Tea house on Mount Tai

Long long ago, there lived a prince. He was sunshine, wild flowers and all things nice. His father loved him, so did his mother. His mother told him, he deserved to have the world at his feet. His father told him, when he grows up, he will be an emperor, then the world will indeed be at his feet.  The boy was very happy to hear that, and he believed in his parents absolutely. 

That dream lasted but for a moment. 

After all, his mother is a scullery maid, and she has hijacked the emperor's meeting with the empress by stealing the crown prince's clothes, and presenting her own son as the crown prince. She left the crown prince under a brush, in his underclothes. Needless to say, she died horrifically. No one mourned her. Hells, everyone thought even that torturous death is too good for her. After all, the crown prince's death would have brought a calamity to the nation. 

Not a rumored or conjectured calamity, but a real, physical calamity. For this is a land of magic, where angels and demons are real and tangible beings. The crown prince is born with the blessing ruler of the sea. He protected the land from being sunk in the sea. It is said, if one goes south of the land to Shencheng, they can see a wall of sea standing right at the edge of the beaches. 

The fishermen just put their hands through the sea barrier to grab the deep sea crabs instead of using nets. They have all taken up farming, for fishing is as simple as going to the sea wall and choosing your fish, dragging it out. Now, imagine if that barrier is gone? Sea will wash away everything a hundred miles inwards from the coast. 

Needless to say, it's a calamity of unparalleled proportion. 

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when the crown prince recovered. 

Among all this commotion, no one paid attention to the five year old prince. Why would they? After all, he is the son of a maid, and even if he were to become emperor by killing all his brothers, noble families will rebel and put him down for once and all, changing the dynasty rather than be ruled by him. He was banished to the remotest corner of the palace, and every one expected he would die and get buried in that very corner some day. 

That is what everyone assumed. Only, the prince survived… 

He lived as a bottom crawler, eating what others have thrown away, but he lived all the same, crawling from one shadow to another, learning from one master of deception to another. Among all this, no one realized, the prince had the greatest blessing of them all, a literal ten thousand year life span. No one will realize in the future either, for the low-born prince never had the privilege to go to the sage to check what his power is. 

The first time he came to know about power is when he is eight. He was hiding and waiting to steal food in one of the chambers. The extremely pretty concubine invited an ugly peasant girl. 

'I heard you have the power of eternal youth..' the concubine asked her, circling around her like a predator.

'Yes, my lady' the girl answered. 

The next moment, the concubine slit the girl's neck. 

"By your dying blood, I take this blessing as my own, even if I were cursed to be a demon."

She put her hand to the corpse, and it disintegrated into a thousand different particles…

Just like that, the little prince realized, this is what he wants to do in future. Take the power as his own, even if he were to be a demon. 

The accursed prince continued to live on, moving from one master of deception to another, learning about one cruelty after another. After all, it is said there is no place as cruel as the palace in this land, the prince had a front seat view to it all. 

His first opportunity came when he reached his fourteenth year. The Fifth prince fought with tench, and sought to suppress him by any means. He helped the fifth prince kill tenth. Then he arranged for the fifth prince to die naturally, as a favor to the seventh. So on and so forth, it went on, till he had every one of them dancing in his palm. However, just being an emperor is not the aim of the prince. 

He wanted all the power in the land. 

He wanted to be a god. 

Thus, he moved the men in power to do his bidding. Obviously, the first order of business is to collect the powerful people. The most powerful Taoist temple in the world, with men who can wield powers one can only imagine in dreams, all the riches and women in the world at their feet, even the emperor listens to them… he had it announced far and wide. Thus, the trap is set. Men are suckers for ambition and power. 

Taoist after Taoist joined, and Starry tower is built to house these Taoists. 

Some of them sages, some of them oracles, yet others, masters of formations. 

As men gathered, cliques formed. Then the treacherous prince played double agent, triple agent, sometimes even a man of justice with a golden heart. In the end, Everyone who's not on his side died. After all, people never cared who's ruling them. Only, whether the ruling party is on their side or not, and if it is not, whom can they kill to get the ruling party on their side. 

Soon, princes perished one after another. The banished prince continued to live in forgotten exile, pulling every string from shadows. Then.. the time came for the sea to recede. The sea wall reduced over a period of five years. In place of the receding sea wall, rivers of blood flowed in the palace. 

The crown prince, able to sense the maliciousness in the air, but unable to pinpoint the cause. gave a mission to the Xue family. Unbeknownst to all, it is the beginning of birth of a monster. Xue family were the keepers of royal archives. Xue patriarch is a man who's blessing is scholarly ability. His brain is akin to a super computer, soon, reading through the royal archives, he realized the banished prince is present at almost all the disasters that happened. Yet, it was not enough to say he is the cause of these disasters. 

He is not the first to doubt the banished prince. There were people who opposed him. Yet, there is one difference between all those people and the monstrous prince. He had nothing to lose but himself. Every man who opposed him died at the hands of a pig teammate or a traitor. 

Xue's family is not without it's pig teammate. The eldest daughter of the Xue family is a plain looking girl. To seduce this innocent girl is but walk in the park for the prince. The besotted Xue eldest miss made the worst kind of ruckus in order to marry the prince. Sensing something amiss with the entire affair, Xue patriarch disposed of all their treasures and assets. 

The prince is still willing to marry dirt poor Xue eldest miss. He had but one request for them. Give him access to all of their records and books, private or otherwise. Xue patriarch sent off his youngest illegitimate daughter with all the secret books that day. Then he made copies of all the books with erroneous details. 

Yet, he forgot one important factor. Their eldest daughter. The girl had excellent memory, almost on par with the patriarch. It is through her the prince came to know about intricacies of spirit energy, rules that bind the angels. Thus, his first true step in journey towards the top began. After all, history has proven one man can stand above all, as long as he strives to get there. 

Or, at least that is what his fiance says is written in the book of true history. 

This world is once upon a time rich in spiritual energy. The Taoists were abundant in the world, cultivating left and right. Only, at some point, a supremely powerful cultivator emerged. He is excessively powerful, and tyrannical on top of that. This cultivator, unable to bear the thought of someone surpassing him, sealed away all the spirit energy in the world in the spirit realm. 

Unable to bear his tyranny, all the powerful cultivators at that point went to war with him. By the time war was over, only seven cultivators remained. The seven realized if they unlock the spirit realm suddenly, the onslaught of the spirit energy will doom the planet. Thus, they took the name of guardian angels, and divided the entire land into seven continents to look after. 

This is all that Xue eldest miss could remember from the book, the rest are empty pages. Or so she thought. Only, there is more written in those empty pages. 

It is written, angels generously siphoned off the energy from the spirit pool to give good hearted people blessings. Afterall, they did not want another demon king to be born. These blessings have become the thread through which spirit energy returns to the realm. These goodhearted people dedicated their lives to the blessing they received. 

The more deeds blessed people did, the more angels benefitted. When a blessed man works in a craft, his knowledge does not get lost, but becomes a part of that blessing. Thus, the blessings become stronger yet when the angel bestows them again. As time passed, some of these came to be known as godly blessings. For even a man without knowledge in painting could create a masterpiece as long as he has the blessing of painting. A man who could not even hold a stick could very well become an unbeatable warrior. 

However, time is not without its effects upon the angels. What was once upon a time a great honor has become a tedious job that imprisoned them as time passed. Angels themselves craved for freedom and change. When one of their own found happiness with another, instead of cheering, they threw them to two ends of earth to forever suffer separation. This is a tale for another day, for this is not even known to the author of true history. 

We were talking about a malicious prince… Now, the prince had the knowledge of spirit magic, he realized, to be the man above all, all he needs to do is collect all such magic in the land. He started acting slowly, from convicting known blessed people, killing them in private to collect the blessing. As his magic increased, the prince realized the magic he holds is not even worth the toenail of the magic an angel holds. 

Angels are created by Taoists in the first place. When the first code of angels is created, every sentence within the book is created with the soul sacrifice of a Taoist. Angels destroyed all the copies of code in the mortal realm, lest someone take advantage of it. While reading and changing code may not be possible, adding to code is certainly possible. 

Thus, he came up with a way to make angels give up that magic. One universally known law of angels is twelve blessings must be given out every year. He created three rules. Angels must give their blessings to only Mo family descendants. When one combines the power of blessings given out in a hundred years, they must be equal to the total spiritual power of the angel, regardless of how many blessings return to her as magic power. A non-blessed person could hold spiritual magic, without a blessing. On top of this, he discovered Angels could not directly act in the mortal realm. They could only act through their followers. 

Angels, who did not have much to do in the past years, and who despised being tied up most chafed at the newer restrictions imposed on them. Thus began the second war of angels and demons. The malicious prince evaded the eyes of angels from the moment he imposed the last law. Angels realized how out of touch they have become with their own domains. At the moment, it is looking very much like they will lose. 

However, the prince is not without troubles of his own. He ascended the throne as emperor, but the crown prince gifted his power, along with all it's magic, to his own son. He is the duke of shengcheng. When crown prince expired suddenly in the middle of the night, Xue family patriarch could not delay any more. He informed duke of shen about his suspicions. 

While the duke of shen did not believe him, he did accept Xue patriarch's suggestion of taking precautions. Thus, he bound his magic power and inherited space blessing to a consecrated artifact, kept in safekeeping with Xue's before accepting the summons of the demon prince, who is now emperor. Xue patriarch's doubts were proven true. The Duke of Shengcheng died, but his blessing did not quite fall in hands of the evil emperor. 

Xue patriarch, acting fast, sent his envoys to the people with godly blessings to take precautions. Meanwhile, the evil emperor sentenced the Xue family to death for deceiving the emperor, for they did not give out location of record of blessings no matter what torture he has inflicted upon them. Xue concubine was found hanging in her room, on the day the emperor killed her family. 

The emperor's quest for power continued. However, now that the Angel has caught on to his intent, the blessings held only skill, never any spirit power. He created a squad for retrieving blessings. The first disaster arrived when he had collected six hundred of the blessings. The guard captain Fa Jing Xuan, who was sent to retrieve the blessing of mining, did not return. 

He not just failed to return, but massacred his entire battalion to protect Xue Bi lan, the last of the Xue family, current keeper of the record of blessed. It did not just end there. They created a resistance movement, stealing away blessed, tying their power to artifacts. Thus, even if the emperor kills them, their blessing could not be stolen. He has ordered a hunt for the couple, but they were not found. 

The emperor continued to kill and collect blessings of all he could find. Where killing is a bad idea, the emperor sought out any means to subjugate the blessed. Soon, his power far exceeded any of the others blessed in the kingdom. With increasing magic power, the king was able to find blessings more and more easily. The word blessing has become synonym for curse, and people with powers started to be hated in the kingdom. the king's task is all the more easier. 

Twenty years passed after that in a flash… 

The emperor sent his latest concubine Shen, from the family of to her hometown for the visit. His aim is to receive the divine artifact of the Shen family. It is said the artifact creation method of Xue is derived from this particular artifact. However, unknown to him, roots of his demise are growing in his own backyard… prince Mo Xing long, son of concubine Xue, did not want these mothers and children to come back…