Cultivators in the Xuanhuang Great Realm are divided into ranks. Those with good spiritual roots live in the Nine Heavens Immortal Domain, while those with poor ones survive in the mortal lands of the Ten Earths, penned up and exploited like cattle and sheep, their bones crushed to pave the roads. And they still have to kneel and give thanks.
Because two "Sages" stand above them.
Yuhengzi, Lord of the Demon-Slaying Hall. In flowing white robes, he tearfully proclaims, "The cultivation world is sick." For three hundred years, he has personally edited countless pieces of "evidence," sending every fellow cultivator who stood in the way of his profits to prison. Lowly rogue cultivators call him "the people's upright lord," but they don't know that three thousand skeletons lie buried beneath his alchemy chamber.
Xuanguzi, a scholar of the Agricultural Sage Manor. In plain clothes and straw sandals, he has spent three hundred years writing Treatise on Spirit Fields, telling the poor, "You suffer because the Immortal Domain is sucking you dry." Every time he condemns the Immortal Domain, his followers grow more fervent. Every time he publishes a compassionate essay, the ingredients for the Rejuvenation Pills he monopolizes rise in price by ten percent. The profits support his only son, hidden away on an island.
The two Sages have acted out this charade together for three hundred years. One creates the "villains": he brands everyone unwilling to be exploited as corrupt, fabricates evidence through his editing tricks, and sends them to the executioner's block. The other creates the "good guys": he passionately denounces the corruption Yuhengzi creates, making the poor believe that "if we just follow the teacher, the world will get better."
The poor believed him. For three hundred years. They believed him even as their bones were ground to dust and used to pave the transport roads through Xuanguzi's spirit-field array, convinced the teacher was doing it for the greater good.
Until six people crawled out of the dark river.
Destined to be the Star of Destruction, Chu Kuang, son of a butcher.
