The specific year of birth and death is unknown. According to Zhuo Ying Ting Ji (Zhuo Ying Ting Ji), "After Ziping's death, there was a Huainan warlock who rushed to Xu Zi in Xichun, Song Xiaozong (1174-1190) and was good at this skill. Buddhism and Taoism were spread by him from time to time, and then spread knowledge to Qiantang. Dasheng Xu of Hongchuan. The great venerable man, whose name is Dongzhai, was born in Li Zongbao's family, and was handed down from generation to generation, and the theory of determining truth and so on.
Therefore, as can be seen from this passage, Dasheng Xu was a member of Li Zongbao You in the Southern Song Dynasty. 1253 was the first year of Li Zongbao's life, so Dasheng Xu was almost from that time.
Xu Ziping, a famous resident of the Northern Song Dynasty, had an unknown life story. According to legend, he lived in seclusion with Chen Tuan in Huashan Mountain at the end of the Five Dynasties, and wrote two volumes of Xu Luozi's Notes. On the basis of Li's three-column method (year, month and day deduction algorithm), he invented the four-column method (year, month, day and time deduction algorithm). Taking the branches of the four pillars as the eight characters and speculating the fate of life with the restraint relationship in the eight characters has a particularly wide impact on society, so that the eight-character method is also called the Ziping method.