Chapter 97: Embracing the Great Dao and Taking a Stand, Yellow Heaven, Part One

Chapter 97: In the Great Way, Raise the Yellow Sky

When the party reached the northern gate of the city, they found it already alive with noise, the streets surged with a churning crowd. The people here—commoners, beggars, and wandering poor—moved like fanatics at a holy shrine, shouting in waves that rolled like the sea itself, full of limitless devotion and expectation.

“How can there be so many people? Will there be enough grain for this many hungry mouths?” Zheng Ji muttered, staring at the crowd.

Zhang Zhidao’s eyes flashed with reverence. “Do you think they are all beggars and destitute? Many wealthy landowners and local gentry are here too, hoping to pour out their fortunes and follow our Master.”

Though officials and guards kept trying to hold the line, this was an age of famine. The hungry poured in like a flood, their eyes fixed only on food and survival. But with so many pressing forward, a crush became inevitable. Wails and cries rose and fell in waves. There were too few guards to contain them, and for a time the scene slipped toward chaos.

It was then that a figure leapt into the air. In his hands he held a jade staff. He wore a saffron-brown Taoist robe. His bearing was otherworldly, as if a celestial figure had stepped out of a painting. He snapped his wrist—and wind rose, thunder rolled.

From his sleeve he cast out a handful of beans. With a flick of his hand he spoke a single syllable: “Shi.”
The golden beans burst in the air with sharp cracks. In an instant, martial spirits flared forth like drawn swords of doom.

The sky darkened all at once. A low rumble of thunder rolled again and again. Lightning flashed across great swaths of heaven, and shouts of battle from distant voices drifted faintly upward.

In the sky, then, a dozen armored warriors appeared, clad in ancient war plate and gold helms. They dropped down heavily to the ground.

Bean-summoning into troops.

Zhang Sanlu’s eyes flickered open wider. This was no ordinary trick of mankind.

The instant-formed men were now towering warriors in heavy armor, powerful as boulders. They spread swiftly through the crowd. A few opportunists who had been pushing and shoving were flung aside at once.

At the sight of the golden-clad divine warriors, all the hungry poor threw themselves to their knees, voices breaking into endless prayers. No more stampedes broke out. By their combined presence, the chaos gradually came under control.

Like walking on clouds sprung from the pavement below, the figure strode down through empty air until he touched the ground. The armored spirits faded like mist, and the sky cleared to bright clarity in a breath.

“This is an Immortal Master!”

Zhang Sanlu watched the scene that shook his soul, and he saw the wild light in every face around him. To those people, this “Immortal Master” seemed to be both redemption and hope. They raised both arms and prayed with fierce devotion, pleading for strength and protection.

The crowds ringed him, shouting out their grievances: injustices, darkness in society, corruption, evil, and their thirst for the Master’s pardon and salvation. The Master listened patiently, his voice calm and commanding, as if it could wash the dust from their hearts.

The elevated platform beside the gruel pavilion was quickly cleared and widened so that the crowd behind could see him.

Zhang Sanlu, who had heard of the Immortal Master’s fame for a long time, could not conceal the stir inside him. In all this clamor, the Master appeared unusually tall and majestic. He held the staff, wore the ochre robe, and moved with that same unworldly, painterly calm. His face was serene, and the deep eyes seemed to behold everything.

“Great virtue may drive out fiendish shadows; hold to the Great Way and establish the Yellow Heaven,” he said softly, but his voice rang through every heart like a struck bell.

“‘Yellow Heaven’ above all, the Yellow Deity brings all to peace… Balance Heaven and earth in equal measure… I abhor the chasm between rich and poor… today I will make you all equal.”

With only a few lines, men in front—gentry, officials, even soldiers—knelt down in unison. Countless voices rose: “Yellow Heaven above all, the Yellow Deity brings peace! Great virtue to drive out fiendish shadows! Hold the Great Way and establish the Yellow Heaven!” Their cries gathered into a roar like mountain and ocean together.

Zhang Sanlu was stunned by the Master’s power of appeal, even as he inwardly shook his head at this almost utopian creed. “Balance Heaven and earth, equalize wealth and poverty”—such ancient, perennial contradictions in human society had resisted resolution even in a world with unimaginable technologies. And this was but an agrarian age.

Yet when he thought of the starved dead on the roads, the relentless disasters, of people reduced to eating one another in years of great famine, Zhang Sanlu felt a sincere wish rise in him: if he failed, this teaching alone, maybe it could still be helped by knowledge from another world. He felt his heart burn hotter.

The old Huang Chao uprising had cut down the gates and houses of nobles and aristocrats alike. Yet it had lacked orderly governance and backing from a landed warrior class. Rebel forces only knew how to fight. Without systems, without logistics, they destroyed but could not build—and thus eventually failed.

Likewise the famed Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, born from another disgruntled scholar, Hong Xiuquan, carried slogans such as “equal wealth between rich and poor,” “common fields for all to till,” “common rice for all to eat,” “common money for all to use,” with fairness everywhere and no one left hungry or cold. An ideal so perfect it was almost unbearable. At that time, far in the West, a thinker named Karl Marx had just begun to set forth ideas strikingly similar, what would later be called communism.

“The sect our Immortal Master founded—what is it called?” Zhang Sanlu suddenly asked, turning his head. He had realized he knew almost nothing about the tradition Zhang Zhidao served.

“Brother Zhang, does your intention truly be to join our order?” Zhang Zhidao’s eyes warmed. He had invited him with hope, and seeing him before the Master and this scene of mercy for the masses, he had not expected him to take such an interest.

“Upon the waters of Quyang Spring, my Master obtained one hundred and seventy scrolls from a divine being—white-silver, vermilion-edged, and blue-capped with red eyes, called the *Scripture of the Great Peace and Azure Crest*. On the basis of that, this teaching was founded.”

Zhang Sanlu nodded as though he understood only partly. “The *Scripture of the Great Peace and Azure Crest*…”

“Yes. It is from my Master’s doctrine, and from it he founded the order known across the Han realm as the Great Peace Way,” Zhang Zhidao said, eyes bright with fervor as he looked directly at him.

“The Great Peace Way…” Zhang Sanlu paused, then repeated, “The Great Peace Way?!”

His face changed at once, eyes widening as if he had heard the most impossible thing in the world. His voice trembled with disbelief. “You mean… it is he, the Great Virtuous and Benevolent Master? Zhang Jiao?!”

Zhang Zhidao nodded firmly. “I dare not speak my Master’s personal name aloud. But since you now know, you have surely recognized him.”

A furious tide rose in Zhang Sanlu’s mind.

He had never imagined he would meet in this place, in this land, the legendary Great Virtuous Master Zhang Jiao himself.

Zhang Jiao—the one who would one day rise like a towering storm in a fractured age, curing the sick with talismanic water and spreading the Way of Great Peace—had been standing before him all along.