Liu 憳

Liu 憳, according to the "Yunji Qiqian - Shijie Bu", the background of this person is unknown. He was tall with a long beard and particularly long arms that stretched down to his knees, giving him a rather strange appearance. During the Jin Dynasty, people lived on Wudang Mountain for a long time and often treated the common people with medicine and magic, working tirelessly. Most of the medicines he used were self-collected. He was well-versed in the nature of the herbs and thoroughly understood their properties. Liu 憳 lived on Wudang mountain for a long time. Though he was not seen to have any cultivation, he had the ability to walk as fast as flying. Wudang Mountain is five hundred li away from Xiangyang. He often went there in the morning and returned in the evening, walking over a thousand li back and forth. At that time, Wudang Mountain was under the jurisdiction of Xiangyang Circuit. Xiangyang was then known as Yongzhou (established in the middle of the Taiyuan period of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, that is, in 386 AD). Liu Daocan, the governor of Yongzhou, was extremely jealous of Liu 憳 's long arms. So he captured liu 憳 in Xiangyang and sent him to Emperor Wen of Song (reigning from 424 to 453 AD) for punishment. After arriving in the capital, Emperor Wen ordered Yan Wei (the then Central Ministry of Justice) to handle it. As Liu 憳 had not committed any crime except for his strange appearance, Yan Wei imposed long-term imprisonment on him. But liu 憳 was indeed highly skilled in medicine and could discern medicinal stones. In order to achieve the purpose of both imprison and utilization, the prison would pull the prison cart carrying him to Jiangshan to gather medicinal herbs every day, and then put him back in prison at night. This went on for years. After a long time, liu 憳 told the prison guard who was watching over him, "I have two volumes of short books with me and can give them to you." The prison guards dared not accept it. Liu 憳 burned the book. That night, liu 憳 was nowhere to be found, and the heavy copper locks of the prison door remained intact. Later, the night watchman saw Liu 憳 at Yan Wei 's door and captured him and sent him to prison. The prison guard asked him why he had run away. He said, "The government killed me. Fortunately, there were no nails in the coffin, so I managed to escape." The prison guard, seeing that all he said were bizarre words, reported him truthfully. A few days later, liu 憳 was indeed killed by Emperor wen. A few days after Liu 憳 was killed, Emperor Wen suddenly remembered the strange words he had said and could not help but have doubts in his heart, so he ordered the coffin to be opened for an autopsy. Unexpectedly, there was no corpse in the coffin, only a bamboo staff. According to the records, there is a lower-level method called "Corpse Dissection" in the cultivation of immortals and Taoists. "Dissection of the body" refers to the process where, upon reaching a certain stage of cultivation, one needs to shed the "stinking skin" of the physical body, allowing the true body that belongs to the soul and can be manifested to exist freely. The method of use is to write the elixir talisman on the object belonging to the five elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth. According to the process of the skill, one of them is selected and buried in the coffin. Then, the body is shed and it disappears according to the attribute of the burial object (for example, a sword is metal and a bamboo and wood staff is wood). The method of corpse dissection is often seen in the cultivation of magic in the Shangqing and Zhengyi schools of Taoism. From this, it seems that Liu 憳 is still a member of the Shangqing School of Taoism. It's only because he keeps a low profile that no one can see his cultivation.