According to Wu Ling, no one knew whether "gods" had existed in the beginning. There was no way to investigate whether the original "gods" were, as the myths and legends described, a special kind of being distinct from humans and other life on Earth, or spirits formed from the gathering of human thoughts.
If one set aside that unknowable past, the history of the supernatural could roughly be divided into three stages.
"The first person—or thing—to accomplish this is unknown. This part of history is also vague. Some surviving records merely indicate that an entity discovered the secret of reincarnation, discovered the underworld and the ghost attendants, and then discovered that Heaven existed. In that era, the supernatural was essentially a conflict between the living, who sought immortality, and the underworld, reincarnation, and perhaps even Heaven. The conflict lasted a long time, but it wasn't especially large in scale. From a scientific perspective, civilization was still at a very primitive stage. More people were concerned with surviving today and tomorrow than with immortality. Survival was the foremost concern. Even now, there are still people with wild fantasies who hope to achieve immortality." Wu Ling continued, "So this stage lasted a long time, but what matters most to the history of the supernatural is that this was when the underworld and reincarnation were discovered."
I nodded, listening closely.
"The second stage was when ghosts appeared." Wu Ling continued, then abruptly changed the subject. "Before that, monsters and spirits had always existed. They were few in number and more like wild beasts. Ordinary people could kill them, and they weren't considered supernatural phenomena."
I thought of Mo Wen.
"Ghosts, though, truly belonged to the supernatural," Wu Ling said. "The first ghosts to appear were more like newborns of a special kind. Their