Zhang Ningren(張寧人) said that the elderly man next door likes to smoke. He holds a bamboo pipe that is more than five feet long and has been using it for over thirty years.
One day, a Daoist priest walked by the door, saw the smoking pipe in the old man’s hand, and said to him, ‘This thing has absorbed human essence for a long time and has become a Smoke Dragon.
The god of Mount Taibai(太白山神) in central Qin is considered the most efficacious. At the summit of Mount Taibai, there are three ponds known as the Big Taibai, Middle Taibai, and Three Taibai. If leaves, weeds, or mud fall into these ponds, flocks of birds will come and carry away these impurities. Therefore, the local people refer to these birds as the ‘Pond-cleaning Birds(淨池鳥).’
Once, a carpenter accidentally fell into the Taibai Pond and discovered another world beneath its surface.
In Jingxiang, there is a temple nestled close to mountains and water, where a dragon resides. This dragon often stirs up storms, damaging trees. Within the temple, there is an old man named Zhang who strikes the bell; he is a sorcerer, unknown to the monks. Zhang detests the havoc caused by this dragon and desires to capture and kill it, secretly performing magic.
The dragon, aware of this, transforms into a human and secretly informs one of the monks, saying, ‘I am a dragon, living in these waters for many years.
