The Human Way in Hongwu: The Dynasty Suppresses the Immortal Sects

After his soul crossed over to Haozhou at the end of the Yuan dynasty, he became Zhu Chongba, who had just buried his parents and was stranded at Huangjue Temple. This world was plagued not only by famine and lives as cheap as grass. Demonic beings preyed on people amid the chaos, while aristocratic clans and sects monopolized the spiritual veins, leaving ordinary people with no hope of ascending to immortality. It was hell-level difficulty from the start. But he had brought with him several centuries of civilization and knowledge from the future, and saw through the fundamental logic of this cultivation world at a glance: to survive, seize power; to win, establish a dynasty that could command the world. Starting as a lowly foot soldier in the Red Turban Army, he recruited born warrior-cultivators such as Xu Da and Chang Yuchun, put Liu Bowen in charge of formations and heavenly secrets, and tasked Li Shanchang with spiritual fields and logistics. He gathered refugees and taught them breathing techniques, enforced military discipline, and established rules for mortals and immortals to uphold together, steadily building his strength. At the Battle of Lake Poyang, he won an astonishing victory over Chen Youliang’s 600,000-strong dragon fleet. At the siege of Pingjiang, he crushed the alliance of Jiangnan sects backing Zhang Shicheng. He led the northern campaign, swept away the Yuan court and the shamans of the steppe, and reclaimed Yanyun and the northern spiritual veins. At a pace far beyond anything in history, he unified the realm, founded the Great Ming, and took the reign title Hongwu. After ascending the throne, he introduced revolutionary new policies: he promulgated the Hongwu Spiritual Code, established state-run cultivation academies, and broke the sects’ thousand-year monopoly on cultivation; abolished hereditary artisan status, developed spiritual machinery and talisman cannons, opened maritime trade to seek spiritual islands and mine immortal ores, and introduced new spiritual-field methods to benefit all the people; overhauled the spiritual officials’ inspection system, bestowed advanced techniques on meritorious officials so they could pursue immortality together, and reformed the imperial clan’s succession to eradicate the troubles of future generations. He drove the remnants of the Yuan north, expanded south into the Nanyang, opened routes west to the Western Regions, and sailed east to the immortal mountains. In this life, the Hongwu reign was no longer a transitional period of recovery and renewal. It was the beginning of the Great Ming, a humane dynasty ruling the cultivation world, and the founding of an unprecedented supreme immortal empire, vast in territory and flourishing for both mortals and immortals alike.