Xu Xun

Xu Xun, styled Jingzhi, was a native of Nanchang during the Eastern Jin dynasty and served as magistrate of Jinyang County in Shu Commandery. Renowned for his upright governance and incorruptible administration, he earned deep gratitude from the people—hence his epithet Xu Jinyang. Later, he resigned his post to cultivate the Dao on Mount Xishan, where he studied under the master Wu Meng and received transmission of the Jingming (Pure Clarity) method. Legend holds that a malevolent jiaolong stirred chaos in Jiangxi’s rivers, causing devastating floods; Xu Xun led his disciples across lakes and rivers, cast iron pillars, slew the jiaolong, and sealed it within a well—thereby ending the inundations. The people of Jiangxi thus venerated him as their regional protector deity. It is said that upon attaining transcendence in the second year of the Ningkang era of the Eastern Jin (374 CE), Xu Xun ascended bodily into heaven together with forty-two family members; even his chickens and dogs rose with him—a phrase later proverbial for ‘when one person achieves immortality, even chickens and dogs ascend to heaven’. In the Song dynasty, he was posthumously enfeoffed as the Perfected Lord of Divine Merit and Miraculous Aid, and the Jingming Dao reveres him as its founding patriarch.