[Taecheon's legends were particularly rich in dragons and their ascents to heaven. Sightings were too numerous to count: thousand-year-old serpents enduring 1,000 years on nothing but water so they could ascend; seven turtles beginning their spiritual cultivation in a cave on the very same day, at the very same hour, with all but the lazy one becoming dragons and flying into the western sky; nine dragons emerging from a river to frolic on a great mountain before flying away. Stories like these were passed down everywhere in the region. Someone who helped a yellow dragon and a blue dragon ascend side by side from the great river winding around the mountain became a landowner of immense wealth. A pregnant woman who dreamed of a dragon flying into her belly gave birth to a sturdy girl. Someone received an invitation from the Dragon King and visited his underwater palace. People prayed to a dragon for rain and enjoyed a bountiful harvest that year.
Among the legends of uncertain origin handed down around Taecheon was a story about a small cave with a spring. Its little spring gushed cold water all year long, and anyone who drank from it could become a dragon.
The elders of a small village at the foot of the mountain had grown up hearing dragon legends. Whenever thunder rumbled and lightning split the sky, they would warn the children that a dragon was ascending, so they mustn't make a racket or get in its way. And since even the humblest creature could become a dragon, they repeatedly urged the children never to catch or kill a living thing carelessly, however insignificant it might look.
One day, the village children went to gather firewood on the mountain behind their homes. While picking wild raspberries and playing, they found a strange place. Between enormous boulders halfway along the ridge lay a tiny horizontal crevice. A child who had been beating small snakes to death with a stick saw one escape between the rocks and crawled into the narrow gap after it.
The child emerged a long time later and said there was a wondrous place beyond the crevice. As though they had found a new playground hidden from the adults, the village children crawled through the dark, narrow gap for a long time until they reached a small cave. In the middle of that dark, cold cave lay a little spring.
A cool, mysterious air hung over the spring. Though not a ray of light entered the cave, the area around it glittered, and snakes, turtles, small fish, and snails moved about as though they owned the place. Thirsty from playing on the mountain and crawling between the rocks, the children scooped up handfuls of cool spring water and drank, unaware of the danger. They remarked on how good the cold water tasted. Before long, they began collapsing, one after another.
Complaining that their stomachs felt strange, the children vomited up all the water they had drunk and screamed in pain. When they had nothing left to bring up, they began vomiting blood. They writhed in agony on the ground until they lost consciousness. Shin's daughter, the only child who hadn't drunk from the spring, tried frantically to shake them awake. But they coughed up blood and couldn't move. The oldest and most suspicious of the children, Shin's daughter emptied the long sack they had been using for wild raspberries. She put the children inside in place of the berries. Tying the sack to her ankle, she crawled for a long time before emerging from the narrow cave, then made her way down the mountain covered in dirt and wounds.
The village erupted when Shin's daughter came down screaming for help. Word that she had found the cave from the old oral legends spread in an instant. The adults discussed what to do, and Heo, the smallest woman among them, took a small gourd bottle and crawled into the narrow crevice. After a long journey with rock pressing against her, she found the spring exactly as Shin's daughter had described it. Even in summer, its water was as cold as ice, so clear that she could see straight to the bottom. Watching from beside the spring, Heo noticed that even the snakes living nearby only licked the water rather than drinking it. She filled her little gourd bottle and barely managed to escape the cave, which seemed to crush her body.
Two of the village's oldest residents volunteered to risk death by drinking the spring water. Fifty-two-year-old Kim had been bedridden ever since falling while thatching a roof and breaking a leg ten years earlier. After drinking two drops from the gourd, Kim walked about as though twenty years younger. When seventy-five-year-old Lee drank two drops, the elder's white hair turned black again.
Everyone in the village wanted to drink the water Heo had brought back, but Shin's daughter warned them, showing them the other children in the raspberry sack. The mysterious water's powers filled the villagers with both longing and fear.
From that day on, the villagers called it healing water. Because the cave entrance was so narrow, children and small adults took responsibility for fetching it. They always kept the area around the spring clean. Before sunrise, they washed their hands, feet, and faces thoroughly, then bowed to the spring before drawing water. If another creature was using it, however small, they waited quietly for their turn. They carefully filled just one of the smallest gourd bottles, and used only enough water to barely moisten the tongue.
At regular intervals, the villagers made offerings in front of the boulders and held shamanic rites for the mysterious spring. Although cold water rose from it daily, as it would in a well, the spring was so small that the villagers tacitly agreed to reserve it for the sick, the injured, and the elderly. Even when an epidemic swept the country and people languished in illness, a single drop washed away their sores and pus as though they had never been there. Two drops let elders whose bent backs and crooked knees made them slower than old donkeys run about like young people.
No matter how ill they were, no one drank more than two drops. The children in the raspberry sack had wasted away, their bodies breaking down, and died before three full days had passed. No amount of spring water their parents fetched and forced down their throats brought them back or made them well. Giving the water to the dead was equally useless.
Even as they used the spring, the villagers feared the harm that greed might bring. And as its water gradually diminished, they grew anxious that it might one day dry up altogether. Some suggested driving away the snakes, snails, and freshwater turtles that lived around it so the villagers could have it to themselves. Every elder opposed the idea, and it came to nothing.
Then came an ill-fated day. A peddler arrived from far away, having heard rumors of healing water that could cure any wound and restore youth with a sip. At the tavern, he loudly mocked the villagers for believing such nonsense. They dismissed the nasty, aging middle-aged man's sneers and false smiles as an idiot's blather and ignored him. Shin's daughter was different. Still young, and having lost all her friends at once, she took him to the crevice to prove that it wasn't a lie.
The peddler tried to enter, but the gap looked too narrow for a grown man to squeeze through even on his belly. He offered Shin's daughter a bolt of silk from his pack if she would fetch him some of the legendary healing water. When she asked for a bottle, he handed her a gourd left over from his wares.
Shin's daughter slipped into the horizontal gap between the rocks like a frog and remained inside for a long time. Just as the peddler tired of waiting and was about to leave, she finally emerged, held the bottle behind her back, and demanded the silk. They exchanged the bolt for the bottle. Clutching her silk, Shin's daughter ran down the mountain with a grin stretching from ear to ear.
Watching the delighted child leave, the peddler wondered whether the little thing had tricked him. The healing water in the bottle amounted to scarcely a bean-sized drop. On his way down the mountain, he found a deer crying out in a trap. He was about to steal it before the hunter arrived when he decided to try splashing the bottled water on its injured leg. The wound healed in an instant. The deer bounded on its sound legs, looked at the peddler, then vanished into the mountain.
Astonished, the peddler realized the rumors were true. He checked his gourd. There had only been three or four drops to begin with, and he had used almost all of them on the deer's leg. The greedy peddler went straight down to the village, asked around for Shin's daughter, and called at her home. As soon as Shin appeared, he shouted that the daughter had taken his silk without permission and demanded payment. If there was no money, he wanted more spring water instead.
Bewildered by this demand, Shin asked whether the daughter had any silk. Looking miserable, the girl brought a bolt out of her room. Asked to explain, she said she had felt sorry for her mother in her threadbare clothes, so she had bought the silk from the peddler and paid a fair price. When Shin asked what money she had used, she explained that she had bought it in exchange for entering the cave and fetching spring water. The villagers took turns drawing water, and that day had been the Shin household's turn.
To Shin, the spring water hidden in the cave was priceless. The villagers would surely cause an uproar if they learned that their secret treasure had been sold to a mere merchant. Shin addressed the slyly smiling peddler.
“Where is the spring water you received?”
“That crafty little thing handed me this empty gourd and lied to me.”
Holding out the empty bottle, the peddler insisted that he had received nothing and that Shin's daughter had deceived him. Shin knew the man was playing a trick, but couldn't give him more water. There was no choice but to take the silk from the daughter's hands and return it. Leaving her furious cries behind, the peddler packed away his recovered silk, beaming.
With his silk back, the peddler wandered the village looking for another child small enough to fetch healing water in place of Shin's daughter. But he could find none, as though their parents had hidden them. The few he did manage to find were too young to understand him properly, or had only just learned to walk.