The Record of the Immortal Tribulation, Volume One: Testimony

A Pact of a Hundred Years: The Silence of the Gods and Their Testimony Before Humanity’s Tragedies

Opening inscription: “October 2, 1949, the day after the founding of New China. Eight hundred summonses were sent to every temple. This was not a trial to judge the gods for their crimes. They were summoned to the human world to tell what they had witnessed over the past four hundred years but could not prevent. Guan Yu said, ‘I saw the eight hundred thousand people of Yangzhou.’ The City God said, ‘I saw the two or three hundred thousand people in Nanjing during the Taiping Rebellion.’ Mazu said, ‘I saw the twenty thousand at Lüshun during the First Sino-Japanese War.’ The Dragon King said, ‘I saw people kneeling in drought, begging for rain.’ The Kitchen God said, ‘I saw one stove after another go cold.’ The Thunder God said, ‘My thunder was drowned out by the cannons of the human world.’ They all saw it, but none of them could save anyone.”