The Book of Changes in the Western Zhou

Do you think Gonggong was an evil god who angrily crashed into Mount Buzhou? Do you think Nüwa mending the sky is a heartwarming tale of salvation? Do you think Hou Yi shooting down the suns and Yu the Great taming the floods are heroic legends? In the third year of King Li of Zhou, Li Guizang, deputy archivist of the royal library, rescued half a copy of The Broken Scroll of Mount Buzhou from a fire. From that moment on, he overturned three thousand years of ancient mythology rewritten by Heaven. He believed in neither ghosts and gods nor ascension. He believed only in written evidence and historical truth. While others sought immortality and fought tooth and nail for a place among the immortals, he was determined to expose “ascension” as a shackle Heaven had placed on all living beings. With scholarship, he debunked lies; with his Daoist heart, he defied Heaven’s laws. He traveled across the Nine Provinces and fought his way through layers of encirclement, uncovering the truth: Heaven’s laws were a tool for monopolizing the Dao, and the Heavenly Court was a cage that confined the Great Dao. He sought neither eternal life nor power. He only wanted the obscured Great Dao to return to the human world, so everyone could hear the Dao and take control of their own fate. Many years later, an old man riding an ox before Hangu Pass wrote the five thousand words of the Dao De Jing. No one knew that behind the words “The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao” lay the legend of an archivist who sought the Dao for all under Heaven. This story is entirely fictional.