[Zhang Jiao, Gao Shun, Jia Xu, Chen Duan, Diao Chan, Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Schemes, Passion, No Golden Finger]
I transmigrated as a refugee at the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, and rotted in a ditch. The cold, the hunger, and the earthy stench rising in my throat.
Zhang Jiao.
No immortal's bearing, just an old robe washed pale and a pair of eyes accustomed to death, but not yet completely cold. He poured a bowl of bitter medicine down my throat and dragged me back from the jaws of wild dogs. I became another silent shadow at his soup kitchen.
I followed him, and through the kindness of a bowl of soup, saw the innermost workings of this age. I watched him call thin porridge mixed with grass seeds "blessings from the Yellow Heaven." I watched him bow before extortionist officials just to keep this one pot from going cold. He wasn't born a rebel. He was just a fool who wanted people to live. He used the pretense of "talisman water" to treat the sick and the name of a "Daoist altar" to hide grain, carefully walking a lifeline of steel along the edge of the law. Until, on that snowy night, the officials' hooves smashed the clay jars at the soup kitchen.
Until the old man who had always bent his back in silence slowly straightened up. Looking at the devastation and the terrified people, the weary warmth in his eyes froze inch by inch. He said, though it sounded more like he was speaking to this world that devoured people:
"This road ends here."
Now he has placed the bloodstained Yellow Heaven banner in my hands.
Tied to the other end of that banner are thousands upon thousands of lives, people I had seen only at the soup kitchen, but could no longer turn away from.
The Yellow Heaven is not dead.
Because there are still people who refuse to live on their knees
