During the Chenghua era, a huge boulder on Mount Yangong split open, and a disheveled Daoist crawled out.
No one knew where he came from.
He couldn't explain it himself, either. He only remembered that Yu the Great had used him to suppress a flood, that the Fifth Patriarch, Hongren, had chanted scriptures over his head, and that a mad alchemist had burned him for three hundred years.
His name was Qi Wuhe, also known as the Stone Daoist, and he called himself Wuhe.
He could drink, fight, and subdue demons. With a staff made from mountain rock, a battered gourd, and a golden hairpin, he wandered the mortal world.
The Crimson Serpent Daoist called him a demon. Taibai Jinxing called him an immortal. The City God said he was beyond his jurisdiction. The common folk called him the Mad Daoist.
