Prologue

The quiet mountains and forests are full of birds and flowers, and the cool temperature by the stream is also very comfortable.

On the mountain lies a Daoist temple, the plaque on the front gate proclaims Qingmeng.

This Daoist temple in Hubei was founded by a group of former Wudang sect members. They were originally part of the religious faction in Wudang but eventually moved out because of a disagreement in belief.

At the time a battle between the orthodox faction and the unorthodox faction had just finished, with a major victory for the orthodox faction, this led to a reshuffle of power among the different orthodox sects, and greed and desire slowly crept into the higher-ups of all of them, Shaolin, Emei, Gaibang, Huashan, Quanzhen and Wudang.

It was quite predictable actually, a sect is like a kingdom, there is a peace faction and a war faction. In the midst of war, the power goes mainly to the warring faction so that the organization does not lose, and when the war ends, the war faction doesn't just give up its power. In this case, while the excitement is still running strong, and a gap in power is caused by the downfall of the unorthodox faction, everyone wanted to take a piece of the pie.

But that was about two centuries ago, it matters not now. Everything sort of stabilized when a new faction came and became the public enemy, the Ming cult. Even the unorthodox sects started slowly reemerging, little by little as decades passed.

The Qingmeng temple is a small sect that mainly pursues the wuwei ideal of Daoism with supplementary teaching of martial arts, which in this case is the taiji quan of Wudang. The sect itself is relatively unknown in the wulin community, with the exception of the Wudang sect itself. The Qingmeng temple itself is pretty small, with a courtyard in the middle, living quarters for twenty to the right, a library and teaching facility to the left, a shrine with the statues of the three pure ones, and a farm behind the shrine.

A young man could be seen dozing off in the library, a book in his hand, the cover wrote Zhuangzi. This book is probably the most important piece of text in the temple as it was named after a story in it, it goes…

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly, he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly, there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

Many debates had occurred on the meaning behind this story, some believe the main point of the story was the butterfly itself, it was content with itself, simply joyful about its own existence, until Zhuangzi woke up. In this context, they believe that the butterfly represents the daoist ideal of self-content.

Others debate that the main point is that of the dream itself, the dream was joyful, it was vibrant, and beautiful but at the same time it ends all in a sudden, life in this context is the dream hazy and chaotic with no significant meaning, fluttering one moment and dead the other.

There are many other debates and opinions on the story of the butterfly dream, as each person may feel and perceive something different from this story. There probably was an original meaning to this story but it's lost through time as is Zhuangzi, now all that is left are the myriads of differing interpretations.

The founders of the Qingmeng temple may have a bit of differing opinions too but reached the consensus that they ran away from the Wudang sect in pursuit of peace and serenity. Thus the Qingmeng(clear dream) temple came to be, a place that they hope the people can find and live the butterfly dream they wanted.