Immortals & Anomalies

Immortal Biographies and Strange Tales

This chapter brings together the Collected Biographies of Immortals, Biographies of Divine Transcendents, Extensive Records of the Taiping Era, Records of Myriad Things, Researches into Lost Records, and Sequel to In Search of the Supernatural. These works preserve immortal lore, occult arts, and local marvels while often retelling older motifs; the graph maps textual relationships without declaring every similar story a single historical event.

230 figures in this chapter, 63 of whom appear in both history and fiction.

Event · Late Han legendZuo Ci Eludes Cao CaoThe Biographies of Divine Transcendents tells how Cao Cao tried to seize Zuo Ci, who vanished among a flock of sheep. When every sheep knelt, the pursuers could no longer identify him, setting political power against an uncontrollable adept.

Not one unified register of immortals

The six works range from individual biographies and miscellanies to a vast classified anthology, and were compiled centuries apart. Figures with the same title may be variant forms of one tradition or entirely different characters. The site joins them only when names and occurrence evidence support the identification, and always retains the work and chapter citation.

When adepts meet historical rulers

Masters such as Zuo Ci and Li Shaojun appear alongside Cao Cao and Emperor Wu of Han, but supernatural feats in tale literature are not presented as official-history facts. Figure pages keep the records side by side, while line style and source labels preserve the boundary between historical writing and narratives of marvels.

Entering through Zuo Ci's escape from Cao Cao

The Biographies of Divine Transcendents tells how Cao Cao tried to seize Zuo Ci, who vanished among a flock of sheep until the pursuers could no longer identify him. The event page supplies a quotation that can be found verbatim in the local corpus; the graph then connects Zuo Ci to Ge Xuan, Cao Cao, and related later traditions.

Peng Zu’s age: three books, three numbers

How long Peng Zu lived depends on which book you open. The Han-era Biographies of Immortals says he “passed from the Xia to the end of the Yin, more than eight hundred years,” and makes him “grandson of Emperor Zhuanxu, middle son of the Luzhong lineage.” The Jin-era Biographies of Divine Immortals revises this to “by the end of the Yin, seven hundred and sixty years old and not yet aged,” and adds a long dialogue in which he teaches the adept Cai Nü. The Extensive Records of the Taiping Era (“Divine Immortals 2”) transcribes it once more, and the figure shifts again to “by the end of the Yin already seven hundred and sixty-seven years, and not aged,” while the lineage moves from grandson to “great-great-grandson of Emperor Zhuanxu.” Eight hundred, seven hundred sixty, seven hundred sixty-seven: the later the text, the more exact the number, and no better grounded. The Taiping anthology leaves its transcription visible: entries note where they came from, and the one just before this is marked “from Supplementary Traditions of the Immortals.” All three sit side by side on the figure’s page, and the site does not rule on which number is true.

One line in the history, a full chapter in the tale

The Records of the Grand Historian (“Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices”) disposes of Li Shaojun in a single line: “Li Shaojun fell ill and died. The Son of Heaven took it that he had transmuted and not died, and had Huang Chui and Shi Kuanshu receive his methods.” The man died; the emperor chose to believe he had transformed. Biographies of Divine Immortals expands that line into a chapter. Li Shaojun studies under Master Anqi, claims “I have been in the world more than five hundred years,” identifies one of Emperor Wu’s old bronze vessels with “Duke Huan of Qi once displayed this vessel at Boqin,” and offers himself at court: “your servant can congeal mercury into white silver and volatilize cinnabar into gold.” At the end, the illness the Records calls a death becomes “Shaojun pleaded illness,” followed by a memorial of withdrawal. One event; one book records a death, the other a departure.

Dual-identity figures

Compiled with AI assistance from public-domain texts, with every claim checked against its source. For cultural reference.