Luya Daoren

Luya Daoren belonged neither to the Chan nor to the Jie Sect nor to the gate of the West. He wandered the five peaks and came and went as he pleased, and men called him a wandering immortal. When Zhao Gongming had bound Jiang Shang with the dragon-binding cord and struck him senseless with the Sea-Stilling Pearls, he came out of the clouds along a rainbow, walked straight into the Western Qi camp, and asked to see him.

The candles wavered in the tent as Luya took out a roll of plain silk on which the method of the seven arrows of nails was written, and told Jiang Shang to set up an altar accordingly: a straw figure of Zhao Gongming was to stand on it with his birth date and name written on it, incense was to be burned and obeisance made day and night, and arrows shot over seven days, first into both eyes and then into the heart, for a term of twenty-one days.

Jiang Shang did as he was told, and the camp bowed before the altar at the appointed hours each day while the figure took on a faint light. Far away on Three Immortals Isle, Zhao Gongming knew nothing of it; he grew weaker and more confused day by day and could find no cause for it.

On the twenty-first day the last arrow went into the figure’s heart, and Zhao Gongming stopped breathing at once and died on Three Immortals Isle. When word spread and the three immortal ladies heard that their brother was dead, they set out the Nine-Bend Yellow River Formation in their grief and fury to avenge him, and Jiang Shang was caught deep inside it and nearly killed.

Luya carried a purple gourd holding a treasure that had brows and eyes and understanding of its own, called the Immortal-Slaying Flying Blade. Facing a strong enemy he would lift the lid and say quietly, “Treasure, turn about,” and a white light would leap out to take the enemy’s head and then return into the gourd by itself.

Before Jinji Ridge, Kong Xuan held the strong ground and challenged, the five-coloured divine light showing about him, and whatever was made of metal, wood, water, fire or earth vanished the moment it entered it. Luya came at the news, lifted the lid and loosed the flying blade; it had barely closed with him when the five-coloured light caught it and drove it back, and Luya, with nothing else to try, took the treasure in, turned into a rainbow and left, unable to break the formation.

Afterwards, whenever the armies stood locked and the Chan disciples were checked, Luya would appear at the lines to help and vanish as suddenly when it was done, never staying in one place, and nobody could ever predict his coming or going.

When Shang had been destroyed and Jiang Shang unrolled the Investiture List at the terrace to enfeoff the loyal dead in order, Luya, being of none of the three teachings, was not on the roll; when the war had quieted he went, as he had come, riding a green rainbow away to nobody knows where.