"As you said, Daoist Master, when the Human Race first emerged in ignorance, they had neither enough clothing to cover themselves nor enough food to fill their bellies. They were little different from the small beasts of the wilderness."
"And humans were weak, with neither sharp claws and fangs nor fur to ward off heat and cold. Their legs could not outrun wolves and jackals, their strength could not match tigers and leopards. They possessed not a single advantage."
"Yet our ancestors emerged from ignorance, clad in rags and riding rough carts, cutting through thorns and brambles. They neither revered ghosts and gods nor worshipped demons."
"When they were cold, tired, or hungry, they used their own hands to drill wood for fire, made clothes from hides and leaves, and built homes to settle in."
"When floods rose to the heavens, they did not petition the gods. They dug channels themselves to drain the waters."
"When disease ran rampant, they did not beg for miracles. They tasted the hundred herbs themselves to heal the people."
"If they drowned in the vast sea, they would fill that sea."
"If mountains towered ten thousand fathoms high, they would move those mountains."
"If ten suns rose together, withering the grass and rotting the trees, they would shoot those suns down."
"There were kings who buried themselves in hard work, kings who labored with their lives on the line, kings who pleaded for their people, kings who were foolish and incompetent, kings who were cruel and heartless, and kings whose kingdoms fell and who died with them."
"But never a king who sought immortals and worshipped gods."
"To revere the Mandate of Heaven and kneel before its gods—how absurd. I do not consult ghosts or gods."
As a transmigrator who had undergone nine years