Yin Shih awoke in a fright, a cold sweat all over her body.  Having awakened her husband, she told him what she had dreamed.  At that moment she was seized with the pains of childbirth.  Li Ching withdrew to an adjoining room, uneasy at what seemed to be inauspicious omens.  A little later two servants ran to him, crying out:  “Your wife has given birth to a monstrous freak!”

An Avatar of the Intelligent Pearl

Li Ching seized his sword and went into his wife’s room, which he found filled with a red light exhaling a most extraordinary odour.  A ball of flesh was rolling on the floor like a wheel; with a blow of his sword he cut it open, and a babe emerged, surrounded by a halo of red light.  Its face was very white, a gold bracelet was on its right wrist, and it wore a pair of red silk trousers, from which proceeded rays of dazzling golden light.  The bracelet was ’the horizon of Heaven and earth,’ and the two precious objects belonged to the cave Chin-kuang Tung of T’ai-i Chen-jen, the priest who had bestowed them upon him when he appeared to his mother during her sleep.  The child itself was an avatar of Ling Chu-tzu, ‘the Intelligent Pearl.’

On the morrow T’ai-i Chen-jen returned and asked Li Ching’s permission to see the new-born babe.  “He shall be called No-cha,” he said, “and will become my disciple.”

A Precocious Youth

At seven years of age No-cha was already six feet in height.  One day he asked his mother if he might go for a walk outside the town.  His mother granted him permission on condition that he was accompanied by a servant.  She also counselled him not to remain too long outside the wall, lest his father should become anxious.

It was in the fifth moon:  the heat was excessive.  No-cha had not gone a li before he was in a profuse perspiration.  Some way ahead he saw a clump of trees, to which he hastened, and, settling himself in the shade, opened his coat, and breathed with relief the fresher air.  In front of him he saw a stream of limpid green water running between two rows of willows, gently agitated by the movement of the wind, and flowing round a rock.  The child ran to the banks of the stream, and said to his guardian:  “I am covered with perspiration, and will bathe from the rock.”  “Be quick,” said the servant; “if your father returns home before you he will be anxious.”  No-cha stripped himself, took his red silk trousers, several feet long, and dipped them in the water, intending to use them as a towel.  No sooner were the magic trousers immersed in the stream than the water began to boil, and Heaven and earth trembled.  The water of this river, the Chiu-wan Ho, ’Nine-bends River,’ which communicated with the Eastern Sea, turned completely red, and Lung Wang’s palace shook to its foundations.  The Dragon-king, surprised at seeing the walls of his crystal palace shaking, called his officers and