Nanhua Laoxian 南華老仙

Chapter 1 of the Romance records that the Ten Regular Attendants formed a clique and committed every kind of wickedness, that the government of the state grew worse day by day, and that the hearts of the people of the realm longed for disorder and bandits rose like swarms of bees, and then introduces three brothers of Julu Commandery, Zhang Jue, Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang. Zhang Jue was originally a scholar who had failed the examinations, and going into the mountains to gather herbs, he meets an old man with green eyes and a child's face who carries a staff of goosefoot. Romance, Ch. 1 §6–7

The old man calls Zhang Jue into a cave and gives him three volumes of a heavenly book, telling him that this book is the 'Essential Arts of Great Peace', that having obtained it he should spread the teaching on Heaven's behalf and save the people of the world far and wide, but that if he harbors any other intent, he will surely be punished. When Zhang Jue bows and asks his name, the old man says that he is Nanhua Laoxian, and as soon as he has finished speaking, he departs as a gust of pure breeze. Romance, Ch. 1 §7–8

Having obtained the book, Zhang Jue studies it day and night until he can summon wind and rain, and he is called the 'Daoist of Great Peace'. When a pestilence spreads widely in the 1st month of the 1st year of Zhongping (184), he hands out water in which talismans have been burned to cure the sick and styles himself the 'Great Worthy and Good Teacher', and his more than five hundred disciples all roam in all directions, writing talismans and chanting spells. As his following grows day by day, Zhang Jue sets up thirty-six 'fang' (districts) and spreads the false saying that the Blue Heaven is already dead and the Yellow Heaven shall arise. In the Romance, Nanhua Laoxian's name appears only in this one passage of Chapter 1. Romance, Ch. 1 §8–9