Heaven Official's Blessing CHAPTER 1

Heaven Official's Blessing 

 CHAPTER 1

Prolog: Heaven Official’s Blessing

Among all the gods and buddhas of heaven, there was one famous laughingstock of the three realms.

Legends have it that, eight hundred years ago, there was an ancient kingdom in the Midlands called the Kingdom of Xianle.

The Kingdom of Xianle was vast in land and bountiful in resources. There were four treasures within the kingdom: cloud-like beauties, vibrant music and marvelous literature, gold and gems, and their one infamous crown prince.

What would be the best way to describe this crown prince? Well, he was a unique man.

He was beloved by the king and the queen, extremely doted upon. They would often say: “My son will become a great ruler in the future, his renown will echo through history.” 

However, the crown prince wasn’t interested in imperial power or wealth in the common world in the least.

What he was interested in, in his own words, was——

“I will save the common people!” 

-

When he was young, the crown prince focused only on his cultivation, and there were two little stories that were widespread of his path of cultivation.

The first story happened when he was seventeen years old.

That year, a grand Shangyuan1 Heavenly Ceremonial Procession took place in the Kingdom of Xianle.

Although the custom of conducting these divine ceremonies has since fallen out of fashion for centuries, it is still possible to deduce what a grand occasion of jubilation it must have been from remnants of ancient books and oral tradition.

The wondrous Shangyuan Festival, upon the Great Martial Avenue.

Seas of people gathered on either side of the grand street, there were royals and nobles talking and laughing in merriment atop the high platforms. The glorious royal warriors donned in armour opened the paths while the maidens danced elegantly, their fair hands scattering flowers; who was to say whether the flowers or the maidens were the more beautiful. From within the golden carriage came melodious music that drifted in the air across the entire imperial city, and coming last of the procession was a grand stage pulled by sixteen white horses in golden bridles.

And upon this towering grand stage was the God-Pleasing Warrior, on whom all focused their attention.

At the Heavenly Ceremonial Procession, the God-Pleasing Warrior wore a golden mask. Donning glamorous attire and with a sacred sword in hand, he played the role of the number one martial god of a thousand years who subdued evil: The Heavenly Martial Emperor, Jun Wu.

It was the greatest of honours to be chosen to play the God-Pleasing Warrior; thus, the selection criteria were exceedingly strict. The one chosen this year was that crown prince. Everyone from all over the kingdom believed that he would bring about the most thrilling performance of the God-Pleasing Warrior.

However, an accident happened that day.

During the third tour of the procession, it passed by a city wall that was dozens of meters tall. At the time, the martial god upon the grand stage was just about to slay the demon with a strike. It was the climax scene of the performance, both sides of the street were at the height of excitement. The top of the city wall was also swarming with people fighting to watch the show, pushing and shoving each other.

Right then, a small child fell from the edge of the wall.

Screams reached the heavens. Just when everyone thought this small child would stain the Great Martial Avenue with blood, the crown prince looked up, leapt into flight, and caught the boy.

The people only caught a glimpse of a white silhouette that flew like a soaring bird before the crown prince already landed with that small child in his arms. The golden mask fell and revealed that young and handsome face behind the mask.

In the next second, cheers erupted.

The people were thrilled and joyous, but the Guoshi 2 of the royal cultivation hall were troubled.

They had never imagined such a huge problem would occur. This was ominous luck! The gravest of misfortunes!

The guoshi were so distraught, they were losing hair as fast as the rain fell. After much contemplation, they called over the crown prince.

They very courteously requested him thus: “Your Highness, might you be willing to face the wall in reflection for a month? It doesn’t really need to be a month, as long as the intention’s there.”

The crown prince smiled, and replied as such: “No.” 

This was how he said it: “Saving people is not anything bad. Why would the heavens convict me for something I’ve done right?” 

Uh…but what if the heavens did convict you?

“Then, it’s the heavens who are wrong. Why would I apologize to those who are wrong?”

The guoshi could not argue.

This crown prince was thus such a person.

He had never run into anything he couldn’t do, nor had he ever met anyone who didn’t love him. He was the justice of the mortal realm, he was the centre of the world.

So, even though the guoshi were frustrated—“What the hell do you know?!”—it wasn’t their place to say much, and they didn’t dare say too much regardless. His Highness wouldn’t listen either way.

-

The second story also happened in the year the crown prince was seventeen.

Legends have it that in the south of the Yellow River, there was a bridge called Yinian3 . Upon this bridge, there was a ghost that had been lingering for years.

This ghost was exceedingly fearsome: it was donned in broken armour, the flames of karma burned beneath its feet, and its body was covered in blood and pierced by all manner of sharp weapons. Every step it took, it would leave behind a footprint of blood and fire. Every few years, it would suddenly appear at night and wander back and forth at the head of the bridge, blocking travelers to ask them three questions: 

“What is this place?” 

“Who am I?”

“What is to be done?”

The ghost would then devour whoever answered incorrectly. However, no one knew what the correct answers were. As the years went by, this ghost devoured countless travelers.

During his errant wandering, the crown prince caught word of this. So, he went and found Yinian Bridge, guarding it night after night, until finally, one night, he met the haunting ghost.

When that ghost appeared, it was indeed as horrifying as the legends said. It asked the crown prince the first question, and the crown prince answered with a smile. 

“This place is the human world.”

However, that ghost replied, “This place is the abyss.” 

An auspicious start. The first answer was already incorrect.

“Well, all three answers are going to be wrong anyway,” the crown prince thought. “So why should I wait ‘til you’re done?” 

And so he pulled out his weapon and lunged.

This fight was complete chaos. The crown prince was skilled in martial arts, but that ghost was terrifying and dauntless. The one man and the one ghost fought so hard the sun and the moon were toppling. In the end, the ghost was finally defeated.

After the ghost vanished, the crown prince planted a flowering tree at the head of the bridge. Just then, a cultivator passed by and happened to see him sprinkle a handful of dirt to send the ghost off.

He asked, “What are you doing?” 

And thus, the crown prince said the famous words: “Body in abyss, heart in paradise.” 

When that cultivator heard, he gave a light smile. He then transformed into a divine warrior donned in white armour, with auspicious clouds beneath his feet, and rode off in wind and holy light. Only then did the crown prince realize that he had accidentally met the Heavenly Martial Emperor, who had personally descended the mortal realm to defeat evil.

All the gods and celestial beings had already noticed this exceedingly outstanding God-Pleasing Warrior when he did that leap during the Shangyuan Heavenly Procession. 

So, after this meeting at Yinian Bridge, the deities asked the emperor: “How does my lord find this royal highness?” 

The emperor answered: “This child’s future is infinite.” 

That night, a celestial phenomenon manifested in the skies above the palace, and storms raged.

Amidst the flashes of lightning and the roars of thunder, the crown prince ascended.

-

Every time a mortal ascended, the heavenly realm would always shake. When this crown prince ascended, the entire heavenly realm shook with three times the normal tremors.

To achieve a fruitful cultivation truly was much too difficult. It required talent, training, and chance. It was often a long road of a hundred years in order for a god to be born.

It wasn’t that there weren’t any fortunate souls who became deities at a young age. But, there largely existed those who exhausted themselves for their entire lives and trained for a hundred years, and still there’d be no heavenly calamities4 to dawn upon them. Even if they did come to face a heavenly calamity, they would die if they couldn’t pass such a trial; even if they didn’t die, they’d be ruined. Their numbers were as numerous as the sands of the Ganges, but most were simply ignorant mortals who would spend their entire lives as nothing more than ordinary, never finding their own paths.

Yet this royal highness was no doubt the darling of the heavens. Whatever he wanted, he got; whatever he wanted to do, he succeeded; he wanted to ascend and become a god, so at the age of seventeen, he actually ascended and became a god.

He had always followed the will of the people, and the king and queen loved their son and missed him dearly. So the king ordered for great temples and shrines to be built all across the land, and for the crown prince’s statues to be erected and worshipped by all. The more believers there were, the more temples there’d be, and thus the longer his life and the stronger his spiritual powers. Thus, in a few short years, the Xianle Palace of the Crown Prince became incomparably glorious, and for a time, its prosperity and splendour reached the peak. 

——Until three years later, Xianle fell into chaos.

-

The cause of the chaos was tyranny, and rebels rose in revolt. However, while the flames of war were set ablaze all over the mortal world, the deities of the heavenly realm couldn’t easily intervene. Unless it was ghosts, monsters, and demons encroaching on the borders—otherwise, whatever was, was. 

Imagine: conflicts were everywhere in the mortal realm, and everyone believed they had reason. So if anyone were to stick a foot in, today you would back your former kingdom, tomorrow another would avenge his descendents. Thus, wouldn’t there be gods who’d want to fight each other all the time and fall into a life of disgrace? 

A situation like this for the crown prince meant he must keep his distance. But, he didn’t care at all. 

He said to the Heavenly Emperor: “I will save the common people.” 

The Heavenly Emperor was in possession of a thousand years of divine power, but even he didn’t dare hang those words off his lips. When he heard this, it was easy to imagine how he felt, yet he couldn’t do anything about the crown prince. 

So he said, “You can’t save everyone.”

“I can,” the crown prince declared.

Thus, he descended to the mortal realm without looking back.

Naturally, the people of Xianle rejoiced. However, ever since ancient times there had been one truth the people had always spoken of in the human world: when gods descended to the mortal realm without permission, there was never a good outcome.

Thus, not only were the flames of war not extinguished, they blazed even wilder.

It wasn’t that the crown prince didn’t work hard, but it would’ve been better had he not tried at all. The harder he worked, the more of a mess the war became; the people of Xianle were devastatingly battered and crushed, the number of wounded and casualties severe, and in the end, a plague swept through the entire imperial city, the rebel army broke through to the palace, and so ended the war.

If it was said Xianle was originally hanging by a thread, then the crown prince came and cut it directly.

-

After the kingdom had fallen, the people finally came to realize one thing: the crown prince they worshipped as a god was never as perfect or strong as they imagined.

More harshly, wasn’t he just some useless trash who couldn’t do anything right?!

Without anywhere to vent the anguish and pain of losing homes and families, the battered people furiously poured into the Palaces of the Crown Prince, toppled his divine statues, and burned down the divine temples.

Eight thousand temples burned for seven days and seven nights, and burned until there was nothing left. From that moment on, the martial god who guarded peace and safety vanished, and a God of Misfortune who brought disasters was born.

When the people call you a god, then you are a god. If they call you crap, then you’re crap. You are whatever they said you were. It has always been thus.

-

The crown prince couldn’t accept this reality no matter what, and what he couldn’t accept even more was the punishment he was sentenced: Banishment.

His spiritual powers were sealed, and his person knocked back down to the mortal realm.

He grew up endlessly coddled and pampered, he had never tasted the suffering of the human world before, yet this punishment threw him from the clouds down into mud. And in this mud, for the first time, he understood the taste of hunger, poverty, and filth. This was also the first time that he did things he never thought he’d do willingly: stealing, robbing, loudly cursing, and giving up on himself. He’d lost all dignity, there was no self-esteem left, and he was as unkempt as one could be. Even his most loyal servant couldn’t accept this change in him and chose to leave.

“Body in abyss, heart in paradise”. This phrase was engraved on stone monuments and plaques everywhere in Xianle. If it wasn’t for the war that burned almost all of the kingdom to the ground, if the crown prince were to see the remnants of those words, he’d probably be the first to rush up to destroy what remained.

The person who had said those words had personally proven that, when the body was in the abyss, the heart couldn’t be in paradise.

-

He ascended to the heavens quickly, but he fell from grace even faster. That awe-inspiring glance upon the Great Martial Avenue, having met evil at Yinian Bridge; it was as if it was only yesterday. However, after the heavenly realm whispered for a while, what was past was past.

Until after many years, one day, a huge rumble thundered from the sky. This royal highness ascended for the second time.

Throughout history, heavenly officials who were banished either never regained themselves, or fell into the ghost realm. There had never been many who were able to turn a new leaf after having been banished. The second ascension was fully grand and spectacular.

What was even more spectacular was that, after he ascended, he charged all the way into the heavenly realm and rampaged in full fury. Thus, he had only been ascended for the spanse of one incense time before he was knocked back down again.

One incense time. This could be considered the swiftest and the shortest ascension in history.

If the first ascension could be considered a beautiful tale, then the second ascension was a farce.

-

Having been banished twice, the heavenly realm looked upon this crown prince with full contempt. And in this contempt, there was also caution. After all, he was already threatening and on edge after the first banishment; now that he was banished twice, wasn’t he going to go berserk and avenge himself against the world?

Yet who knew, after getting banished this time, he didn’t go berserk, and was even adjusting to the banished life honestly. There were no issues at all, the only problem was…maybe he was taking things a little too seriously?

Sometimes he’d busk at the end of the street, expertly playing any instrument and singing any songs, and even shattering boulders on his chest was not beyond him. While there had long been word that this royal highness could sing and dance and was a master of many talents, unbelievably, all of his talents were being witnessed in such a fashion, truly making one feel complicated. Sometimes, he would diligently and humbly collect junk.

All the deities were shocked to the core.

Unthinkable, that things would reach this point; the point where now, if anyone was to say “the son you gave birth to is the Crown Prince of Xianle”, it’d be a curse more malicious than “may you die without sons”. 

He was once the noble and gracious crown prince, a heavenly official who made part of the divine ranks. But to have screwed up to this point, there really was no one else. And so, this was the story of the man who was known as the laughingstock of the three realms.

After laughing, those who were more sentimental might also sigh. That darling of the heavens, who once stood at such a height, had truly and thoroughly disappeared.

Divine statues collapsed, native kingdom destroyed, not a single believer remained. Gradually, he was forgotten by the world. Thus, no one knew where he drifted afterwards.

-

Another many years passed. Suddenly one day, there was another huge rumble in the sky. The heaven fell and the earth cracked, the ground trembled and the mountains shook. 

The lanterns of everlasting light shuddered, the firelights danced in fury, and all the heavenly officials jolted awake inside their own golden palaces, every one of them running out to ask each other:

Which new dignitary ascended? Such a grandiose entrance!

Yet who knew—they’d only exclaimed in wonder the first second, when in the next second, all the gods and buddhas of heaven were thunderstruck.

Weren’t you done?!

That infamous weirdo, the laughingstock of the three realms, the legendary royal highness the crown prince, he—he—he—he fucking ascended again!

Footnotes:

1 Shangyuan Festival is also known as the Lantern Festival, marking the 15th and last day of the Lunar New Year. It’s a day for worshipping and celebrating the celestial heavens.

2 “Guoshi” can be translated as “Imperial/State Preceptor”. It is a high-ranking government position that also has significant religious responsibilities. Guoshi serve as the religious heads of state under the Emperor, and are the tutors, chaplains, and confidants of the Emperor and his direct heirs. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Preceptor

3 [一念] means “One Thought” or “Fleeting Thought”. This is also the first half of the idiom, “Wrong decision made in a moment of weakness.”

4 Before a Daoist Cultivator can ascend, they must go through the trial of a Heavenly Calamity in order to pass to the heavens. It’s usually a fierce storm full of piercing lightning.

CHAPTER 2