Langmei Shrine

Langmei Shrine is located on the road from Wuya Ridge to the Golden Summit. It was built by imperial decree in the tenth year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty and was the largest of the sixteen shrines in the entire mountain at that time. The Langmei Shrine has a close connection with the legend of Emperor Zhenwu's cultivation. It is said that when the True Martial Emperor was practicing, due to his weak willpower, he returned halfway. On the way, he met the Purple Qi Yuan Jun who had transformed into an old woman and ground an iron rod into a needle to enlighten him. Emperor Zhenwu returned to the mountains to continue his cultivation. He broke off a plum branch and inserted it into a nut tree, saying, "If I achieve enlightenment, I will blossom and bear fruit." Later, he indeed succeeded in his cultivation, and the plum branches were successfully planted on the nut tree, blooming and bearing fruit. The Wudang Mountain Langmei fruit was highly renowned in the Ming Dynasty. Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica records: "Langmei only comes from Taihe Mountain in Junzhou." In the third year of the Yongle reign of the Ming Dynasty, Li Suxi, a Taoist priest from Wudang Mountain, presented plums and nuts to the imperial court and was generously bestowed by the emperor. A few years later, the emperor issued an edict to build this Langmei Shrine.