Summon Wind and Rain

呼风唤雨 / Summon Wind and Rain

Type: 五行术法 / Five-Phase Elemental Art

Category: Weather Intervention Art

Creator or Lineage: No single founder; passed down through Daoist and Daoist-adjacent traditions, recorded in texts such as the *Journey to the West*, the *Chronicles of the Gods*, and the *Romance of the Three Kingdoms*.

Grade: Variable (low-grade for a light breeze, high-grade for a full-scale storm)

First Recorded Era: Known since at least the Han dynasty, with formal ritual structures recorded in the *Tai Shang Dong Yuan Zhao Feng Lei Shen Zhou Jing* (Supreme Cavern Abyss Scripture of Summoning Wind and Thunder Deities) and the *Yun Ji Qi Qian* (Seven Lots from the Bookbag of the Clouds).

The ruins of an ancient ritual platform in the Yellow Turban territory, near modern-day Handan, Hebei Province, still bear the residual energy of repeated weather-intervention rites. Local farmers report finding burned talisman fragments in the topsoil, and the site is known for micro-climate anomalies—sudden wind shifts and brief, unexplained rain showers even on clear days. The platform is not actively sealed, but the local land god is said to avoid the area out of a lingering sense of violation.

For a broader understanding of the elemental system under which this art operates, see the entry on Wu Xing Shu Fa (Five-Phase Spells). The practitioners who risked this art's cost, including the Yellow Turban leader Zhang Jiao, are recorded in their own biographical entries. The retaliatory action from celestial overseers is detailed under the Thunder Department and the concept of Tian Tiao (Celestial Decrees). The Buddhist alternative to forced weather intervention is described under the Dragon King petitioning tradition within the Buddhist scripture lineage.

The art operates by temporarily overriding the local Tian Di Gang Chang (Celestial Order) regarding weather. It uses a talisman, incantation, or ritual object to disturb the equilibrium of Yin Yang (the twin fundamental forces) in the atmosphere. By imposing the caster's will onto the natural balance, the practitioner seizes the authority of the local Rain Master and Wind Earl (deities whose domains are specific to a geographic area) and forces the local rain, wind, and lightning laws to obey them. This is not a plea to deities, but a forced intervention that rewrites the local weather code. The underlying cosmic law being violated is the autonomy of elemental distribution—each region has a natural quotient of water, air, and yang energy, and this art reallocates it by force. The energy source is therefore dual: it draws from the ambient environment as a primary reservoir, and from the caster's own body as a secondary, emergency reserve.

Preparation requires an open, sky-exposed location—the art is impossible underground or in sealed Grotto-Heavens. The caster dons clean robes, sets up a Fa Tan (ritual platform) aligned with the local directional qi, and begins the incantation. The spoken Kou Jue (oral formula) is archaic, often chanted in a specific cadence that resonates with the lung and kidney channels. The caster holds a Fu Lu (talisman) in one hand and a sword or ritual bell in the other. As the voice rises, the talisman begins to smoke and burn. At the moment of release, the sky above visibly darkens, the wind rises in a spiral around the altar, and rain begins to fall in a controlled column. Visually, the scene is both majestic and unsettling: the clouds swirl in a pattern that seems to answer the caster's hand movements, and the wind carries the scent of burned talisman paper. The art does not require sustained energy—once the weather pattern is set, it continues by the normal mechanics of atmospheric physics until it naturally dissipates.

The primary energy source is environmental: the art sucks ambient yang energy from the air to create wind, and ambient yin-water energy to create rain. In a place with sufficient moisture, the cost is moderate—the local climate is temporarily sapped, but recovers within a season. The caster's internal cost is direct: **summoning wind burns the Lung Metal energy** (肺金之气), creating a sensation of the lungs being seared by fire; **summoning rain consumes the Kidney Water essence** (肾水之精), producing a coldness that spreads from the kidneys outward, as if the organs are slowly freezing. If the caster attempts to force rain in an arid region where no atmospheric water exists, the cost escalates: instead of drawing from the environment, the art draws from the caster's own blood, draining the red from their veins, leading to a lethal condition known as blood desiccation. In every case, the cost is not a gentle trickle—it is a raw extraction. A major summoning leaves the caster bedridden for at least seven days, experiencing alternating waves of lung-fire pain and kidney-ice chill.

The backlash operates on two timeframes. **Immediate backlash**: severe organ depletion. The lungs feel as though burned from within, and the kidneys as though frozen solid. This state, called 'lung-fire, kidney-ice syndrome' in Daoist medical texts, requires a full week of bed rest and specialized herbal decoctions to restore balance. **Cumulative backlash**: each use leaves a 'weather scar' on the local environment—a pocket of imbalanced Yin Yang that predisposes the region to droughts or floods for the next three to five years. More dangerously, if the same location is targeted with the same weather effect more than three times, the cosmic order's self-correction mechanism (Jue Di Tian Tong's residual protocols) triggers a catastrophic flood or hurricane that devastates the area indiscriminately. **Regarding evasion**: there is no reliable way to avoid the organ depletion—it is the direct cost of the energy transfer. The karmic flood/storm backlash, however, can be avoided by never casting in the same spot more than twice. This is not an avoidance of cost but a geographical constraint on the caster's mobility.

Repeated use in a single region creates a permanent **law scar** on the local elemental distribution. The area's natural balance of yin and yang weather-patterns becomes permanently disrupted. For example, a once-fertile valley might experience erratic rainfall for decades after a single cultivation battle, with spring floods arriving a month early and autumn droughts lasting twice as long. The land god and the water spirits of that region often bear a grudge against the caster, but this is a social and legal cost, not a cosmic one—the deities record the infringement and will, at an opportune moment, report it to the Celestial Court as an act of divine-office trespassing. At the extreme, if the caster routinely performs this art across multiple regions, the cumulative environmental wounds cause a regional disharmony that attracts the attention of the Thunder Department (雷部), celestial auditors who investigate weather anomalies. They may issue a formal sentence of *Tian Jie* (Celestial Tribulation) calibrated to the scale of the caster's interference.

The art is neither a single lineage's secret nor a formally sealed forbidden technique. It is a widespread folk craft known scattered across many Daoist and non-Daoist traditions. In the *Journey to the West*, the Monkey King Sun Wukong uses a variant of this art in the Cart-Slow Kingdom (chapter 45) during the rain-summoning competition, demonstrating that even a celestial monkey with immense power still negotiates the cost—he has to follow the formal ritual protocol to complete the summoning. No single **sealing event** marked this art for prohibition; rather, its relatively low-but-constant cost means most formal Daoist traditions teach it as a mid-level ritual, while warning disciples to use it sparingly. It is still actively taught in some orthodox lineages, always with the caveat that frequent use invites the anger of the local weather deities and the ire of the Thunder Department.

Within the Daoist Five-Phase spellcraft tree, Summon Wind and Rain sits at the boundary between permitted elemental manipulation and forbidden overreach. It is considered a heavier cousin of the more basic wind-fanning and rain-making spells that simply move existing clouds; this art creates weather from raw elements, which is where the cost escalates. Practitioners of the **Theriomorphic Path (妖道)** have been known to master this art using a corrupted version, drawing environmental moisture from living creatures instead of the sky—a method that leaves the caster's own body healthy but incurs a terrible karmic backlash from the animal spirits. The **Buddhist monastic tradition** has no equivalent art; their monks may chant for rain, but they petition the dragon kings and naga kings through prayer and merit transfer, not forced elemental hijacking. The **Mo (demon) path** has pushed this art to a horrific extreme: the 'Blood Rain Art', which draws moisture directly from the blood of the living, leaving an area stained red. This variation is universally classified as a Jin Shu (Forbidden Technique) and its practitioners are hunted across the Three Realms.

**Zhang Jiao (张角)** , the Yellow Turban leader of the late Han dynasty, is recorded in the *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* as having mastered the art of summoning wind and rain to aid his rebel army. He used it to confound enemy troops, summoning sudden storms to obscure vision and disorganize supply lines. His end, however, is instructive: repeated use across multiple battlefields—far beyond the recommended limit—shattered his lung and kidney channels. He died not on the battlefield but in his tent, coughing black blood and shivering uncontrollably, his organs in complete collapse. His body was found with his own talismans scattered around him, as if he had tried one last summoning to save himself but simply had nothing left to burn.