Chapter 61: Side Story – Research Records of the Azure Sky Goddess

September 17, 5178 of the Taiyi Calendar.

After enduring turbulent times and spending fifty-eight years striving to catch up, the nation of Yan, which had suffered devastating losses in its cultural heritage, officially resolved to have the government join hands with the history, archaeology, religious, and related departments of various universities to launch the Civilization Origin-Tracing Project. At the same time, considering that mythological stories and figures tend to attract much more public interest than dry history, it was decided that mythology would be the first area explored.

However, the researchers argued fiercely over which mythological figure or story should be investigated first. Some insisted that they must start with the creator deities, while others argued that creation myths were far too ancient and virtually impossible to verify, and that they should instead begin with human-turned-deities who had truly existed—preferably those with clear, documented miracles.

In the end, the human-deities naturally held an overwhelming advantage.

After all, creator deities were indeed far too ethereal and elusive.

Even so, selecting the specific human-deity proved difficult for the researchers, as there was no shortage of candidates: ancient human sages who ascended to divinity, renowned ministers and military generals who became gods, and heroic figures who sacrificed themselves for the common people.

Later, someone suggested that since the most ancient creator deities had already been ruled out from the very beginning, they might as well start the tracing process with someone more recent and widely known.

Thus, they finally settled upon the Righteous Deity of the State and Harvest, Lady Qingtian.

She was also the most recently added Righteous Deity of the State.

Righteous Deities of the State had a long history; only those gods who enjoyed official state sacrifices were entitled to such a designation. Past Righteous Deities of the State primarily included Taiyi Dijun, Haotian, the Five Heavenly Emperors, the Spring and Autumn Deities, the Yellow Emperor Xuanyuan, and Chi You the War Lord. Normally, an imperial court would not casually add or remove them, at most changing the principal object of worship.

For instance, certain imperial lineages considered themselves descendants of the Yellow Emperor.

Naturally, they would change the principal deity of sacrifice to the Yellow Emperor Xuanyuan.

Others believed themselves descendants of Emperor Ku, and thus might change the principal deity to Taiyi or Dijun. Those unable to claim such a lineage would, according to the theory of the Five Virtues, select a Heavenly Emperor that suited them as the main object of worship. Under conventional circumstances, however, the primary focus remained the sacrifice to Haotian, the August Emperor of Heaven.

Most Righteous Deities of the State had remained unchanged for two thousand years, but Lady Qingtian was an exception; she had been newly added a little over seven hundred years ago.

She was the youngest among the Righteous Deities of the State.

Among the common folk, she was also revered as the Agricultural Deity, the Shepherd Deity, and Lady Qingtian the Divine Farmer. Most importantly, this deity still had miracles passed down through the generations, and virtually everyone remained dependent upon her miracles.

It felt as though tracing her origins would be relatively easier.

No matter what, it was bound to be much simpler than tracing Taiyi or Dijun.

With the subject chosen, the origin-tracing team immediately split into three groups: one went to conduct field investigations at various temples of Lady Qingtian across the country, another headed to the National Museum to search through ancient texts and historical records, and the third offered bounties online to gather information related to Lady Qingtian.

Although gathering information online might be the least reliable method.

It was undoubtedly the most extensive.

While the first two teams had yet to reap any rewards—some hadn't even reached their destinations—the team responsible for online bounty collection had already received thousands of submissions.

Sorting through them and distinguishing truth from falsehood.

Required an extraordinary amount of time.

[I know about this! My ancestors used to be eunuch tomb guards for the Prince of Lu's Mausoleum, and it’s written in our genealogy records that my ancestor personally witnessed Lady Qingtian manifest her divine presence three times. The first time was in the capital, where she manifested to execute the Prince of Lu; the second time was when my ancestor and the others mentioned that many people were going to be buried alive to accompany the prince in death—she manifested then, carried away the Prince of Lu's Mausoleum, and the third time was when my ancestors tried to plunder the funerary objects inside the coffin of the Princess of Lu, only to discover that her corpse wasn't even inside...]

[Therefore, my ancestor wrote with absolute certainty in our genealogy records that Lady Qingtian was actually the Princess of Lu who had attained immortality through corpse-liberation. It's just that nobody believes it—I don't know why they don't, everything my ancestor wrote is true! Besides, my ancestor lived in the exact same era as Lady Qingtian!]

[The person above is way too stubborn. Your very first sentence is completely untrustworthy, so anything after that must be a ghost story to be believed. Was your ancestor infertile yet blessed with a house full of children and grandchildren?]

[What about it? Wasn't Cao Cao also the descendant of a eunuch?]

[Is this "The Tomb-Raiding Notes of a Eunuch Ancestor"?]

[The first commenter is writing a novel right here!]

[Some things I'm not entirely clear on, but I do know that there really is a Lady Qingtian Temple right beside the Prince of Lu's Mausoleum, and its history is quite ancient. It's rumored to be from the exact same period as the Prince of Lu's Mausoleum, and should be considered the oldest Temple of Lady Qingtian. Moreover, the county chronicles do indeed record that it was built by a group of eunuch tomb guards, but I still feel it's unreliable.]

[Even if the Princess of Lu was forced to commit suicide by imperial decree, stealing the funerary objects from her coffin must still have been a capital offense. Who would dare commit a capital offense and then write about it in their own family genealogy? Ridiculous...]

[That's right, I almost believed it for a second!]

[My family's genealogy is never shown to outsiders!!]

[I don't believe it. Let alone committing a capital offense—even if I just did something embarrassing, I would never secretly write it in my diary, let alone record it in the family genealogy.]

[By the way, do you guys actually believe that those high-yielding quality crops and other such wonderful things were sent by Lady Qingtian? Isn't there another prevailing theory that the Grand Guardian and Protector of the State was a super-duper brilliant agronomist, or perhaps a hidden giant of the School of Agronomy? They spent countless years cultivating those wonderful things, and then, in order to facilitate their dissemination and consolidate imperial power, they joined forces with the reigning Emperor Xingwu at the time.]

[They seized upon the hot topic of Lady Qingtian of the moment and made a big fuss over it.]

[I really don't get it. Clearly, it was the Grand Guardian and Protector of the State who planted, cultivated, ultimately presented the treasures, and took charge of their promotion, yet how did it end up as though all the credit belonged to Lady Qingtian?]

[Lady Qingtian is simply a fictional character, alright.]

[Still trying to trace her origins—what on earth is there even to trace?]

[Even if those quality seeds weren't bestowed by Lady Qingtian, the fact that she punished evildoing princes, forced Emperor Tianwu to punish his own sons according to the law, and completely abolished human funerary sacrifice are all recorded in both official and unofficial histories.]

[It's just that official histories recorded it relatively obscurely.]

[While unofficial histories tended to make it more story-like.]

[Yet at least the general content should be correct; it's recorded in the county gazetteers of the fiefs of the Prince of Lu, Prince Han, Prince Qi, and Prince Jin.]

[Please, can some people read a history book before spouting nonsense? The Grand Guardian and Protector of the State was only twenty-four years old when she presented those high-yielding quality seeds, and the preceding dozen or so years she was basically just a young lady of a noble household. It wasn't until she almost became a sacrificial burial victim at the Prince of Lu's Mausoleum, after which no one dared to ask for her hand in marriage, that she became a Daoist nun and gradually began learning about farming. She must have been sixteen that year.]

[In less than eight years, going from knowing nothing to producing so many quality seeds, and even reaching a certain scale—are you kidding me? Modern agronomists aren't even that amazing.]

[As for the School of Agronomy, that's even more laughable. The Mohists, who were countless times more prosperous than the Agronomists back then, essentially perished, let alone the Agronomists. If the School of Agronomy could conceal their identities and breed so many high-yielding quality seeds, the Mohists should be able to fly out into the universe by now. Isn't that pure nonsense?!]

[Right! If the Grand Guardian and Protector of the State were a seventy or eighty-year-old elderly Daoist nun, or even fifty or sixty, I might find it believable, but being in her twenties is just too absurd. Therefore, I'm more inclined to believe that the Grand Guardian and Protector of the State wasn't lying.]

[Those quality seeds really were bestowed upon her by Lady Qingtian.]

[If you really refuse to believe in mythological legends, you could also view Lady Qingtian as some mysterious organization—a mysterious organization capable of making a move against Emperor Tianwu's sons, and even leaving Emperor Tianwu utterly helpless and forced to compromise.]

[Then why couldn't that mysterious organization be the School of Agronomy?!]

[Are you picking a fight with the School of Agronomy? The Agronomists have always been trash, alright; they've never produced anyone capable. If the Agronomists could directly confront a founding emperor of a dynasty and even force the emperor to compromise, they probably could have gone toe-to-toe with the Confucians. Why would they need to hide?]

[But it still doesn't make sense. Such a powerful mysterious organization—why did it quietly lose all traces later on, appearing out of nowhere and then vanishing just as quietly? Besides, I've read many official and unofficial histories, and they all write directly about Lady Qingtian rather than mentioning some organized faction.]

[Surely the people of that era weren't all fools.]

[Unable to tell that it might have been the work of some faction.]

[Wait, I suddenly remembered—didn't someone mention earlier that they suspected Lady Qingtian was actually the Princess of Lu who achieved immortality through corpse-liberation? Wasn't the Grand Guardian and Protector of the State the younger sister of the Princess of Lu? People were questioning long ago why Lady Qingtian would choose the Grand Guardian and Protector of the State. If the two of them already knew each other or even had family ties, doesn't it feel a lot more logical? Oh my god, could everything the descendant of that eunuch said above actually be true?!]

[Over six hundred years ago, there were actually similar guesses, and even more besides—written in classical Chinese which is too hard to read through, but the general gist seemed to be a story about how the Princess of Lu was wronged and executed by imperial decree, only to turn into a vengeful ghost to exact revenge.]

[But there is no conclusive evidence to verify this matter. Unless someone opens the Prince of Lu's Mausoleum, there might just be some clues.]

[The Prince of Lu's Mausoleum has never been robbed, and it's rumored there aren't many funerary objects inside anyway. Under these circumstances, the higher-ups probably won't allow the Prince of Lu's Mausoleum to be opened for inspection.]

[Regardless of whether this so-called Lady Qingtian was a single person or a faction, what I'm more curious about now is how she managed to pull off those legendary feats—swallowing eight imperial mausoleums in one breath and tossing all eight of them right into the imperial palace, smashing the ancestral temple of the Zhu family.]

[The whole thing is just absurdly unbelievable, alright. Anyone who didn't know better would think she was Zhenyuanzi, capable of containing the universe within her sleeves.]

[Emperor Tianwu and Emperor Xingwu, as well as the prosperous era of Tianxing that the two of them jointly created, seem to be extremely closely connected to this Lady Qingtian. Moreover, Lady Qingtian's attitude toward the two of them differed vastly. Toward Emperor Tianwu, she simply dealt out various threats, but toward Emperor Xingwu, she actually went out of her way to bestow a grand gift upon him.]

[Could it be that they had a secret romance??]

[It's also possible they reached a tacit agreement and mutual understanding.]

...

As time went on, although the information on the bounty website grew increasingly numerous, the truly valuable parts became scarcer and scarcer. Later on, people went off-topic to discuss other subjects, or an excessive number of unrelated topics flooded in, so the relevant department ultimately and decisively decided to cut it off, saving the information-sorting staff from daily grievances.

Meanwhile, the other two groups were making good progress as well.

One group had dug up a great deal of records from official histories, unofficial histories, and even county gazetteers, while the other had gathered numerous folk legends, stories passed down from different Lady Qingtian temples, and so forth.

Finally, synthesizing all this information together.

Everyone was astonished to discover that Lady Qingtian indeed had a very high probability of being inextricably linked to the Grand Guardian and Protector of the State. Especially after laying out the timeline, everyone felt even more strongly that such a coincidence was likely no coincidence at all.

Yet everything remained mere speculation.

There was no actual evidence whatsoever.

It wasn't until the fellow on the internet who claimed to be a descendant of a eunuch grew thoroughly exasperated that almost nobody believed him, prompting him to directly steal his family genealogy and deliver it to the origin-tracing team. He demanded that they authenticate it—since his family genealogy was genuine, the contents written within it must be true as well.

Not for anything else, but simply to prove that he was right and hadn't been spouting nonsense. As for why his ancestor wrote so many fatal pieces of information in the family genealogy, how was he supposed to know? He wasn't his own ancestor; perhaps the man was out of his mind. Eunuchs, after all, had thought processes and logic different from normal people, which was entirely understandable.

Upon authentication, his family genealogy proved to be genuinely authentic.

It possessed a history spanning several centuries.

However, whether the contents inside were true or false was hard to say.

Yet, as the old saying goes, the first project had to be completed successfully to score an auspicious opening; otherwise, it would inevitably impact the subsequent tracing of mythological figures and stories. After a round of discussions, they specifically drafted a report and ultimately obtained the authority to open the Prince of Lu's Mausoleum. Naturally, aided by modern technology, they successfully opened the Prince of Lu's Mausoleum within a couple of days and inspected every layout inside.

They even used perspective scanners to examine the coffin of the Princess of Lu.

Ultimately, they discovered that the coffin indeed contained neither the corpse nor the funerary objects of the Princess of Lu, but only a pile of white bones—which matched the contents provided in the genealogy by the descendant of the eunuch perfectly.

Through such comprehensive cross-checking and comparison.

The records inside the genealogy undoubtedly became far more reliable.

In the end, based on the contents of that family genealogy, the origin-tracing team concluded the project and determined the identity of Lady Qingtian to be the executed Princess of Lu. Whether she hadn't actually died back then, had transformed into a vengeful ghost, or had somehow achieved immortality through corpse-liberation, nobody could say for certain.

They even produced a documentary specifically about it.

It became the very first case study of the Mythology Origin-Tracing Project.