Dragon Subduing Arhat teapot, 170cc

It is said that during the Xuanhe period of the Northern Song Dynasty, an unusual phenomenon suddenly occurred in Tai Lake. At midnight on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, a torrential rain poured down like a river in the sky, causing a ten-foot-long storm to sweep through the 800-mile-long Dongting Lake. When the veteran potter Chen SAN was running towards the kiln with a tung oil lamp, he suddenly saw a huge shadow of green scales floating at the junction of the water and the sky. The dragon's body, which wound a hundred feet long, was wrapped with a half-broken chain.

The inscription "Edict of Yu the Great" on the copper ring flickered in the lightning.

In front of the Land temple in the south of Yixing City, a wandering monk who had fainted

under the incense table suddenly opened his eyes. A tattered palm-leaf fan wiped his forehead, revealing golden and red Dharma marks beneath the dirt. The tattered monk's robe puffed out without the wind, revealing the eighteen lapis lazuli beads strung together on his chest that were subduing demons. Outside the temple came the cries of the common people, saying that the dragon chain had been broken for a thousand years and that this dragon was going to flood the three states to vent its anger.

Amitabha Buddha. The monk parted the wine gourd to his waist and stepped barefoot on the surging waves. Under his feet, Tai Lake split open into a deep abyss, revealing the dragon coiled on the black iron pillar at the bottom of the lake. The horn of that sinful animal dragon was broken in a section, which was exactly the old scar from being wounded by the dragon subduing Arhat a hundred years ago.

Suddenly, Huanglong Mountain shook, and the five-colored clay flew into the purple and gold bowls where the monks were begging for alms by themselves. Just then, seven layers of precious light appeared on the head of this Arhat, and the clay in his palm turned into mud upon contact with water, absorbing all the toxic fire spat out by the dragon. When the dragon's tail swept through seventeen kilns, a handful of clay mixed with the blood of Arhats splashed onto the face of the young potter, Ah Hu.

Ah Hu wiped his face, his fingers interlaced with gold and red. When he was about to take a closer look, he suddenly felt a burning pain in his palm - the clay stained with the dragon's blood began to twist in his hand, and in an instant, it transformed into a three-foot-long dragon, with its scales glisten with a strange bluish-purple color. The Dragon Subduing Arhat threw half a purple and gold bowl. The sharp pottery shard cut through the young man's fingertip, and a drop of blood fell into the dragon's eyes.

"Well done!" The arhat's voice was as loud as a bell, causing the thirty-six dragon kilns in the mountains to resonate in unison. "Since this branch of the dragon soul has entered the pottery body, we will use your deft hands to find a place for it to return to."

Seven days later, Ah Hu opened the kiln. Only seventy-two red clay teapots were seen shining with a lustrous glow in the kiln fire. The very center, an antique well rim teapot, was all amber-colored. When the lid was slightly opened, a faint sound of a dragon's roar could be heard. Some experts used it to brew tea and saw that the steam gathered but did not dissipate. It even condensed into a small dragon about an inch above the spout of the teapot. After three swirls, it finally dissolved into the blue sky.

From then on, all the potters in Yixing knew that deep in Huanglong Mountain, there was half a purple and gold bowl buried. Every thunderstorm night, there would be dragon-shaped kiln fires wandering in the mountains. Those top-quality purple clay pieces mixed with five-colored soil, when closely examined under the sun, still reveal golden-thread-like blood patterns of Arhats hidden within the clay.