A long-term illness is nothing anybody wishes upon themselves or others. It is usual for people to get ill at the change of seasons or when they have been exposed to extreme conditions for too long. Usually, most common illnesses like a cold will pass quickly, and the symptoms are pretty evident.
Throughout history, there have been many accounts of long-term illnesses that could not be treated with any common form of remedy.
The following story illustrates a particular instance where a long-term illness was cured in the most unusual way imaginable. Whether fact or fiction, the truth often lies between the lines.
A mother’s long-term illness
There once was a mother who suffered from a strange illness in Qingshan. Even though a long time passed, she did not feel any better.
Everything seemed fine during the day. But at night, just as she thought she may have recovered, the symptoms would begin to appear again.
Even the finest medicine she could get had no effect. Eventually, a year passed with no difference in her state.
The lady did not know of the mysterious connection between her illness and a huge bird that landed on her roof every evening.
This is not a single occurrence. There have been more such apparent cases.
The hunter and a mother’s long-term illness
Li Chubin, a well-known hunter during the Tang Dynasty, had masterful hunting skills and hunted for a living. Whenever he went hunting, he always returned with a rich amount of game.
At the time, another man called Tong Yuanfan lived in Qingshan. A dreadful disease had plagued Tong’s mother for quite some time. In her case, too, she felt no symptoms of illness during the day. But when nightfall came, her peculiar condition began to reappear.
Whenever Tong’s mother felt pain, Tong would take out the medicine he had prepared to relieve her pain and give his mother some. But all his attempts seemed fruitless against the long-term illness.
As different as the two cases may seem, they share a single mystery. The following part of the accounts may shed some light on the strange illness that would leave a person well during the da,y but would reappear to its fullest extent at night.
An epiphany through a Taoist’s divination
One day, the Taoist Zhu Hand, good at divination with the Book of Changes, passed by Yuanfan’s home on his way to Jiangxi Yuzhang, another district near to where Tong and his mother lived. After learning of the peculiar situation that had befallen Tong’s mother, Zhu divined with yarrow sticks, looking for a way to resolve Tong’s mother’s strange long-term illness.
After the divination, Zhu told Tong: “You can dress neatly at 1:00 p.m. this afternoon and wait by the roadside for a passer-by holding a bow and arrows. If you ask him for help, your mother will be healed and understand the reason for her long-term illness.” After passing on the interpretation of his divination to Tong, Zhu left on his scheduled journey.
Tong didn’t hesitate and did as Zhu told him. Soon after, Tong saw a passer-by with a similar appearance to the one described by Zhu, the Daoist who did the divination for him.
It was the hunter Li Chubin. As usual, he was on his way to the forest, carrying his bow and arrows. Tong remembered the description the Daoist gave him. The description matched. “A passer-by holding a bow and arrows,” the Daoist’s voice echoed in Tong’s mind.
Tong quickly made a gesture for the hunter to stop. Tong told the hunter about his mother’s condition and asked him for help. The hunter agreed to render assistance and accompanied Tong to his mother’s home.
After nightfall, the moon seemed to shine incredibly bright as if it were daytime. As a hunter, whose eyes were accustomed to the night, he felt compelled to go outside to observe the moonlit night.
Following his habits, the hunter circled the premises. What happened next was a complete surprise. The hunter suddenly noticed a “gigantic bird” flying in a circle before ascending and landing on the rooftop of Tong’s house.
Shortly after it landed on the rooftop, it began picking and pecking the house with its beak. As the gigantic bird continued picking and pecking at the rooftop, painful screams came from inside the house.
Finally, the hunter yelled: “You are a bird of bad spirit!” He immediately drew his bow, shooting at the bird and piercing it with two arrows at once. The bird escaped, but it was injured. As the bird disappeared, the crying sounds inside the house also stopped abruptly.
Early the next day, while the first rays of sunlight warmed the earth, the hunter told Tong: “I got rid of your mother’s disease last night.”
I shot down a giant bird with two arrows. However, the bird flew off, injured and pierced by my two arrows. It can not have gotten far. So that we can ensure it never returns, let us look for it.
He took Tong to search all around the house carefully, but they found nothing. Later, just a short distance from Yuanfan and his mother’s home, they found an abandoned house. In the house, they found a wooden frame that used to hold a stone mural. Stuck in the wooden frame were two bloody arrows. The hunter and Tong couldn’t help but think of the big mysterious bird from the night before.
In the end, Tong dug a hole, tossed in the wooden frame, and burned it. And with that, he also eliminated a monster that endangered all of humankind.
After that, his mother recovered and never suffered from the mysterious long-term illness again.
Translated by Joseph Wu
Rewritten by Hermann Rohr
