More than fifteen hundred years ago.
It was the final years of the Great Sheng Divine Dynasty.
The great edifice was about to topple, and powers on every side watched like predators.
In this life, Xuanming was actually the Last Divine Emperor of the Great Sheng Divine Dynasty.
He remained shrouded in shadow, acting with brutal abandon and without restraint. He even seemed to have erupted into quite a few arguments with the Imperial Preceptor of that time, the Peaceful Heaven Dao Master.
Extortionate levies, lust for women, reckless warmongering, grandiose ambitions, mercurial tempers, persecution of the loyal and virtuous, extravagant indulgence!
He seemed to have been a tyrant without precedent.
Under his rule, the people of the Great Sheng Divine Dynasty could barely survive, all living beings suffered, and myriad Divine seethed with resentment.
Finally, at sixty years of age, he suffered Heaven's punishment and Earth's chastisement. Spurned by all living beings, he died in bitter rage.
The common people cheered, all living beings rejoiced, and myriad Divine celebrated.
Even the Peaceful Heaven Dao Master laughed three times.
The Past Boat drifted onward, continuing upstream.
Life after life, incarnation after incarnation.
He continued to offer sacrifices, continued to die horribly.
A eunuch, a courtesan, a matchmaker, a night watchman, an old farmer, a mason, a servant boy, a maid, a thief, a bandit, a mayfly, a summer cicada, a grasshopper, an ant...
The farther upstream he went, the lower the station of his reincarnations became, and the more miserable their fates. Several times he was born disabled; several times he died in infancy; several times he died in the womb.
His lives as other creatures were even more tragic.
Trampled to death, drowned, burned, crushed...
It seemed that not one of his countless lives ended well.
As though he