when the time comes, mind do not forget us two, and you will readily be
able to escape from the fiery furnace."

Shih-yin, after this reply, felt it difficult to make any further
inquiries. "The primordial scheme," he however remarked smiling,
"cannot, of course, be divulged; but what manner of thing, I wonder, is
the good-for-nothing object you alluded to a short while back? May I not
be allowed to judge for myself?"

"This object about which you ask," the Buddhist Bonze responded, "is
intended, I may tell you, by fate to be just glanced at by you." With
these words he produced it, and handed it over to Shih-yin.

Shih-yin received it. On scrutiny he found it, in fact, to be a
beautiful gem, so lustrous and so clear that the traces of characters on
the surface were distinctly visible. The characters inscribed consisted
of the four "T'ung Ling Pao Yue," "Precious Gem of Spiritual Perception."
On the obverse, were also several columns of minute words, which he was
just in the act of looking at intently, when the Buddhist at once
expostulated.

"We have already reached," he exclaimed, "the confines of vision."
Snatching it violently out of his hands, he walked away with the Taoist,
under a lofty stone portal, on the face of which appeared in large type
the four characters: "T'ai Hsue Huan Ching," "The Visionary limits of the
Great Void." On each side was a scroll with the lines:

When falsehood stands for truth, truth likewise becomes false,
Where naught be made to aught, aught changes into naught.