In Shicheng county of Ganzhou, the City God shrine stood beside the county office; prayers for rain or drought were often answered, and the locals honored it. On the seventeenth day of the fifth month of the xinhai year of Shaoxi, a pouring rain came; the stream swelled and overflowed, flooding the main street more than a zhang deep, and the shrine gate collapsed. The gentry and people joined forces to renew it.
To the left and right of the gate had originally been two sculpted horses, but in the rebuilding they forgot to set them up; over a month later, the magistrate Lü Danian dreamed of a purple-robed clerk standing in his court, bowing and saying: “The Great King now sends word to the magistrate: for going out and coming in I lack a mount, and would like to borrow two fine steeds for a while.”
Lü granted it. Waking, he thought: a mountain county has never kept horses — how could it lend or borrow? Then he realized the meaning, and of his own salary had two horses sculpted and decorated at the east and west, with four stalwart soldiers in brocade reining them.
In the seventh month, a ten-day drought came; he prayed beneath the shrine, and no sooner were the incense and fire put away than dark clouds gathered at noon and rain followed — the year was a great harvest. Some in the county dreamed that the god’s retinue was very grand, and that he was just riding the eastern horse that had been sculpted.
