There was a man named Mao Ba(茅八) who, in his youth, went to Jiangxi to trade paper. In the deep mountains of Jiangxi, there were many paper mills. The people in the mills would close the doors as the sun set and warned Mao Ba not to go out, telling him, ‘There are many strange things in the mountains, not just ordinary tigers and wolves.’
One night, the moonlight was very bright, and Mao Ba couldn’t sleep.
Xu Yake(徐崖客), a man from Huzhou(湖州), was the son of a concubine. His father, misled by Yake’s stepmother, sought to put him to death. He fled and wandered the world. Every famous mountain, great river, deep cave, he endeavored to ascend, believing himself already doomed and therefore fearing nothing.
Once, while climbing Mount Yandang, Xu Yake couldn’t make it to the top. With nowhere to stay for the night, a monk nearby asked, “Do you enjoy traveling?”
During his tenure as the magistrate of Liangdang County(兩當縣) in Shaanxi(陝西), Tu Chiwen(屠赤文) had a cook named Zhang(張某) under his command. Zhang, a powerful and hearty eater, possessed immense strength and a robust stature but lacked his left ear. Tu Chiwen inquired about the cause of his missing ear, and Zhang recounted his experience.
“I hail from Sichuan(四川), where my family for three generations lived off hunting. We owned an extraordinary book passed down through generations, teaching hunters a peculiar skill: by catching a breeze and sniffing it, one could discern the approach of any wild beast.
