Born on the Ghost Festival: From Ordinary Man to Ruler of the Mortal Realm

On the night of the Ghost Festival in Bashu, yin energy swept across the mass grave and rapped at the courtyard gate of Granny Ning, a spirit-medium. Outside knelt the corpse of a pregnant woman, her skirt soaked in blood. At the cost of her soul being scattered, she begged Granny Ning to save the child in her womb.

Granny Ning defied the signs and opened the gate. At the hour of the Four Yin, she delivered the corpse-born child, whose brow bore a mark of the Other Shore Flower. He had a pure yin constitution, born to attract spirits. She named him Ning Ji, hid his true name, Xuan Ming, and tied a warding pendant around his neck, hoping to keep disaster at bay. Her simple-minded son, Shitou, stood guard nearby, thinking only that he had to protect “Little Ji.” He had no idea he was the child's biological father, nor that the faint golden birthmark at his waist concealed the power of a guardian of the Human Sovereign, sealed within him by the divine beast Bai Ze.

While the baby slept, the lonely ghosts of the mass grave kept their distance. The warding pendant flickered faintly, as if suppressing some dormant source of power. Granny Ning believed this was the beginning of redemption, but she never imagined that the child she had saved was not only a poor, unfortunate boy, but also the crown prince chosen by Pangu to become the Human Sovereign, and a descendant of the ancient gods destined to soothe the grievances of the mortal world.

The tenth and final life of the cycle of reincarnation began quietly that night. When would the Other Shore Flower on his brow bloom? When would Shitou's seal be broken? And how would the “Calamity of Delusion,” spanning five thousand years, sweep away the peace of this mountain village?