A Dream of Prince Ma’s Southern Journey

There’s an unwritten rule in the Three Realms: you can offend anyone, but never Lord Ma, because he has three eyes and can see through your past and present lives, your good and evil, and the causes and consequences of your actions. But no one knows that Lord Ma, revered as the “Three-Eyed Divine Light,” never actually had a third eye. His name is Ma Wangye. He was once a lamp wick before the Buddha at Spirit Mountain. Moved by compassion, he burned the Lone Fire Ghost to death and was banished to the mortal world to undergo three tribulations. In his first life, he was born with two pupils, but after seeing through the injustice of the world, people saddled him with the name “Three-Eyed.” In his second life, he mastered the divine arts of fire and called himself the Heavenly King Huaguang. He rebelled against the Celestial Court solely to shatter its hypocritical hierarchy of immortals. In his third life, he descended into Fengdu three times to save his mother from the depths of hell, throwing the Three Realms into turmoil and ultimately becoming the foremost of Taoism’s Four Guardian Saints. Everyone says, “Lord Ma has three eyes,” but they don’t know that his eye was neither inborn nor granted by the gods. He forced himself to “see” it into existence through the blood and tears of one life after another. He has no need for a third eye, because he has already seen through everything: the so-called immortals are not always compassionate, and the so-called demons are not always evil. All he wants is to protect the flame in his heart.