Liu Yu died.
At thirty, he had achieved nothing. He had chosen to lie flat and let life pass him by, only to die young. It was only after death that he learned even lying flat could be a sin. His resentment was so deep that he was sentenced to the Stone Mill Hell, where he would be ground to pieces ten thousand times.
Just as he was being crushed into a bloody pulp, suffering beyond endurance, someone came to his rescue. The ancestors of the Liu family had guarded a gate for generations, and the merit they had accumulated over more than a dozen generations earned him one chance to return to the land of the living.
His mission: transmigrate through history and undo age-old tragedies.
His first stop was the banks of the Miluo River. During the reign of King Qingxiang of Chu, a frail old man, banished for three years, was preparing to leap into the river.
Liu Yu asked him, “The Han River is clear and irrigates both banks. The river is muddy, yet it irrigates both banks too. What good does it do the people to take only the clear water and reject the muddy?”
Qu Yuan fell silent. Then he wrote a letter of apology.
Letting intellectuals lead an army similar to the Boxers 🤦 That's such a wild idea!