In the vast sky full of gods and buddhas, there is a famous laughingstock across the three realms.
It is said that eight hundred years ago, in the central plains, there was an ancient kingdom called the Divine Joy Kingdom.
The Divine Joy Kingdom was vast and rich, with a happy and harmonious people. The kingdom had four treasures: countless beauties, splendid music and writings, gold and jewels, and a renowned Crown Prince.
This Crown Prince was quite a remarkable man.
The king and queen cherished him like a precious jewel, often proudly declaring, "Our son will be a wise ruler, celebrated for generations."
However, the Crown Prince had no interest in worldly power and wealth.
What he was interested in, as he often said to himself, was—
"I want to save the world!"
·
As a young prince, he was dedicated to cultivation, and during his journey, two well-known stories spread widely.
The first story happened when he was seventeen.
That year, the Divine Joy Kingdom held a grand Lantern Festival.
Although this traditional divine event had been abandoned for hundreds of years, people could still imagine its grandeur from ancient texts and oral traditions.
During the Lantern Festival, on divine martial street, the streets were packed with people.
Nobles chatted and laughed from high towers; royal warriors, clad in armor, cleared the way; young girls danced gracefully, their snow-white hands scattering a rain of flowers, making it hard to tell if the flowers or the girls were more beautiful; melodious music floated from golden carriages, drifting over the entire royal city.
At the end of the procession, sixteen white horses with golden bridles pulled a grand platform.
On this high platform was the celebrated Divine Harmony Warrior.
During the festival, the Divine Harmony Warrior would wear a golden mask, don splendid clothes, and hold a treasured sword, playing the role of the first martial god of a thousand years—Emperor Jun Wu.
Being chosen as the Divine Harmony Warrior was the highest honor, and the selection criteria were extremely strict.
That year, the chosen one was the Crown Prince. The entire kingdom believed he would deliver the most spectacular performance ever.
However, an unexpected event occurred that day.
During the third lap of the procession around the city, they passed a city wall several stories high.
At that moment, the martial god on the platform was about to slay a demon with a single sword strike.
This was the most thrilling moment, and the crowd on both sides of the street was in an uproar, as was the crowd above the city wall, with people craning their necks and jostling to get a better view.
Just then, a child fell from the top of the city wall.
Screams filled the air. Just as people thought the child would crash onto divine martial street, the Crown Prince slightly raised his head, leaped into the air, and caught him.
People only had time to see a white figure soaring like a bird before the Crown Prince landed safely with the child. The golden mask fell, revealing a young and handsome face.
The next moment, the crowd erupted in cheers.
The commoners were overjoyed, but the royal court's national advisors were troubled.
They never expected such a major mistake.
It was ominous, very ominous!
Each lap of the platform around the royal city symbolized a year of peace and prosperity for the nation. Now that it was interrupted, wouldn't that invite disaster?
The advisors were so worried they were pulling their hair out, and after much thought, they invited the Crown Prince and gently suggested, "Your Highness, could you meditate in seclusion for a month to show remorse? You don't have to actually meditate, just make a gesture."
The Crown Prince smiled and said, "No."
He said, "Saving someone isn't a bad thing. Why would heaven punish me for doing the right thing?"
But what if heaven does punish you?
"Then heaven would be wrong. Why should the right apologize to the wrong?"
The advisors were speechless.
This was the kind of person the Crown Prince was.
He had never encountered anything he couldn't do, nor anyone who didn't love him. He was the right path of the world, the center of the universe.
So, although the advisors were pained, thinking, "You don't understand anything!"
They couldn't say much, nor dared to say much. After all, the Crown Prince wouldn't listen anyway.
·
The second story also happened when the Crown Prince was seventeen.
Legend has it that south of the Yellow River, there was a bridge called the Bridge of Thoughts, where a ghost had lingered for many years.
This ghost was terrifying: wearing tattered armor, stepping on karmic fire, covered in blood and weapons, leaving a trail of blood and fire with each step.
Every few years, it would suddenly appear at night, wandering at the bridgehead, stopping passersby to ask three questions: "Where is this place?" "Who am I?" "What should I do?"
If answered incorrectly, the ghost would swallow the person whole. But no one knew the correct answers, so over the years, the ghost had devoured countless travelers.
The Crown Prince heard about this during his travels, found the Bridge of Thoughts, and kept watch at the bridgehead every night until one night he encountered the haunting ghost.
The ghost appeared, indeed as eerie and frightening as the rumors said. It asked the Crown Prince the first question, and the Crown Prince smiled and replied, "This is the human world."
The ghost said, "This is the endless void."
The first question was answered incorrectly right from the start.
The Crown Prince thought, since all three questions would be answered wrong anyway, why wait for you to finish asking? So he drew his weapon and started fighting.
The battle was fierce and intense. The Crown Prince was highly skilled, and the ghost was even more ferocious and terrifying.
The man and ghost fought on the bridge as if day and night were reversed, and finally, the ghost was defeated.
After the ghost disappeared, the Crown Prince planted a flower tree at the bridgehead. At that moment, a Taoist passed by, saw him scattering a handful of yellow earth, and asked, "What are you doing?"
The Crown Prince said the famous eight words: "In the endless void, my heart is in paradise."
The Taoist smiled slightly, transformed into a god in white armor, and rode the clouds, catching the wind, and ascended with the light of heaven.
Only then did the Crown Prince realize he had encountered the god Emperor Jun Wu himself, who had come down to subdue demons.
The celestial gods had noticed this outstanding Divine Harmony Warrior during the Lantern Festival.
After seeing him at the Bridge of Thoughts, a celestial asked the Emperor, "What do you think of this Crown Prince?"
The Emperor replied with eight words: "This child has limitless potential."
That night, an unusual phenomenon appeared above the royal palace, with a storm brewing.
Amidst the lightning and thunder, the Crown Prince ascended to the heavens.
·
Whenever someone ascends, the heavenly realm trembles. When this Crown Prince ascended, the entire heavenly realm shook three times.
Achieving immortality is extremely difficult.
It requires talent, cultivation, and opportunity. The birth of a god often takes a hundred years.
There are prodigies who ascend in their youth; there are many who spend a lifetime cultivating without ever encountering a heavenly tribulation; even if they do encounter it, they might die or be crippled if they can't overcome it; and countless others live their lives in mediocrity, unable to find their path.
This Crown Prince was undoubtedly heaven's favored one.
What he wanted, he got; what he wanted to do, he accomplished; when he wanted to ascend to godhood, he truly ascended at the age of seventeen.
He was already beloved by the people, and with the king and queen missing their son, they ordered the construction of temples and statues for him everywhere, and the people worshipped him.
The more believers and temples, the longer his life and the stronger his powers.
Thus, the Crown Prince's palace in the Divine Joy Kingdom flourished and reached its peak within a few years.
—Until three years later, chaos erupted in the Divine Joy Kingdom.
·
The chaos began with the king's tyranny and a rebellion.
However, even though the human world was engulfed in war, the celestial officials couldn't intervene at will. Unless demons or ghosts crossed the boundary, things would proceed as they would.
Imagine, if the human world was full of conflicts and everyone thought they were right, if everyone intervened, today you'd support your homeland, tomorrow someone else would avenge their descendants, wouldn't that lead to constant celestial battles and darkness?
In the Crown Prince's case, it was even more necessary to avoid suspicion.
But he didn't care. He told the Emperor, "I want to save the world."
The Emperor, with a thousand years of divine power, didn't dare to say those words lightly. Hearing the Crown Prince say it, one can imagine his feelings.
But he couldn't do anything about it and said, "You can't save everyone."
The Crown Prince said, "I can."
So, he resolutely descended to the mortal world.
The people of the Divine Joy Kingdom naturally celebrated. However, countless folk tales have long tried to convey a truth: when gods descend to the mortal world without permission, it never ends well.
As a result, the war not only didn't stop but became even more intense.
It's not that the Crown Prince didn't try, but he might as well not have. The more he tried, the worse the situation became, with the people of the Divine Joy Kingdom suffering heavy casualties.
Eventually, a plague swept through the royal city, the rebels stormed the palace, and the war ended.
If the Divine Joy Kingdom was barely hanging on before, the Crown Prince's actions finished it off.
·
After the kingdom's destruction, people suddenly realized something:
The Crown Prince they worshipped as a god was not as perfect and powerful as they imagined.
To put it bluntly, wasn't he just a failure who couldn't accomplish anything?
With no outlet for their pain and loss, the wounded people angrily stormed the Crown Prince's palace, toppling the statues and burning the temple.
Eight thousand temples burned for seven days and nights, leaving nothing behind.
From then on, a martial god who protected peace disappeared, and a god of calamity was born.
People say you're a god, you're a god; they say you're nothing, you're nothing; they say you're something, you have to be that something. That's how it is.
·
The Crown Prince couldn't accept this reality. What he couldn't accept even more was the punishment he had to face: exile.
His powers were sealed, and he was cast down to the mortal world.
He had grown up pampered and had never experienced hardship.
This punishment brought him from the clouds to the mud. In this mud, he experienced hunger, poverty, and filth for the first time.
For the first time, he did things he never imagined he would do: stealing, robbing, cursing, and giving up on himself.
He lost all dignity and self-respect, becoming a disgrace even his most loyal servants couldn't accept, choosing to leave.
The phrase "In the endless void, my heart is in paradise" was engraved on various stone tablets and plaques throughout the Divine Joy Kingdom.
If they hadn't been mostly burned during the war, the Crown Prince would probably have been the first to smash them.
The person who said this phrase had proven that when he himself was in the endless void, he couldn't keep his heart in paradise.
·
He ascended quickly and fell even faster.
The martial god's path was a fleeting glimpse, and the encounter with a demon at the Bridge of Thoughts seemed like it was just yesterday.
But the heavenly realm sighed for a while, and then it was over.
Until many years later, one day, there was a loud bang in the sky.
The earth shook, and the mountains trembled.
The eternal lamps quivered, the flames danced wildly, and the celestial officials all woke up in their golden halls, rushing to ask: which new noble has ascended? What an impressive spectacle!
But before they could finish marveling, they saw that all the gods and buddhas in the sky had been struck.
Are you done yet?
That famous oddball, the laughingstock of the three realms, the legendary Crown Prince—he, he, he—he ascended again!
·
In the past, when a celestial official was exiled, they either never recovered or fell into the ghost realm, with very few ever having the chance to rise again.
A second ascension was undoubtedly a grand and spectacular event.
Even more spectacular was that after he ascended, he stormed into the heavenly realm, punching and kicking, causing chaos.
So, he only ascended for the time it takes an incense stick to burn before being struck down again.
An incense stick's time. It could be said to be the most rapid yet shortest ascension in history.
If the first ascension was a beautiful tale, the second was a farce.
·
After two times, the heavenly realm was filled with disdain for this Crown Prince.
Along with disdain, there was also a bit of caution. After all, being exiled once was a great humiliation. Being exiled twice, wouldn't that lead to a heart filled with demons and a desire for revenge against the world?
Who knew, after this exile, he didn't become a demon and instead adapted quite well to the life of exile. There were no problems, except... he was a bit too earnest.
Sometimes, he performed on the streets, proficient in singing, dancing, and playing instruments, even breaking stones on his chest. Although it was well-known that the Crown Prince was talented and versatile, seeing it in this way was truly a complex feeling. Other times, he diligently collected scrap.
The celestial gods were shocked.
Things had reached such an unimaginable point that now if you told someone, "May your son be like the Crown Prince of the Divine Joy Kingdom," it was more vicious than cursing them to be childless.
He was once a noble Crown Prince, a celestial official, and now he had fallen to such a state. That's what being a laughingstock of the three realms meant.
After laughing, some sentimental ones might sigh: the once high and mighty prodigy has truly disappeared.
The statues toppled, the kingdom was destroyed, not a single believer remained, and he gradually faded from the memory of the world. No one knew where he wandered.
Being exiled once was already a great humiliation. Being exiled twice, no one could ever rise again.
·
Many years later, suddenly one day, there was another loud bang in the sky.
The sky collapsed, the earth shook.
The eternal lamps trembled, the flames danced wildly, and the celestial officials all woke up in their golden halls, rushing to ask: which new noble has ascended? What an impressive spectacle!
But before they could finish marveling, they saw that all the gods and buddhas in the sky had been struck.
Are you done yet?
That famous oddball, the laughingstock of the three realms, the legendary Crown Prince—he, he, he—he ascended again!