s in the rocks, he called himself the Mountain Guest or the
Guest of the Rocks. He lived on air and ate no bread. Yet he was fond
of flowers. And in the course of time he acquired the hidden wisdom.

In Lo Yang, the capital city, the peonies bloomed with special
luxuriance. And there dwelt a flower fairy, who changed herself into a
lovely maiden with whom Guest of the Rocks, when he came to Lo Yang,
was wont to converse. Suddenly along came the Yellow Dragon, who had
taken the form of a handsome youth. He mocked the flower fairy. Guest
of the Rocks grew furious and cast his flying sword at him, cutting
off his head. From that time onward he fell back again into the world
of mundane pleasure and death. He sank down into the dust of the
diurnal, and was no longer able to wing his way to the upper regions.
Later he met Dschung Li Kuan, who delivered him, and then he was taken
up in the ranks of the Immortals.

Willowelf was his disciple. This was an old willow-tree which had
drawn into itself the most ethereal powers of the sunrays and the
moonbeams, and had thus been able to assume the shape of a human
being. His face is blue and he has red hair. Guest of the Rocks
received him as a disciple. Emperors and kings of future times honor
Guest of the Rocks as the ancestor and master of the pure sun. The
people call him Grandfather Lu. He is very wise and powerful. And
therefore the people still stream into Grandfather Lu's temples to
obtain oracles and pray for good luck. If you want to know whether you
will be successful or not in an undertaking, go to the temple, light
incense and bow your head to earth. On the altar is a bamboo goblet,
in which are some dozens of little lottery sticks. You must shake them
while kneeling, until one of the sticks flies out. On the
lottery-stick is inscribed a number. This number must then be looked
up in the Book of Oracles, where it is accompanied by a four-line
stanza. It is said that fortune and misfortune, strange to think,
occur to one just as foretold by the oracle.

The fourth Immortal is Tsau Guo Gui (Tsau the Uncle of the State). He
was the younger brother of the Empress Tsau, who for a time ruled the
land. For this reason he was called the Uncle of the State. From his
earliest youth he had been a lover of the hidden wisdom. Riches and
honors were no more to him than dust. It was Dschung Li Kuan who aided
him to become immortal.

The fifth is called Lan Tsai Ho. Nothing is known