Searching for Tu Shan is also called Erlang Shen Searching for Tu Shan, because it shows the story of Erlang Shen's evil spirits. The story of Erlang God is widely circulated among the people and reflected in many literary and artistic works. In the Yuan Dynasty, there was a play called "Erlang Shen Drunk Shooting the Magic Mirror", which described that Erlang Shen competed with Wang Mo, Nezha, the Golden-eyed and Hundred-eyed Ghost, and finally caught the double-hole demon. According to records, the earliest painting "Ghost Seeking Mountain" was the work of Gao Yi, a painter in the Northern Song Dynasty, which was valued by the emperor. Later, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, biographies continued.
This "Search for Tu Shan" was written by people in the late Southern Song Dynasty and early Yuan Dynasty. The figures are heavily colored with meticulous brushwork, and the clothing line is drawn with iron wire, which is strong, vivid and free from vulgarity. The rocks and trees are magnificent, and the style is close to that of Liu Songnian in the Southern Song Dynasty. Compared with books with different themes, this volume is incomplete, lacking the main god Erlang, but its painting skill is higher than other books. This painting depicts the magic soldiers searching for all kinds of monsters in the mountains. Monsters are all kinds of wild animals, including tigers, bears, tapirs, monkeys, foxes, goats, geese, rabbits, lizards, snakes and tree spirits. These monsters, who showed their true colors or turned into women, fled for their lives after being hunted by the gods, or hid in caves or refused to be captured. And those gods, with swords, spears and halberds, let the dogs go with the eagles, blocking the front and cutting them behind, leaving the monsters with nowhere to escape. Originally, Erlang God was praised as a positive figure, but in this volume, he got a negative image. Those magic soldiers and generals are fierce and hateful, while those monsters are kind-hearted, and their inner descriptions of fear and escape make people feel sympathy. I don't know whether the author intentionally or unintentionally, which naturally reminds viewers of the oppression of ordinary people by social officers and soldiers at that time.