A rebellious minister forced me to be a foolish king

Chapter 601: Meeting at Yaotai
When King Mu of Zhou first set foot on Kunlun, the birthplace of the gods, it was the Peach Festival on March 3. He was fortunate to meet the six realms of beings and the nine heavenly spirits from Kunlun Yunshan and Guixu Overseas. All the legends of strange beasts were vividly presented before his eyes.

It turns out that there really was a dream of Hua Xu in the sacred Kunlun Mountain.

Ji Man enjoyed the generous hospitality of the Queen Mother of the West, the host of Yaotai, and accepted the seamless heavenly clothes and cranes given by the goddess. He heard that the clothes could protect his body from damage and be invulnerable to water and fire. Ji Man had no way to repay her, so he gave the Queen Mother of the West a pair of jade gui and jade bi as a return gift.

The jade gui is the tablet of the ministers; the jade bi is the seal of the monarch. These two symbolize the supreme power and status of the human king, and are his greatest piety as the emperor in the era of ritual and law. They are exactly matched with the divine clothes given by the Queen Mother of the West. It's a pity that the gods and mortals are different.

It is said that the Queen Mother of the West of Kunlun has the elixir of immortality. King Mu of Zhou, Ji Man, had spent half his life in the military and had already won all the power and honors that a king could get, and enjoyed all the prosperity of the world. He dominated the world and was extremely powerful. At his level of experience, what he wanted was not worldly things, but immortality.

But the Queen Mother of the West concluded that he was the reincarnation of the Eastern Emperor Taiyi from the Heavenly Abode. His earthly life was not over yet, and he was destined to fight and kill in this life. Moreover, he had a strong desire to stay in the human world, so she refused to give him the elixir of immortality and urged him to return home as soon as possible to end his obsession.

Before leaving, Queen Mother Xi only accepted the jade disk, which symbolized the king's seal, while Ji Man took back the jade gui. Ji Man reluctantly agreed that a hundred years later, after he had forged a tripod in Jiuzhou, pacified the world, and settled worldly affairs, he would ride a crane back to Yaochi, bring the jade gui and his jade disk together, and serve the goddess forever.

A hundred years passed, and the world changed. But when Ji Man returned to Kunlun, he saw only the jade disk left on the Yaotai, but no goddess.

And there was a black bird transformed from the spirit of the Queen Mother of the West, waiting for him with the elixir of immortality in its mouth.

The Xuanniao told him that the Queen Mother of the West had transformed into the war goddess of the Nine Heavens and was reborn as a mortal.

Ji Man couldn't understand! A hundred years ago, he would rather give up his status as the King of Zhou, leave behind his subjects, come to this place where the sun sets to seek immortality, want to leave his mortal body behind, and serve the Queen Mother of the West... But when he left behind the King of Zhou and flew up to Kunlun on a crane, the Queen Mother of the West, the owner of the Yaotai, reincarnated to the mortal world for the sake of imperial power? To covet the secular world?
The spiritual bird Xuanniao, who was delivering the message for the Queen Mother of the West, kept saying that the Queen Mother of the West did this for the sake of the people of the world and that was why she risked her life to get involved.

But Ji Man was not convinced. He had experienced the rise and fall of dynasties from father to son, and he thought he understood the heart of the emperor and the sufferings of the world the best. But he didn't understand why he let go of his obsession and ascended to become an immortal, but the god he admired was obsessed with worldly affairs?
Until Ji Man took the immortality medicine left by the Queen Mother of the West and returned to the human world, he watched the younger generation playing tricks on the princes in order to win the smile of a beauty. The Eastern Zhou Dynasty was in chaos, rituals and music were broken, dynasties were broken and established, and hereditary succession was unrepeatable. Mortal life is fragile and worthless.

There is only one black bird flying around, auspicious signs and ominous signs restrain each other, and fortune and misfortune depend on each other. That is the Nine Heavens Mysterious Lady who always appears in troubled times and gives military books to quell wars.

Ji Man gradually realized what the black bird said. The mortals claimed to be the emperor from the human emperor to the emperor. The so-called emperor after King Zhou of Shang was because everything the mortals had was given by the mother goddess, and the achievements he was proud of were just the leftovers from the wars of the ancient gods.

Humans inherited everything from God. God was reborn as a mortal because he wanted to maintain human order and make life endless. But it was just a cycle. As long as there were people in the world, there would always be fighting and killing.

Ji Man finally understood why the Queen Mother of the West had entered the game. He volunteered to return to the human world again, determined to fight alongside her, so he changed his name to Guiguzi, calling himself the son of the Queen Mother of the West, and used his eyes, which had long been the eyes of the Zhou emperor, to see through the fate of all the kings, princes and generals in this chaotic world.

He has no desires and no demands. He has countless disciples and has made great achievements in the world, but he has been without a wife and children for thousands of years and is still a widower. Whenever someone asks him about his wife, he always says "My wife is the Queen Mother of the Nine Heavens". However, Ji Man has been searching for her in the world for thousands of years. His black hair has turned white, and his seamless robe has faded. He has seen the Yunmeng Lake dry up and the world change, but he still has not found the reincarnation of the Queen Mother of the West and has not lived and died with her.

He has changed many identities, including Guiguzi, Zuo Ci, Tao Hongjing... from a widower to a dissolute husband, and then to a celibate woman. He has also found women who look like the Nine Heavens Mysterious Lady and the reincarnation of the Queen Mother of the West, but most of them died early. They turned against the norm for the sake of all living beings, and wanted to change their fate, but they died under the oppression of royal power and fighting.

Ji Man, the King of Zhou Mu, who had already reached the pinnacle of power and obtained everything in the world, was naturally accustomed to the power struggles and wars in later generations. In order to avoid disrupting the order of mortals, Ji Man, who had become an immortal, could ignore it.

However, when he saw a woman who looked like Xuan Nu, Ji Man always wanted to lend a hand and help her, hoping that she would win and live. Unfortunately, they all died in the war at a young age, and none of them lived long.

Until one day, he revisited the old site of Yaotai at the foot of Kunlun Mountain and discovered a stele.

There are only eight words on it: You will carry on my ambition and there will be successors.

She said: "You are the inheritance of my spirit, someone will carry on for me."

This monument is very old, its origin is unknown, and no name is left on it. It only contains this sentence of selfless love yet deep obsession.

Ji Man suddenly realized something, but he didn't want to believe it. At this moment, his heart was broken! He was afraid that he had been wrong for a thousand years. It turned out that the path she had taken had always been contrary to his!

In the Western Zhou Dynasty, people all believed that King Mu of Zhou, who loved traveling and was the supreme emperor of Zhou, was a perfect match for the Kunlun Goddess. It was a love story, but everyone must die eventually. It just so happened that Ji Man was a king and a wise ruler, so the princes and subjects should have burned incense and built a temple to pray for his longevity.

It just so happens that the Queen Mother of the West is in charge of the life and death of the gods, and is best at granting elixirs of immortality.

During his reign, Ji Man was away from the court for most of the year. He once conquered the Quanrong in the west, pacified the Jingman in the south, gathered the princes at Tushan, and conquered the Xu State in the east. When the world was in turmoil, Ji Man would pacify the barbarians in all directions, rule the nine states, and make the world prostrate itself within the Zhou king's territory. With a weak body, Ji Man once again returned to Kunlun when he was seriously ill and dying, hoping to seek immortality by risking his life, or to die in front of the goddess.

When Ji Man came to Kunlun again that year, looking at the empty Yaotai and Yubi, he thought that she had broken her promise. He was angry at her depravity and resentful of her breach of trust.

But he later learned that the Queen Mother of the West's elixir of immortality was exchanged for her life span, and the immortality brought by each elixir was the reincarnation she had entered. Gods also have a life span, and mortals will die, otherwise the world will be in chaos. But Ji Man was tired of the world, so she gave him immortality and returned to the world to experience the tribulations for him. Retracing the path he had come from.

This time, it was his turn to look down on the secular world from the position of a god, waiting for a thousand years, gazing at her, watching her, hoping that she could ascend the throne in this life, pacify the troubled times, rebuild the glory of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and reproduce the glory of King Mu of Zhou conquering the nine states. Or... hoping that she would give up the human world, break away from worldly desires, and return to her position as the goddess.