Chapter 7 Chitose, the fifth wise man in the poultry department

October 29, 2008 at 22:42 Out of admiration for the gods and curiosity about the upcoming events, the emperors awarded staffs decorated with doves and birds to the elderly over one hundred years old, and hired them to serve as advisors to the empire.The emperors hoped that the elderly would be like long-lived and wise doves, providing predictions and guarantees for the policies of the empire. The dove is a symbol of longevity and prediction.Most of these birds can live to be over a hundred years old.For the first half of their lives, they feed on insects.For the next twenty-five years, they switch to eating the tree's most delicate foliage.They have since switched to naturally fallen leaves and only eat for three months of the year after late autumn.In another ten years, they will no longer feed on anything tangible, but absorb the dark red sun's rays twice a day at dawn and dusk.Pigeons over a hundred years old don't even need to do this activity, they don't need to eat anything, they just quietly watch the changes of time.

The eldest of all dove birds is their king.Because life is too long, it has insight into the ins and outs of everything in the world, and can infer the future development of the world based on this.Dove King only appears during dynastic transitions.It appeared before the turmoil and told its people about the upcoming changes in the human world and how to avoid the chaos.Naturalists know very little about this dove king, and there are only records about it in "Shen Yi Jing".The author Dongfang Shuo said that King Jiu was the servant and messenger of the Eastern Prince, and he once chatted with her at the banquet hosted by the Queen Mother of the West for the Eastern Prince.Dongfang Shuo also wrote down the name of King Jiu: Qian Xituan.

Although King Jiu's indescribable prophecy ability cannot be used by humans, people have found a substitute.The wizards noticed that, as another long-lived animal, the tortoise also carried the spiritual seeds of prophecy.Gao Zuyi, the first great priest in Chinese history and the founder of the Shang Dynasty, discovered that tortoises will gradually become lighter after they are over 300 years old.After living to be five hundred years old, it is so light that it can easily crawl on the petals of peach blossoms.Turtles with a lifespan of more than a thousand years have blue serrations on the edges of their shells.Kill such a turtle to take its shell, and after praying, burning and other procedures, a prophecy made up of black cracks will appear on the shell for human reference.The older the turtle, the more accurate its predictions.

Since then, people have begun to abuse this divination method, killing a large number of light-bodied turtles with blue serrated edges.The demand for elderly tortoises has gradually expanded from sacrificial activities to other fields.In the end, the nobles even demanded that the turtle meat used in the banquet must come from turtles over a thousand years old.After about four hundred years in this way, people found that they could no longer find suitable turtles. New ways of prophecy continued to be invented.Ren Fang mentioned in the book "Shu Yi Ji" that swallows will grow beards when they are over 500 years old.The swallow, which is more than a thousand years old, sings like a baby and turns the door of its nest to the north.The thousand-year-old bird's nest became the next target of mankind.

There are also some animals who are good at prophecy and ask to provide services to humans.Unfortunately, they never survived long enough, so predictions were always simpler and less accurate.Xu Shen said in "Shuowen Jiezi" that magpies can provide human beings with some meteorological guidance. "Huainanzi? Wanbishu" claims that the orangutan can call out the name of any person in front of him.Rats live slightly longer, so they do slightly better.If it can live to be a hundred years old, its whiskers will turn white, which can help humans do some predictive work.But even so, they can only tell the good or bad of things within a year.