Scholars propose divergent semantic interpretations of the jie in shijie: "to molt," "to quarter," "to expel an affliction";[11] "to divide, separate, disperse, to detach, deliver", "to loosen, dissolve, explain", and "emancipation, liberation" in Chinese Buddhism;[12] and "release, deliverance, escape".

"[37] Second, the term xingjie (形解, "release of the form") describes an advanced self-cultivation exercise in the "Shiwen" (十問, Ten Questions), a previously-unknown medical book within the c. 200–168 BCE Mawangdui Silk Texts that archeologists discovered in a Western Han tomb.

[12] The fourth of the Shiwen's ten dialogues (MSVI.A.4) is between the mythical Yellow Emperor and Rong Cheng (容成), a legendary ancient master of Daoist sexual practices and Daoyin breath circulation techniques, who says, Longevity is born of growth and accumulation.

[38] This is the only Shiwen passage that reflects the likely influence of xian or "syncretistic-Daoist" ideas about transcendence/immortality in the Mawangdui and Zhangjiashan bamboo medical texts, which primarily discuss maintaining health and attaining longevity.

[39] Third, xingjie names a supernatural technique in Sima Qian's c. 94 BCE Shiji (Records of the Historian) passage denouncing the practices performed by some fangshi ("masters of the methods") from the state of Yan who arrived at the First Emperor of Qin's court.

"[46] The c. 190–200 CE Xiang'er commentary to the Daodejing, which is central to the Daoist Way of the Celestial Masters religious tradition, uses shi to mean not specifically a "corpse" but generally a "mortal body", either living or dead.

[52] Beginning with the c. 2nd century CE Liexian Zhuan (Biographies of Exemplary Immortals), numerous hagiographies of Daoist masters directly or indirectly mentioned them transcending death through shijie.

Two exemplary Taiqing scriptures, both mentioned in the c. 320 Baopuzi below, describe novel shijie procedures: placing a brief listing one's own name and registration data onto one's grandfather's corpse during the funeral, and creating a Daoist fu (符, supernatural talisman) asserting the cause of death was illness.

First, the "Taiqing yinye shenqi jing" (太清金液神氣經, Grand Purity Scripture of the Divine Pneumas of Potable Gold') quotes the mythical Yellow Thearch's instructions for preparing a legalistic brief and incantation in order to falsify the life and death ledger system.

After you have ingested the Medicine for the Release from the Mortal Body for the prescribed number of days, write the talisman [of the Highest Mystery of Living Unseen] in red on white silk, and place it on your belly.

[57] The same scripture also describes how to make male and female versions of a talisman for "masters of the Dao who wish to perform shijie", which when written with a "spirit-brush" (神筆) on any wood or metal object will immediately transform it into a substitute cadaver that will subsequently "die and depart".

[60] One passage about the 2nd century BCE fangshi Li Shaojun (李少君, mentioned in the Lunheng above) lists shijie as the lowest category of xian transcendents after tian (heavenly) and di (earthly).

[62] In another Baopuzi passage, Ge Hong denounced as a charlatan the healer Li Kuan (李寬), who treated illnesses with holy water and amulets and became extremely popular in south China.

When Zuo Ci and Guo Pu were condemned to execution, they escaped through bingjie (兵解, "martial liberation") and simultaneously eluded the agents of both the imperial and the spirit world bureaucracies.

[73] Another context says Xu Mai studied under his teacher Wang Shilong (王世龍), and "received the Way of loosening constraints [jieshu zhi dao 解束之衜], practiced the method of walking backward, consumed jade fluid, and had audience at Brain-Essence [Palace]".

[76] Zhao Cui (d. 622 BCE) was a legendary Daoist transcendent who assisted Duke Wen of Jin (r. 636-628), and the Zhen'gao records that five to six years after he died, "a man travelling through the mountains one evening spotted this corpse inside a rock chamber.

Chinese alchemists were aware that the metallic compounds produced in their furnaces were highly poisonous, but they believed that the practitioner would suffer only an apparent death while in fact passing into the heavens without dying.

Sire Deerskin swallowed jade blossoms and the maggots streamed out his door; Youngest Son Qiu gulped the gold fluid and the stench was smelled a hundred Ii away.

The Yellow Thearch, who fired the nine cauldrons [elixir] on Mount Jing, still has a tomb at Qiao Peak; Sima Jizhu, who consumed mica powder to make a covert ascent, still [left his] head and feet in different places.

[76] The Shangqing classic Jianjing (劍巠, Sword Scripture) compares several shijie alchemical preparations and says the lingwan (靈丸, Numinous Bolus) elixir is the only one that permits the adept to return home without changing his or her name.

[83] This passage distinguishes two grades of shijie by the time of day when the adept leaves the world, superior bairi (白日, daytime; broad daylight) and inferior yeban (夜半, midnight).

[84] The reason for this inferior status of an adept who performs shijie is that despite their having attained an advanced spiritual state, it is insufficient for them to "ascend to heaven in broad daylight", and they need to undergo a transformational "refining the bodily form".

[12] Cross-borrowings between Buddhism and Daoism were so pervasive that many narratives about Buddhist monks include supposedly distinctive Daoist practices such as shijie (liberation from the corpse) and bigu (grain avoidance).

[89][90] For instance, the 648 Book of Jin records that the Buddhist monk Shan Daokai (單衜開), a contemporary of the Central Asian missionary Fotudeng (c. 232–348 CE), "achieved a cicada-like metamorphosis by ingesting pills".

"[92] The shijie implements such as a sword or shoe perform a function similar to the tishen (替身, "replacement bodies") used in some Daoist rites to represent the adept's negative and "unrefined" aspects, worldly bonds which made it impossible for one to achieve a higher form of liberation in life.

[97] Needham and Lu also interpret that the remarkably well-preserved body of Xin Zhui or Lady Dai (d. 163 BCE), discovered in 1972 among Mawangdui tombs, showed that early Chinese mortuary specialists, whom they presume were Daoists, had sufficiently advanced chemical knowledge and skill to achieve an almost perpetual conservation, which suggests "for the first time all that [shijie] may have implied".

[99] Michel Strickmann convincingly proposed that the adept's "corpse" in shijie techniques was not always a temporary stand-in but in certain cases could be the cadaver of someone who achieved xian transcendence by means of ritual suicide through Chinese alchemical elixir poisoning.

In one of the best-documented cases, Tao Hongjing's disciple Zhou Ziliang (周子良, 497–516) received visions from Perfected Ones who guaranteed him transcendence into Shangqing heavens, and gave instructions how to compound a deadly potion of mushrooms and cinnabar, with which he committed suicide.

[45] In some cases, a Daoist adept carrying out shijie "escape by means of a corpse" was not attempting miraculous transcendence but was simply absconding from difficult demands, such as when Emperor Wu of Jin indefinitely detained Ge Xuan, he told his disciple, "I do not have the leisure to prepare the great drug [of immortality].

"[58] Finally, even the Shangqing patriarch Tao Hongjing himself, after years of unsuccessful alchemical experiments with immortality elixirs for Emperor Wu of Liang (r. 502–549), desperately attempted to flee his imperial patron in 508 by changing his name to Wang Zheng (王整) and pretending to be an ordinary soldier.