Prologue (1/1)
C-writer Tong Hua has carved out a nice niche for herself writing romance novels o over ith readers that find her twists and distortions to events in historical texts to be nothing short of blasphe apart Da Mo Yao, which was just a totally farcical take on certain historical figures which hardly merits a yawn much less a detail critique of why it’s so inaccurate I’m far fro dynasty historical lore mixed with some fanciful twists and turns If anyone takes it seriously then clearly a Chinese primary school education has failed for said person Her last two novels have juoessince the very preical text The Classic of the Mountains and the Seas is a collection of supernatural and fantastical stories of Gods and demons and beasts that all roah the ancient Chinese eras before the dynastic ascension of human rule
It’s a dense and meaty book that has no known author but the historians believe to be a collection of oral legends that ritten down over ti States through the early Han dynasty era into the anthology known as The Classic of the Mountain and the Seas In Tong Hua’s first novel in her series based on this Classic, Once Proround infory behind the world of the three Godly kingdoets to the sequel Lost You Forever, Tong Hua doesn’t bother repeating the saht into the story of Xiao Yao and occasionally provides so forHua drops it through each chapter of Once Promised rather than in a section that is easy to translate She did, however, write a prologue to Once Promised that provides a very top down su until the three Godly kingdoms period Hopefully this will provide a nice clarity to understanding how the conflicts have continued froue to Once Promised:
At the dawn of time, when the universe was just formless chaos, the world had only one ruler That was the Great Emperor Pan Gu, who opened the Heavens and created the world itself
At that time, the distance between Heaven and Earth was much closer Humans lived on Earth and the Gods lived on the Heavenly Mountains Humans could travel on a sky stair to reach the Gods The Huether in the world
The Great Emperor Pan Gu had three subordinates that he was as close as siblings with The one with the greatest spiritual poas a woer can be found Only known is that she created the Hua Xu Kingdom, so the people called her Hua Xu The other two subordinates wereand was stationed in the Middle Plains to ensure peace fro and was stationed to the East to protect where the sun rose the Holy Yang Valley and the Eye of the East Gui Xu
After the Great Emperor Pan Gu passed, the world descended into fiery conflict and endless warfare Hua Xu tired of the endless battle and left for the far reaches to create the peaceful and harh the legends was not her Hua Xu Kingdohter Nü Wa
Fu Yi and Nü Wa were brave and just, subduing all the heroes of the world willingly and ending the warfare They were crowned Eht peace to the bruised and battered vast wilderness, and gradually life began anew again
After thousands of years, Emperor Fu Yi passed and Edoain What happened to her remained a mystery and the Fu Yi and Nü Wa tribes slowly lost prominence
With the downturn of the Fu Yi tribe, the Sheng Nong tribe in the Middle Plains and the Gao Xing tribe in the Southeast rose to be the two great powers On the surface both abided by the pacted signed before Emperor Fu Yi and Empress Nü Wa to never attack each other, but deep down each was bursting with ambition to devour the other
In the Northwest area of the vast wilderness, there was a unassu at the base of the mountain was a small God tribe that the powerful Gods never took notice of – the Xuan Yuan tribe After a great ceremony, the tribal elders of the Xuan Yuan tribe chose the bravest, s man in the tribe to be their leader But even the tribal elders could not have foreseen what great feats and acco man would one day accomplish
In another few thousand short years ti man expanded the for and Sheng Nong becaht, the time had passed to eliminate Xuan Yuan easily They could only watch wearily as Xuan Yuan vaulted to join thereatest God tribes in existence
The three great God tribes The head was Sheng Nong, the tribe that received the direct order from the Great Emperor Pan Gu to watch over the Middle Plains, and each leader of the Sheng Nong Kingdom was called the Flame Emperor The Fla, under orders to watch over the Southeast, and each successive ruler was called the Grand Emperor The Grand Emperor ruled by protocol The last was the upstart Xuan Yuan based in the Northwest, its ruler was called the Yellow E Nong in the Middle Plains, Xuan Yuan in the Northwest, and Gao Xing in the Southeast – the three powers co-existed warily for thousands of years in a seely stable balance and division of power