When Li Yuanzuo was magistrate of Nancheng, he once took his family to visit Mount Magu. His sons were still young, and took with them the two serving boys who travelled in their company. Climbing to the Cloud-Level Pavilion, they saw butterflies fluttering over the mountain stream, and thought them delightful, and told the boys to catch some.
The boys went into the deep woodland and were a long while coming back, and did not answer when they were called. The matter was reported to Li; he sent runners to search the whole mountain; and after a good while the boys came out, saying only that they had lost their way, and would not explain further.
A month or more later, the young masters noticed the boys wearing new clothes, and often buying meat and wine to eat together. They grew suspicious, and fearing the boys had turned thieves, they had them bound and questioned.
Then the story came out.
“When we were catching butterflies,” the boys said, “we met a Taoist carrying his headscarf in his hand. He called us to where he lived. The buildings were splendid and the scenery pure beyond compare, not like the world of men. He told us to boil tea, and was about to give us drink — but before it was ready we heard your voices calling, urgent, and we ran home.”
He threw something after us. We picked it up and saw it was silver; and when we looked back, the man and the house had both vanished. We were secretly delighted and dared not speak of it. We sold the silver to a shop in the market — it weighed ten taels and fetched twenty-two strings — and left the money on deposit there, drawing on it for food and clothes as we needed.
The young masters did not believe it, and made inquiry at the shop: it was true.
Li Yuanzuo thought the silver must be an immortal’s, and so different from ordinary metal; he wanted to buy it back at the price that had been paid. The shopkeeper said a traveller had already bought it.
Later, inquiring among the Taoists of Immortal City, they all said: the one who carries his headscarf in his hand is the Ziyang real man Deng. Only then did they understand what the two boys had met.
That year was the guiyou year of Shaoxing; and in the bingzi year, Li handed over the county seal. The two boys disappeared one after the other, and no one ever learned where they went. One was the fortune-boy, surnamed Dai; the other the long-life boy, surnamed Fu. Both were men of Nankang.
