Baopuzi

Divided into 20 Inner Chapters on esoteric Daoist alchemy, breathing and cultivation techniques, and the theory and practice of achieving physical immortality, and 50 Outer Chapters of conventional Confucian social and political commentary, a division its author, the scholar-official and alchemist Ge Hong, presents as complementary rather than contradictory. The Inner Chapters are the single most important surviving source for early Chinese alchemical practice, cataloguing recipes, cinnabar-based elixirs, and the hierarchy of immortals, while defending alchemy against skeptics on largely empirical grounds, that gold and cinnabar resist decay, so ingesting them should confer the same durability on the body. Ge Hong later pursued alchemy at Mount Luofu in the far south until his death.