Zuo Ci 左慈

In Chapter 68 of the Romance, when the palace of the King of Wei is completed in the 10th month of winter, Cao Cao has rare flowers and precious fruits gathered from everywhere, and Sun Quan picks more than forty loads of large tangerines and sends them to Ye Commandery. While the exhausted porters are resting at the foot of a hill, a master appears who is blind in one eye and lame in one leg, wearing a white rattan cap and a loose blue robe; he carries each load for five li in their place, and all the loads become light. As he leaves, he tells the officer in charge of the tangerines that he is Zuo Ci, an old friend from the same home district as the King of Wei, with the courtesy name Yuanfang and the Daoist name Master Black Horn, and asks him to say, when he reaches Ye Commandery, that Zuo Ci sends his regards. Romance, Ch. 68 §32–33

At Ye Commandery the tangerines Cao Cao splits open himself are nothing but empty rinds, but those split by Zuo Ci, who has come calling, are full of sweet flesh. Zuo Ci, who drinks five dou of wine without getting drunk and eats a whole sheep without being sated, says that after studying the Way for thirty years on Mount Emei in Jialing in Xichuan he found inside a rock face shattered by thunder the three volumes of the Heavenly Book of Dunjia: Heavenly Escape, Earthly Escape and Human Escape. He then tells Cao Cao that if he steps down and goes with him to Mount Emei to cultivate himself, he will pass on the heavenly books, and when Cao Cao says he has no one to entrust the court to, Zuo Ci says that unless he yields his position to Liu Xuande of Yi Province, he will send a flying sword to take his head. Romance, Ch. 68 §34–37

Calling him Liu Bei's spy, Cao Cao has a dozen or so jailers torture him, but Zuo Ci snores in a deep sleep and shows no sign of pain. Though he is put in a heavy cangue fixed with iron nails, locked with iron chains and imprisoned, the cangue and chains all fall away, and though he is given nothing to eat or drink for seven days, his face only grows ruddier. Zuo Ci says that he can go without food for decades and can also eat a thousand sheep in a day, and Cao Cao can do nothing with him. Romance, Ch. 68 §37–39

Appearing in wooden clogs at a great banquet where the officials have gathered at the palace, Zuo Ci takes a dragon's liver from the belly of a dragon painted on a white wall, sprays water on a flowerpot to bring forth two peony blossoms, catches four-gilled perch of the Song River from the pond below the hall, and fills a gold basin covered with his robe with purple-sprouted ginger. In the basin appears a copy of the New Book of Mengde without a single character wrong. Zuo Ci splits the wine in a cup into two halves with a jade hairpin, drinks one half and offers the other to Cao Cao; when Cao Cao rebukes him, he flings the cup into the air and turns it into a white dove, and while the officials are gazing at it, he walks out of the palace gate. Romance, Ch. 68 §40–45

On Cao Cao's orders Xu Chu pursues him with three hundred armored troops but cannot overtake Zuo Ci, who strolls along in his wooden clogs. When arrows are shot at Zuo Ci after he walks into a flock of sheep, he vanishes, and after Xu Chu kills the whole flock and goes back, Zuo Ci fits the dead sheep back together, brings them to life and returns them to the shepherd boy. Cao Cao has his portrait drawn and orders his arrest everywhere; within three days three or four hundred masters who look exactly the same are brought in, and Cao Cao has them doused with the blood of pigs and sheep, surrounds them himself with five hundred armed soldiers at the drill ground south of the city, and has every one of them beheaded. Romance, Ch. 68 §45–49

Thereupon a wisp of blue vapor rises from each man's neck and gathers in the sky into a single Zuo Ci, who summons a white crane, mounts it and, clapping his hands, laughs: 'The earth rat follows the metal tiger; the treacherous hero will end in a single morning!' When Cao Cao has arrows shot at him, a violent wind rises and the beheaded corpses, holding up their own heads, rush to attack Cao Cao. In Chapter 69 Cao Cao, having collapsed to the ground in shock, falls ill, and medicine does not cure him. Romance, Ch. 68 §49Romance, Ch. 69 §1–2