On the rugged slopes of Xuanzhu Mountain, three kilometers southeast of Weishan Ancient City, Xuanzhu Taoist Temple stands as a monument to survival and spiritual synthesis. Its story began in the Tang Dynasty, during the Zhenguan reign of 627 to 649 AD, when the Nanzhao ruler Xinuluo raised an ancestral temple to honor his mother, Moliqiang. In the mid-Tang period, Taoist alchemists from Sichuan's Qingcheng Mountain arrived, filling the halls with the sharp scent of burning minerals and transforming the royal shrine into a house of worship.

Disaster struck repeatedly. Fire consumed the temple in the late Ming Dynasty. In 1656, during the tenth year of the Southern Ming's Yongli reign, Buddhist monks from the neighboring Yuanjue Temple offered their labor and funds to rebuild the complex. This collaboration merged two faiths, renaming the site Xuanlong Temple. War leveled the structures again during the Tongzhi reign, leading to a final, grand reconstruction during the Guangxu reign of 1875 to 1908.

The physical structure mirrors this complex history. Rejecting a standard north-south axis, the temple climbs from west to east across three terraced levels. Visitors navigate seven courtyards connected by winding paths. At the Mountain Gate, the eye meets the complex ruyi dougong brackets and the hollow-carved dragon reliefs beneath the Zijin Jinque plaque. Though locals call it the "Little Temple," its footprint is three hundred square meters larger than the neighboring "Great Temple," inspiring the local proverb: "The Great Temple is not big, the Little Temple is not small."