Roaming the sky as a carefree soul,
I met the Double Ninth Festival in late fall.
Dark clouds spread across the vast firmament,
Their nourishing rains ceaselessly feed all things.
Muddy from rain, I stayed behind my door,
When a neighbor's alchemy talk reached my ear.
"May I learn your art?" I ventured to ask,
He agreed with a word, no difficulty at all.
A few strange texts came into my hands,
I lit the lamp, reading through the night, unfinished.
At dawn, I finished reading early on,
Unaware, I fell into a drunken trance.
In the trance, I saw a thing appear,
Shaped like a sun-wheel, bright and abrupt.
It claimed to be the essence of cinnabar,
Fit to refine mortal substance in the cauldron.
Mortal substance cannot turn to truth by itself,
To turn to truth requires the truth within.
No need for lead, no need for mercury,
The returned elixir must be sown in the furnace.
The mystery within mystery is called true lead,
Yet when using lead, it is ultimately unused.
Sometimes named dragon, sometimes named tiger,
Or called the infant and the fair maiden.
One cinnabar pellet bears a thousand names,
Within one lies the mother of the elixir.
Fire, do not blaze; water, do not freeze,
Cultivate and refine it with utmost care.
Wait until the tiger roars, the peak is broken,
And the black dragon seizes the dark pearl to play.
The dragon swallowed the dark treasure and soared,
I caught the flying dragon and rode it.
With one ascent, I went to the azure vault,
The azure vault is vast, without east or west.
No dawn, no night, no year or month,
No cold, no heat, no four seasons.
Since I cultivated to the state of non-action,
I began to find it ever stranger and more wondrous.