| | Li Gen, courtesy name Ziyuan, was a native of Xuchang. There was a man named Zhao Jia, who had heard from his father and grandfather about the family legend of meeting Gen. Since he was a child, Jia had always followed Gen's affairs, and when Jia reached eighty-four years old, Gen remained young without showing signs of aging. In the past, at the home of Wu Taizhang in Shouchun, Taizhang followed him to study the Dao and learned the method for making gold and silver, which could be accomplished immediately. Gen was able to transform and enter water or fire without harm. He could summon a traveling kitchen while seated, which provided food for twenty people—all of them delicacies and rare items from all directions that were not found locally. He suddenly told Taizhang, "The King's tomb will be destroyed, Shouchun will fall, and it will no longer be safe to live among the troops. You should leave quickly with me." The people then sent men to arrest Gen and intended to kill him. At that time, Gen was just about to write a letter when suddenly he heard more than a thousand people outside surrounding his home in search of him. He told Taizhang's father, "Hastily tell them I don't know anything; the officials will come and search themselves. He has already left yesterday." Taizhang went out of the house and looked back, only to find that Gen had vanished. All his books and belongings were also gone. The soldiers then entered to search thoroughly—every jar, every piece of clothing, every chest was checked—but they could not find Gen. After a long time, Taizhang came out and saw Gen still sitting in the original place, looking exactly as before. Gen told Taizhang, "The Duke Wang Taiwei will be executed along with his entire clan. Your younger brother revealed this secret and will die within ten days." All events indeed came to pass as he had said. One of Gen's disciples gave his daughter to Gen in marriage. This woman was well-versed in literature. When Gen went out, she secretly looked through a scroll of plain writing he had left behind and read it, discovering that it contained Gen's own explanations of the Daoist scriptures. He studied the Dao with a certain person named Moujia during the Yuanfeng period of the Han dynasty, and at that time it was calculated that Gen had already lived for more than seven hundred years. Taizhang also said that both of Gen's pupils were square in shape. According to the Daoist scriptures, the pupils of an eight-hundred-year-old person are square. Gen told his disciples, "I have not obtained the secret of the divine elixir and the great Dao; I have only acquired the method of earthly immortality. My lifespan will last as long as heaven and earth, yet I am still not a being of the lower realms."
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