'Are you here to critique me?' I asked Jin Sheng with a half-smile. 'If so, we don't need to waste words. We can just fight.'

I was certain Jin Sheng hadn't come simply to kill me; he had another purpose.

But, I couldn't figure out what he wanted.

Jin Sheng sat across from me. 'I've come to invite you to join a grand endeavor!'

'You're a Hell Minister!' I scrutinized Jin Sheng for a long time. 'Is this so-called grand endeavor welcoming the return of the Heavenly Soul to turn the human realm into a purgatory?'

Jin Sheng said, 'It's not turning the human realm into a purgatory, but reshaping it.'

Jin Sheng said, 'Don't you think this human realm no longer needs to exist? Only by tearing it down and rebuilding it can we restore the ways of antiquity?'

I sneered. 'What do you mean by the ways of antiquity? Everyone going back to drinking blood and living with beasts?'

'Superficial!' Jin Sheng said disdainfully. 'What I mean by the ways of antiquity is respecting the Human Sovereign, promoting etiquette, and everyone being a junzi (gentleman).'

'Everyone a gentleman?' I laughed. 'Do you think that's possible? Human nature has already determined that there are no true gentlemen in this world. There are only those whose bottom line is higher.'

I pointed to the cell across the way. 'Did you deliberately create such a character to show me a microcosm of certain people?'

'Of course!'

Jin Sheng said, 'He's clearly locked in the same cell as you, and when he sees you're not as good as him, he'll take care of you a little. But when he discovers there's an extra cigarette in your plate, he feels incredibly offended!'

'That cigarette didn't belong to him in the first place, but he feels like you stole his thing, and he immediately hates you to the core.'

'Originally, you were just two parallel people who would never intersect. But he develops this resentment towards strangers, this hatred towards strangers.'

'That's the ugliness of human nature.'

'If you don't eradicate this ugliness, these despicable people will eventually unite, and they'll spread wider and wider, eventually sweeping the world and turning it into a true realm of ghosts.'

'Don't you think that's terrifying?'

I looked at Jin Sheng for a long time. 'Are you sick in the head?'

'I don't want to argue with you about anything right now.'

'I just want to understand one thing: how could a dignified Hell Minister rebel with the Heavenly Soul?'

From Jin Sheng's posture and tone, I had long determined that he was a Hell Minister, and now it seemed this person's position among the ministers was not low.

Jin Sheng slowly said, 'Li Po, have you met the Samsara Sacred Lord?'

'I have had the honor of meeting the Sacred Lord and was moved by the Sacred Lord's ambition. I am willing to be driven by the Sacred Lord and become a vanguard of destiny.'

Jin Sheng's words were equivalent to confirming my guess.

In the past, both the arcane world and Hell believed that the Samsara Bureau was the spokesperson of the civil officials in the Yang world.

In fact, the Samsara Bureau controlled a part of the Hell's civil officials, infiltrating Hell from the Yang world.

The Samsara Sacred Lord's game of chess was too big, so big that no one dared to imagine it.

That was precisely why no one suspected that the Samsara Bureau controlled the civil officials.

Jin Sheng said, 'When the Samsara Sacred Lord leads everyone back, it will be the day when the Human Sovereign reappears. The human world will inevitably become clear under the lead-ership of the Human King. We will restore the glory of our human race and be on par with the Heavenly Dao.'

'Human King!' I couldn't help but gasp.

'Your goal isn't the Emperor?'

'Hahaha...' Jin Sheng laughed loudly. 'What does the Emperor count for? Even the Human Emperor is not in the Sacred Lord's eyes. Only the ancient Human King is the goal pursued by the Sacred Lord.'

Emperor, Human Emperor?

I once asked Old Liu, which was greater, the Emperor or the Human Emperor? And what was the Human King all about?

Old Liu told me: They were just different titles, it didn't matter whether the Emperor or the Human Emperor was greater. If we had to rank them, the Human Emperor was before the Emperor. The Human Emperor represented Heaven, and the Emperor connected to Earth. The Emperor combined was equivalent to the master between Heaven and Earth.

The title of Emperor began with Qin Shi Huang and was used by subsequent dynasties.

Before Qin Shi Huang, the title of the ruler was 'King,' and among Kings, there was a watershed, which was that from the Western Zhou dynasty, the Zhou King called himself the 'Son of Heaven.'

From then on, there were only 'Sons of Heaven' and no 'Human Kings' in the world.

Old Liu told me a sentence: When the Human King is present, Heaven and Man are equal; when the Human King is absent, Man is subject to Heaven.

From this point of view, later emperors could not be compared with the ancient Human Kings.

At that time, Old Liu also gave me an example of King Zhou of Shang writing a poem.

Old Liu told me that King Zhou wrote a poem in the Nüwa Temple, indicating that he did not have much fear of the gods. From this, it could also be inferred that the kings of the Xia and Shang dynasties before King Zhou only respected but did not fear the gods.

Just imagine, if the Human Kings of the past had all been taught from an early age that they must revere the gods, how could King Zhou have written a poem in the Nüwa Temple? No matter how昏庸无道 (hūn yōng wú dào - fatuous and tyrannical) the later emperors were, none of them did the same thing.

Looking further back, the gods who were killed by the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors in mythology were countless.

The Human King being in the world, Man being equal to Heaven, may not be a legend.

Of course, when I asked Old Liu about these things, I was just curious about what kind of existence the Emperor was, and why the arcane world had to find the Emperor? I didn't carefully verify these myths.

Jin Sheng's words, however, shocked me greatly!