Continued Biographies of Immortals 续仙传
Paul PengContinued Biographies of Immortals
Compiled by Shen Fen, magistrate of Lishui County in the Southern Tang state during the Five Dynasties.
It was already recorded in the Chongwen Zongmu (Comprehensive Bibliography of the Chongwen Academy) of the Northern Song Dynasty.
Continued Biographies of Immortals
The original work has three volumes, included in the Biographical Category of the The Dongzhen Section in The Daozang.Its text is also excerpted in Scroll 113 of the Seven Bamboo Slips of the Cloudy Satchel. The book mainly records the deeds of Taoist priests from the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties who attained immortality through cultivation.
The first volume contains sixteen figures who ascended to immortality, including Xuan Zhenzi (Zhang Zhihe), Lan Caihe, Xie Ziran, and Qi Xiaoyao.
The middle and last volumes record twenty practitioners who attained transcendence in seclusion, among them renowned Taoists such as Sun Simiao, Zhang Guo, Sima Chengzhen, Lüqiu Fangyuan, and Nie Shidao.
Although the stories and accounts in the book inevitably contain legendary and exaggerated elements, they are not entirely groundless fiction.
