that. Yet the process of seeking the Queen Mother of the West's realm was accompanied by territorial expansion, military victories, and barbarian chieftains coming to court — all of which delighted the emperor. Coupled with the constant stream of feedback, seeking immortals in the west seemed more and more credible.

"This is the reason they prevail, and we are defeated!"

After Lu Ao's analysis, Scholar Hou was drenched in sweat. So what truly caused their defeat was not the quality of their rhetoric, but the entire chain of events that followed.

He racked his brains. There was absolutely no way their side could provide the emperor with so much promise and satisfaction. His face turned ashen. "What is to be done?"

If the emperor lost faith in them, there would be no more coin and silk invested. The immortality elixir that Scholar Hou believed in without doubt would never be concocted, and his dream of bringing longevity to himself and his family would become empty talk.

Lu Ao urged, "At this juncture, the two schools of fangshi will live if united, and die if divided!"

Scholar Hou rose from his seat. "How do we unite?"

Lu Ao said, "First, we must merge the tenets of the two schools. We shall say: by making offerings at the stove, beings are summoned; by summoning beings, cinnabar can be transmuted into gold; when gold is made into eating and drinking vessels, longevity is increased; with increased longevity, the immortals of Penglai in the sea become visible; when they are seen and one's merit and virtue suffice, one is bestowed immortal drugs; those immortal drugs are then refined in vessels and processed — only then can they be consumed to achieve deathlessness…"

This way, they could take ordinary gold vessels, falsely claim they were refined from stone and cinnabar, and perform a few small tricks to deceive the eye — thus fooling onlookers and letting the emperor see that the fangshi had finally produced some results.

At the same time, they needed to vouch for each other, tightly intertwining the theories of the two schools. The elixir-concocting faction would need the immortal-seeking faction, and the immortal-seeking faction would need the elixir-concocting faction.

Lu Ao would also continue to flesh out the eastern legends — the Fusang Tree, the Valley of Boiling Water, the Kunpeng — and even fabricate some apocryphal texts…

"We can have someone skilled in rhetoric imitate ancient bronze script and seal script to write a *Classic of Pengzu*, casting Pengzu as the first of the fangshi, who lived from the time of Yao and Shun to the Yin-Shang dynasty by ingesting substances and concocting elixirs, only ascending to immortality at eight hundred years of age!"

Scholar Hou clapped his hands. "Excellent! I shall go write it myself at once!"

There was one more thing Lu Ao did not say aloud: beyond this, they could also fabricate some ambiguous prophetic-apocryphal sayings to confuse and mislead…

After their discussion, he further encouraged Scholar Hou. "These books and rumors must be compiled quickly, because this year is likely our best — and last — chance to persuade His Majesty!"

Scholar Hou, also well-informed, lowered his voice. "Could it be…"

Lu Ao nodded. "Yes. Word has come that in the south, Qiongdu has already surrendered, and in the west, the Yuezhi have been swept away and destroyed by Li Xin. The captives from both regions will be escorted back to Xianyang and presented to His Majesty in three days."

"With both west and south pacified, His Majesty will have added more glorious achievements to boast of. Once the prisoner presentation concludes, the eastern inspection tour will begin!"

Heaven have mercy — because of Heifu, the First Emperor of Qin cancelled his twenty-eighth-year eastern inspection tour and concentrated his efforts on dealing with the Xiongnu and the Yuezhi first. The fangshi and Confucian scholars took turns urging him for years, talking until their lips were worn thin, and now this long-delayed journey is finally about to begin!

"Though the eastern tour's itinerary is unknown, His Majesty will certainly go first to Mount Tai to perform the Feng and Shan sacrifices, and then tour the coast. Jiaodong and Langya are places he will definitely want to see."

Over the years, every time Lu Ao was summoned by the First Emperor, he would always, intentionally or not, speak of what he had seen and experienced by the sea. This greatly intrigued the First Emperor, who had never seen the ocean, and he had been making arrangements to go and see it ever since.

Or perhaps this also indirectly led to the First Emperor attaching exceptional importance to Jiaodong, sending Heifu there to govern the commandery?

Lu Ao rather regretted that matter, but now, no matter who was there, they could only steel themselves and press on. He added:

"I have also contacted two others, both fangshi from the Qi region, waiting in Linzi and Langya respectively. These two men will endorse our proposal and together we shall persuade His Majesty!"

Scholar Hou could more or less guess. "One is Xu Shi of Langya. Who is the other?"

Lu Ao smiled mysteriously. "You will know when the time comes. Of the three hundred men under heaven who refine elixirs and observe stellar vapours, we must join forces this time to drive this matter through and accomplish our goal in this single undertaking!"

Scholar Hou nodded. "I will certainly seize the opportunity to request that His Majesty allow me to accompany him. I imagine that when His Majesty sees the vast, misty expanse of the ocean, a yearning will arise in his heart. To present our counsel on Zhifu Island, before the Eight Divine Masters, would yield twice the result with half the effort!"

"That is as it should be. However…"

Lu Ao's face showed difficulty. "Our greatest opportunity lies in Jiaodong — and our greatest obstacle also lies in Jiaodong!"

Scholar Hou focused his gaze. "What Lord Lu speaks of, could it be…"

He dipped his finger in wine and wrote a single character on the table: "Dog"!

(End of chapter)