Half of the mountain was enveloped in a sea of clouds. It had steep-walled cliffs on all four sides. Cascades torrented down the lichen-covered cliffs. It seemed that they couldn’t climb up the mountain without a heavenly ladder. His companions again urged him to abandon his mission, but he shook his head firmly. Standing on a small hill, he looked up and down the high mountain. Suddenly, he saw several golden monkeys climbing along the hanging rattan and the deadwood lying around the waist of the cliff. Suddenly, an idea occurred to him. He immediately called in his companions and asked them to chop down trees and cut off branches to create a shelf set against the cliff. They managed to erect one floor in one day. The work lasted one year without any stops no matter if it rained or snowed. They put up 360 floors right to the top of the mountain. It is said that the people learned from Shen Nong the best method to build houses.
Shen Nong and his fellows climbed up the shelves and reached the top of then mountain. They saw a veritable universe of herbs and flowers, red, green, white and yellow-every colour under the rainbow. Shen Nong was extremely pleased. He asked his companions to watch out for wild animals and he himself picked flowers and grasses and began to taste and test them. In the daytime, he and his companions tasted the herbs on the mountain and at night, they made a fire, and all the information discovered was carefully recorded: which grasses were bitter, which hot, which cool, which could allay hunger and which could cure diseases.
Once, after he had tasted one grass, he felt very dizzy and fell down. His companions hurried to help him up. He was aware that he had poisoned himself but he couldn’t speak. With his last energy, he pointed at a red and bright glossy ganoderma and pointed at his own mouth. His companions hastily picked up the red glossy ganoderma, chewed it a little and then put it into his mouth. After Shen Nong ate the glossy ganoderma, it neutralized the toxin in his body and he didn’t feel dizzy any more and could speak. From that time on, glossy ganoderma gained fame as a herb that could do anything, even almost raise the dead. His companions were worried that it was too dangerous for him to taste herbs and advised him to return home. But he refused again, saying, “I can’t go back. We still can’t cure some diseases of the people. How can we go back?”Then, he continued tasting herbs.
He moved from one mountain to another erecting shelves all the time to reach high peaks. He tasted herbs and flowers for 49 days, until he had explored all the mountains there. Once, when he tasted a kind of rattan-like plant with yellow flowers growing in the rocks, he ate both flower and stem. Soon, he had sharp pains in his stomach. He was writhing in agony on the ground, half dead. The pain was unbearable. Shen Nong breathed his last. Even in death however, this fearless pioneer and servant of the people had been of service. The virulently poisonous grass was identified and its properties recorded, undoubtedly saving many future lives.
Later, Shen Nong’s companions took back his records on many hundreds of kinds of herbs he had tasted in his efforts to find cures to common diseases. To commemorate his achievements, the people compiled his records into a great book which came to be known as Shen Nong’s Classic of Herb-Roots. The vast mountain forest where he tasted these herbs himself and paid for his compassion with his life is now known as “Shen Nong Jia (shelf)”.
