Three Lives Three Worlds
Pillow Book of Samsara:
三生三世 枕上书之梦回洪荒远古时
At the dawn of the Age of Chaos, Heaven and Earth was a formless mass resembling a hen’s egg. Inside the egg gestates an ancient God. The first of all Gods, his name, Pan Gu.
God Pan Gu could not endure the drizzling primal chaos after opening his eyes, so he transformed his hand into a giant hatchet and cleaved the forsaken mass of Heaven and Earth into two, separating them. From then on, the world of the Eight Realms had a Heaven and an Earth.
As separating the Heavens and splitting the Earth was a matter that required extreme effort, God Pan Gu exhausted all of his primal strength. Shortly after Heaven and Earth were separated, he perished. His spiritual essence returned to Heaven and Earth and the First Gods were born.
The most powerful amongst them, Father God and Mother God, possessed spiritual knowledge. Upon taking physical form, they assumed the role of creation God Pan Gu left behind.
Following the law of the Heavens, they shifted the Four Seas, built the Six Universes and formed the Eight Realms, allowing this formless world to complete the demarcation between Heaven and Earth. Gradually the sun, moon and stars evolved, and there was night and day, four seasons, mountains, valleys, rivers and seas, grassy plains and forests.
The world of the Four Seas and Eight Realms was born.
Following the birth of the world, came the five races of the Gods, Demons, Ghosts, Monsters and Humans brought forth by the spiritual energy of Heaven and Earth. The five races coexisted within the Four Seas and Eight Realms with male and female as life partners, continuing the cycle of life.
When it came to the last 150,000 years since the birth of the five races, everyone was in fact getting by fairly harmoniously. But as the population of each race became larger and larger, it wasn’t long before their individual territories were no longer sufficient to sustain them. As a result, the curtains of the acts of war between the five races were drawn.
To say the war was between the five races was far-fetched. In reality, it was more like the war between the three races of the Gods, Demons and Ghosts. The Monster and the Human races were significantly weaker, and had to rely on the other three races for survival.
As the seemingly endless war dragged on, starting and stopping sporadically, the two weaker races simply had no power to discourse. This was especially true of the human race; they were always the first to become the sacrificial offering to the war.
By this time, Father God was already in his twilight years, spending much of his time worrying about the war between the five races. But he was powerless to stop the neverending skirmishes.
After deliberating for a time, he built a school named Water Marsh in the wilderness on the eastern side of Kun Lun. Father God networked with talented individuals of the five races to attend his Water Marsh School in order to nurture their talents further.
He had hoped that by letting the powerful clans of each race socially mingle, they could forge a better understanding of each other, potentially reducing future conflict between the five races.
At the same time, Father God believed in the laws of Heaven and destiny. In the primal chaos outside the Four Seas and Eight Realms, an earthen pot of demonic flowers had grown out of Pan Gu’s immortal remains after years of fertilization by the essence in his blood.
This earthen pot of flowers was the Scarlet Lotus. The petals of the flower had inherited Pan Gu’s ability to create worlds; from every petal, a new world was born, splintering the formless chaos outside the Four Seas and Eight Realms into many small worlds. Hence, the three thousand large worlds and ten billion mortal realms were born.
But as the three thousand large worlds were transformed from the petals of a demonic flower, their birth was accompanied by the essence of evil.
In the few hundred thousand years following this event, Father God harmonised the evil essence in the mortal realms alongside teaching his students at Water Marsh. He had earnestly hoped that his students would develop friendship and mutual support towards one another, hence retaining friendly respect towards people of other races and clans when they returned home to assume their key roles.
Father God had been in existence since the dawn of time and was not naive to believe he could succeed in achieving peace in this way and understood that the possibility was quite small. Therefore, he settled for the next best thing. If he could nurture a few talented individuals to take over his legacy to protect the human race during these troubled times, preventing the genocide of humans, it would be a good thing.
Unfortunately, both of Father God’s hopes came to naught in his lifetime. Even during the last hundred years of his life, he was forced to see one of his best disciples at Water Marsh, his own eldest son — God Mo Yuan, stepping towards what he could never approve of; the pursuit of war to end war with no second thoughts. Right up till the time his Father faded, Mo Yuan still never looked back.
Father God did not like Mo Yuan’s hands to be stained with the blood of his enemies through the use of warfare to stop a war. But God Mo Yuan had only entered the battlefield for 700 years, yet he was able to command his army of heavenly gods to completely subdue the forces of the Ghost and Monster races. This ended over a hundred thousand years of warfare between the five races, allowing the long running war to finally reach its conclusion.
Since then, the Ghost and Monster races had to acknowledge their allegiance to the Gods, and the small and weak Human race fell under their protection.
The Demon race which had retreated from the war after High God Mo Yuan became the commanding leader directing the tumultuous war between the five races, did not need to pay tribute and capitulate to the Gods. However, according to the signed treaty, << Pledge of Zhang Wei >>, the Demon race shall remain only in the Southern Realm, and must never create trouble with the other races.
After more than a hundred thousand years of chaos, Heaven and Earth appeared to finally be on the verge of welcoming the elusive long term peace and stability of the Four Seas and Eight Realms.
But just before High God Mo Yuan officiated the Investiture of the Gods of the Eight Realms at the peak of Nine Heavens, ending the Old Era of the Gods, and establishing a New Order on Heaven and Earth, something unexpected happened.
The Ancestor Goddess of the Demon race, Shao Wan, had always sympathised with the plight of the Human race. So she took advantage of this time, when everyone was too busy with the ceremony to notice, to execute her plan.
Using her Phoenix Nirvana Fire, she destroyed the Wakagi door separating the Four Seas and Eight Realms and the ten billion mortal worlds, sending the human race into the mortal worlds. As a result, she had exhausted all of her immortal force, and sadly, faded into ashes.
Although the evil essence surrounding the ten billion mortal worlds had already been completely harmonised and purified at this point, it was still a rampage of wind covered in karmic fire, an uninhabitable place for humans to live in.
However, Shao Wan had the foresight to prepare for this eventuality. Before using her phoenix Nirvana fire, she had travelled to Gu Yao Mountains to visit Light Goddess, Zu Ti, requesting for her assistance.
After Shao Wan faded, Zu Ti immediately rushed to the mortal realms with the task she was entrusted to do. She sacrificed herself to the chaos world, transforming her body into all living things, allowing the human race to settle down safely in the mortal realms.
This final act severed the human race completely from the immortal world of the Four Seas and Eight Realms, ending several hundred thousand years of reliance on stronger races. In the long run, this dependence would have eventually led to the sorrowful fate of extinction.
Shao Wan’s fading, the opening of the Wakagi door, the changing residence of the human race, and Zu Ti’s sacrifice shook Heaven and Earth. The four races were all in an uproar.
Within the Eight Realms, several enlightened elders of the Monster race had a private discussion. They concluded that High God Mo Yuan with his heartless iron fist would surely take this opportunity to use his army to flatten the now leaderless Demon race, fulfilling his quest to unite all of Heaven and Earth; the Investiture of the Gods likely to be postponed indefinitely.
However, this fell outside their expectations as the God race did not show any signs of deploying their army. Six days later, the Investiture ceremony proceeded as scheduled at the peak of the Nine Heavens.
On the day of the Investiture, on the highest stand, High God Mo Yuan stood in his white robes, his complexion smooth like jade; he looked once again like the handsome god he was in his usual plain robes after changing out of his armour. It appeared as if he had transformed back to the peaceful and refined noble look of his Water Marsh years.
But he was different now.
Seven hundred years of cruel relentless killing on the battlefields had stained his peacefulness with blood. His pure and speckless aura was now steeped in ferocity and bloodlust, deeply hidden by eyes that were now exuding the power and influence of the King of Gods.
The Investiture ceremony lasted for seven days.
Ever since Pan Gu separated Heaven and Earth, the Eight Realms had been a chaotic mess for 500,000 years.
For the first time in history, there were categories of Gods and every God had a position, and Heaven and Earth now had a unified statute stipulating laws that all five races will need to abide by. All of these were a sign that the chaotic and warring Age of Great Chaos had come to an end.
Every leader of the God, Ghost and Monster races who participated in the Investiture were bowled over by the plainly dressed, but powerful young God. All of them firmly believed that under the leadership of this King of Gods, the endless chaotic wars that drove many to despair will finally come to an end. An era of peace was imminent.
But what every living thing in the Eight Realms did not expect, happened. Three months after the Investiture, when matters within the four races were on the right track, the King of Gods they had come to trust and rely on simply disappeared.
For three years, the Gods turned the world upside down, looking for their King, but no one was able to find a trace of his presence. Everyone eventually accepted that their King of Gods had indeed disappeared, abandoning everything he had built. No one knew the reason why.
An imaginative young immortal who loved to read folk stories was privately discussing the issue with his companion, “Could the disappearance of the King of Gods be related to Goddess Shao Wan? Shortly after Goddess Shao Wan faded, the King disappeared ... it was said that while they were at Water Marsh, the King and Goddess Shao Wan had some friendship ...”
His companion did not believe him and immediately gave some concrete evidence refuting his claims, “What sort of friendship? Is it the irreconcilable type? All of Heaven knows Goddess Shao Wan and our King of Gods had always been against each other! Saying that the King got tired of managing the four races and decided to run away halfway is more believable than what you said!”
“Take a look at Emperor Lord Dong Hua of the Heavenly Jade Sea, he did exactly that. He had been alongside the King during the war expeditions and was doing well. At the time, I was thinking about who would assume the title of the King of Gods and mused between Mo Yuan and Dong Hua. I did not expect the Emperor Lord to say he got vexed and promptly left for the Heavenly Jade Sea to live in seclusion.”
The young immortal was reminded by his companion and remembered the story. He felt that his companion made sense. Nodding his head seriously, he replied, “The Venerable Wild Magnificent Eight Saints, everyone of them had a strange temperament. Our King is one of the Eight Saints, who knows when his strange temperament might flare up …”
Hailing from Ten Miles Peach Forest, High God Zhe Yan who had once been classmates with Mo Yuan, Dong Hua and Shao Wan, was a perpetual gossip.
With his invisibility spell on, he walked past the two young immortals and vaguely overheard their conversation. He couldn’t help but look toward the direction of Zhang Wei Mountains with a sigh as a pang of regret for Mo Yuan and Shao Wan washed over him.
Zhe Yan felt that while these two people had been entangled with each other for thousands of years, the rest of the world had remained unaware. In the end, whenever these two people were mentioned by others, the words “the two cannot exist together” came to their minds.
It was a pity that apart from this, there seemed to be nothing existing, and nothing left behind, compelling one to sigh in sadness.
Credits
Header Pictures: Tencent, Eternal Love of Dream
Story: 唐七 | Tang Qi
Book Title: 三生三世 枕上书之梦回洪荒远古时 | Pillow Book of Samsara: Back to Chaos in a Dream
Copyright Statement
The above translation is translated by our translation team from Chinese author, Tang Qi’s original work, Back to Chaos in a Dream Part 1, an outtake of her book, Three Lives Three Worlds, Pillow Book of Samsara. All copyright belongs to Tang Qi.
以上的英语翻译都是本翻译师从唐七原作， 三生三世枕上书番外， 梦回洪荒元古时第一段所翻译的。版权都是作者唐七所拥有。