The Age of the Cauldron

A passage from the later-era Cauldron-Bearing Sacred Age says:

In Pingqiu, the few slaughter the many, and blood fills the land with its stench. Across the barren wastes, schemes intertwine, and lives are twisted by treachery.

His achievements could protect the world for a thousand ages, yet even ten thousand years could not wash away the hated name he left behind.

You are no selfless savior, so why pretend to be kind and virtuous?

Thus, in grief, grievance, sorrow, and a life gone to waste,

I make a private offering to the fate of all living beings, and beg the gods and ghosts to descend into the world.

*

Ming means drawing near to the light, bright and clear; He means radiance, bold and unrestrained, boundlessly glorious.

This name weighed upon his fate, bound his spirit, and trapped him in a mortal body. It was bound to a curse: when the body perished, the spirit would vanish. No reincarnation, no release.

Ming He was summoned into the mortal world and took possession of a mortal body, becoming a prince of Nanque. Fifteen years later, he finally met the so-called Supreme Lord of Qianning.

The mortal dynasty had joined forces with the Immortal Realm, willing to sacrifice a life, a city, even an entire nation's people, to forge another false god.

By then, he had already spent twelve years as a hostage in Beidi, roaming this chaotic, absurd land and realm, which was nevertheless called the Cauldron-Bearing Age.

*

As the years passed, the youth set out alone to pacify Pingqiu, establish a sacred sect, take in disciples, form karmic ties, eliminate dissenters, earn a wicked reputation, and declare himself supreme.

People said that saving the common folk from calamity and restoring order to the court and the state were the duties of the powerful.

Cultivators argued that reversing the collapse of Heaven's mandate and shaping a god from a mortal body was the greatest good fortune of his life.

But Ming He believed that every hardship he had suffered in this life had been brought upon him by other people.

The lowly slave of the pleasure quarters, the Supreme Lord of Qianning, the children of the imperial house, the heirs to spiritual bloodlines, even the strange souls who had entered this world...

Everyone was driven by ambition; everything was a scheme.

*

An old friend's selfish desires, a beloved disciple's treachery, and even talk of laughable infatuation and a foolish longing for deep, enduring love.

There was turmoil in every conversation and encounter; everyone was a piece on the board, whether laying a trap or falling into one. True hearts were hard to find.

A great calamity once every ten thousand years, a war in the Immortal Realm once every thousand, and living beings laid waste.

Two hundred years of a fractured dynasty and a world thrown into chaos: what did anything beyond these mountains have to do with him?

All he craved was riding freely, galloping through the mountain streams.

All she longed for was sleeping drunk amid a sea of flowers, raising a cup before her lord.

All they hoped for was a bright moon over the sea and thousands of lights across the land.

"If there were no hatred or resentment, no sorrow or grievance, and all were clear of heart,

with peace and prosperity beneath the Cauldron-Bearing Age, why enter Pingqiu at all?"

▼ Explanations and quotations are in the author's notes. Many details are the author's own inventions.

▼ Everyone is unhinged; the writing is a little overwrought and fanciful.

[Important Notes]

▲ The characters' values do not represent the author's own.

▲ Many supporting characters have unrequited feelings for the protagonist.

▲ The supporting cast has complicated relationships, but the protagonist has no romantic pairing and stands alone.

▲ Slow-building ensemble story. The writing is unpolished, and the plot runs wild like a horse.

[One of the author's daily-madness series]

#An old draft from the beginning of 2020#

#Come guess who will have the last laugh#

Theme: I'm not sad, I just laugh out loud