Year One of Hongwu.
In the capital, Fourth Master Zhu trained his Nine Yangs within and his Diamond Body without. Carrying a golden-ringed saber, he hacked his way from the city gates to the palace entrance.
Zhu Yuanzhang had just returned from paying respects to his ancestors when he saw him and was stunned. “My father is still alive?”
He took the assumed name Zhu Balang and became Fourth Master Zhu’s neighbor.
Fourth Master Zhu opened an academy in the capital. His three thousand disciples did whatever they pleased and feared nothing.
Zhu Yuanzhang: “Fourth Master, you’re actually my father.”
Fourth Master Zhu: “I treat you like a younger brother, and you treat me like your father?”
Zhu Yuanzhang: “Old man, would you like to be the retired emperor?”
Fourth Master Zhu: “How much did you drink? You’re completely smashed.”
The retired emperor of Great Ming, the academy’s teacher, the Zhu family’s living King of Hell, the greatest Confucian sage of the age: a man who could execute anyone and judge the emperor guilty of tyranny.
