Outside the Tianyi Zhenqing Palace of the Nan Yan Palace

In Nan Yan, the most renowned building is a stone hall called "Tianyi Zhenqing Palace". Legend has it that after Emperor Zhenwu ascended to heaven through his cultivation, his residence in the heavens was called "Tianyi Zhenqing Palace". Obviously, this stone hall was built by the believers on earth for Emperor Xuanwu. Tianyi Zhenqing Palace is an unparalleled masterpiece among ancient Chinese architecture. It is a wooden structure imitation. Large components such as beams, columns, lintels, doors and Windows, as well as small ones like dougong brackets and mortise and tenon ornaments, are all carved from bluestone into components and then assembled with mortise and tenon joints. The entire stone hall is precisely designed with exquisite carvings and is built on a cliff. The scale of the project and the difficulty are beyond people's imagination. It is a large-scale stone carving art treasure of our country. Tianyi Zhenqing Palace was first built in the 23rd year of the Zhiyuan era of the Yuan Dynasty and took more than twenty years to complete. Its builder was Zhang Shouqing, a renowned Taoist priest of Wudang. At the age of thirty, Zhang Shouqing entered Wudang Mountain and led several thousand disciples to cultivate fields and dig out cliffs and valleys, leaving behind this unique "wonder of the world" that stands out among Wudang for future generations.