Since ancient times, people have said that there are Heaven, Earth, humanity, and the gods; that the gods act under Heaven’s mandate, and that mortals are no more than ants. They reside above the Nine Heavens, monopolizing divine power under the pretense of “protecting all living things.” In truth, they use humanity’s sincere faith as nourishment for themselves. They steal our spiritual energy, leaving our people unable to cultivate and forever barred from the Nine Heavens. They seize our fortune, making us dull-witted and ensuring that we will never again have wise people who live long. They leave our people beset by one calamity and war after another. They sit in the Nine Heavens, indifferent to the suffering of the mortal world. In drought, they begrudge us rain; in floods, they look the other way. Countless people struggle in misery, able to do nothing but offer sacrifices in vain to uncaring deities. Then they try to explain away the countless deaths of our finest warriors with the words, “It is fate. It is Heaven’s will.”
To hell with your Heaven. Damn your gods! Do they even know? The gods were never born with any innate superiority. They were all raised up and deified by us mortals, through our faith, sacrifices, and unyielding devotion. The ancient gods, Pangu, Fuxi, Nuwa, Shennong, and Yu the Great, were all heroes who once sought the welfare of all and saved countless people. We, their descendants, remembered their deeds, honored their courage and the good they brought to the world, and gathered our thoughts and spirits by the billions into the “power of deification.” Only then did they gain powers beyond those of ordinary mortals and come to endure forever in this world.
But now there are false gods who devour the spiritual energy of our land and seize the last scraps of our people’s fortune. They oppress and deceive the last stalwarts of humanity, forcing us to kneel before and worship their idols of clay and tile.
I spit on them! How can we, the human race, accept this? How can we allow ourselves to become helpless prey?
I will shatter Heaven, defeat the gods, and overthrow their rule. I will establish a new and equal order,
