The Ravages of Time - Ch. 608 - The Celestial Master’s Debut

[MangaDex]

 

[Grimmycoffee]

I am so loss on most of these names, especially this Ruxukou that is treated as something vital by Jia Xu.

 

[sssr]

I am so loss on most of these names, especially this Ruxukou that is treated as something vital by Jia Xu.

Ruxukou is a port city on Lake Chaohu in Anhui. It's where a major battle between the Sun and Cao forces took place in 213 which was won by Sun Quan. This chapter is taking place in 211.

The kids are future generals who will decide the fate of the Three Kingdoms, especially the future great rivals Deng Ai and Jiang Wei. Guo Huai and Wang Shuang would also become great generals of Wei.

Of the surrendered officials mentioned, only Zhao Ang really matters to the story. You can ignore the rest.

 

[SilverMajeh]

Thx for the chapter. Always glad to see the immortal again.
Is the text cloud in page 8 supposed to be empty?

 

[maddery]

Oh dear, the problematic Jiang Wei finally made its debut.

About the 8th Genius, who is he based on anyway?

 

[Kathartes]

About the 8th Genius, who is he based on anyway?

Zhao Sheng was a fictional character from the traditions of Way of the Five Pecks of Rice. He could be based on an actual person, or was entirely invented as a narrative device.

In the lore of 5-Peck, the 1st gen Celestial Master Zhang Daoling had two most brilliant students named Wang Zhang 王長 and Zhao Sheng 趙升. Zhao Sheng in particular had passed through the seven trials imposed by Zhang Daoling to prove his aptitude for learning secret scripture, and then all 3 of them ascended to heaven and became immortals. Yep, it's just one of your typical religious tall tales to prop up the founder's divinity.
The name "Zhao Sheng" since then was passed down from one generation to another, creating an illusion that the he was truly immortal (current year was 211, and Zhang Daoling was said to ascend in 122, which was nine decades ago).

Spoiler: Some historical tidbits

Taoism originally started as a philosophical school, but during later years of Han dynasty, its teaching was incorporated with other beliefs and gave rise to various religious groups (such as 5-Peck and Way of the Great Peace). At this point of time, 5-Peck's leader was the 3rd gen Master Zhang Lu (grandson of Zhang Daoling), who took over Hanzhong Commandery and established his own theocratic state.
After losing in the upcoming Battle of Tong Pass, Ma Chao escaped to Hanzhong and went into Zhang Lu's service. In 215, Cao Cao attacked Hanzhong, Zhang Lu surrendered to him and was granted titles and lands. He would use his religious influence to lend legitimacy to Wei court, in exchange 5-Peck was officially recognized by government, signifying Taoism's starting point as a religion.
Now you can see how that scene from Chapter 1 would come to be, and what was the role of the 8th Genius in it.

 

[LecteurH]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[maddery]

Zhao Sheng was a fictional character from the traditions of Way of the Five Pecks of Rice. He could be based on an actual person, or was entirely invented as a narrative device.

In the lore of 5-Peck, the 1st gen Celestial Master Zhang Daoling had two most brilliant students named Wang Zhang 王長 and Zhao Sheng 趙升. Zhao Sheng in particular had passed through the seven trials imposed by Zhang Daoling to prove his aptitude for learning secret scripture, and then all 3 of them ascended to heaven and became immortals. Yep, it's just one of your typical religious tall tales to prop up the founder's divinity.
The name "Zhao Sheng" since then was passed down from one generation to another, creating an illusion that the he was truly immortal (current year was 211, and Zhang Daoling was said to ascend in 122, which was nine decades ago).

Spoiler: Some historical tidbits

Taoism originally started as a philosophical school, but during later years of Han dynasty, its teaching was incorporated with other beliefs and gave rise to various religious groups (such as 5-Peck and Way of the Great Peace). At this point of time, 5-Peck's leader was the 3rd gen Master Zhang Lu (grandson of Zhang Daoling), who took over Hanzhong Commandery and established his own theocratic state.
After losing in the upcoming Battle of Tong Pass, Ma Chao escaped to Hanzhong and went into Zhang Lu's service. In 215, Cao Cao attacked Hanzhong, Zhang Lu surrendered to him and was granted titles and lands. He would use his religious influence to lend legitimacy to Wei court, in exchange 5-Peck was officially recognized by government, signifying Taoism's starting point as a religion.
Now you can see how that scene from Chapter 1 would come to be, and what was the role of the 8th Genius in it.

...they couldn't choose someone else as the genius?

I know about Zhang Lu because I played ROTK before. We will see for now. I am still not convinced that he is good enough to be considered a genius.

 

[Kathartes]

...they couldn't choose someone else as the genius?

I know about Zhang Lu because I played ROTK before. We will see for now. I am still not convinced that he is good enough to be considered a genius.

No, Zhang Lu is NOT the 8th genius. As the symbol of the entire religion, they can't have the Master running around preaching to other people. That role was given to the gifted student a.k.a. Zhao Sheng, a nobody who inherited and carried on the legacy of that name. Therefore don't expect to find what his real identity is, he has none.

 

[sssr]

No, Zhang Lu is NOT the 8th genius. As the symbol of the entire religion, they can't have the Master running around preaching to other people. That role was given to the gifted student a.k.a. Zhao Sheng, a nobody who inherited and carried on the legacy of that name. Therefore don't expect to find what his real identity is, he has none.

Er, not exactly. The 8th Genius' real name IS Zhao Sheng. It's just a coincidence that he shared his name with the legendary immortal, and one that the other Geniuses made fun of when they were kids. However, Zhao Sheng made use of his name and went off to study with the 8 Eccentrics, the more politically-engaged "immortals" of Daoism. He ended up inheriting the Zhao Sheng lineage of Celestial Masters through this effort. That's how we end up with Celestial Master Zhao Sheng as the 8th Genius.

It should be noted that in the real world this may not have been the original plan for the 8th Genius character. There have been instances where fans have "correctly guessed" the 8th Genius' identity and had it confirmed by Chan Mou, but the fans who managed to make the "correct guess" then agreed to keep the secret to avoid spoiling the story. The problem is that I can't think of a single possible way ANYONE could have guessed it would have been "Zhao Sheng" (because he isn't even a character in any rendition of the 3K story), so I think Chan Mou probably said fuck it, just dumped his original plans, and made up "Zhao Sheng". Looking at the way the story went, I kinda suspect the 8th Genius was supposed to have been a fake Zhao Ang. If you follow the Zhao Ang story in this manhua so far, Zhao Ang is supposed to be the real heir of the Zhao clan and he's married to Wang Yi, who's basically a FMC-type character. The historical Zhao Ang also sort of disappeared after pulling off a really brilliant multi-year stratagem against Ma Chao that effectively turned Ma Chao from a major warlord into a fugitive, and he may have disappeared from records because he's the same guy as the heroic Zhao Yong killed by Huang Zhong. So maybe originally the 8th Genius was "Zhao Yong", the fake Zhao Ang who would have played out Zhao Ang's heroic life alongside his loyal wife Wang Yi.

Anyway, we now have Celestial Master Zhao Sheng as the 8th Genius.

 

[solfalling]

Er, not exactly. The 8th Genius' real name IS Zhao Sheng. It's just a coincidence that he shared his name with the legendary immortal, and one that the other Geniuses made fun of when they were kids. However, Zhao Sheng made use of his name and went off to study with the 8 Eccentrics, the more politically-engaged "immortals" of Daoism. He ended up inheriting the Zhao Sheng lineage of Celestial Masters through this effort. That's how we end up with Celestial Master Zhao Sheng as the 8th Genius.

It should be noted that in the real world this may not have been the original plan for the 8th Genius character. There have been instances where fans have "correctly guessed" the 8th Genius' identity and had it confirmed by Chan Mou, but the fans who managed to make the "correct guess" then agreed to keep the secret to avoid spoiling the story. The problem is that I can't think of a single possible way ANYONE could have guessed it would have been "Zhao Sheng" (because he isn't even a character in any rendition of the 3K story), so I think Chan Mou probably said fuck it, just dumped his original plans, and made up "Zhao Sheng". Looking at the way the story went, I kinda suspect the 8th Genius was supposed to have been a fake Zhao Ang. If you follow the Zhao Ang story in this manhua so far, Zhao Ang is supposed to be the real heir of the Zhao clan and he's married to Wang Yi, who's basically a FMC-type character. The historical Zhao Ang also sort of disappeared after pulling off a really brilliant multi-year stratagem against Ma Chao that effectively turned Ma Chao from a major warlord into a fugitive, and he may have disappeared from records because he's the same guy as the heroic Zhao Yong killed by Huang Zhong. So maybe originally the 8th Genius was "Zhao Yong", the fake Zhao Ang who would have played out Zhao Ang's heroic life alongside his loyal wife Wang Yi.

Anyway, we now have Celestial Master Zhao Sheng as the 8th Genius.

I've been rereading the series the past week and 8th Genius/Master Water Mirror were talking about the forbidden art of war (religion) almost from 8th's very first appearance. So I think 8th was always meant to be a Taoist character. Based on that connection and the "Zhao" family name, it seems possible that some fans managed to guess it randomly.

 

[sssr]

I've been rereading the series the past week and 8th Genius/Master Water Mirror were talking about the forbidden art of war (religion) almost from 8th's very first appearance. So I think 8th was always meant to be a Taoist character. Based on that connection and the "Zhao" family name, it seems possible that some fans managed to guess it randomly.

Religion wasn't the Forbidden Art of Water Mirror. It was the use of self-sacrificing leader-martyrs as a cheat code to beat better strategists. This was what Jia Xu used several times against Lu Bu. Guo Jia used a variant of this by using the incidental death of Cao Cao's father. Yuan Fang tried to do the same with his dad and brothers, although in his case he didn't bother getting their consent. Water Mirror actually views religion as something OUTSIDE the proper Art of War, something he couldn't master. Zhao Sheng also tried to use the Forbidden Art with Zhao Fan, but he failed to execute it properly.

With that said, I agree that the 8th Genius was being built up as a Zhao and that Daoism was going into play in his tale. My point is just that the NAME Zhao Sheng is way out of left field because you can't find him in either 3K or actual historical records of this era, so there's no way fans could have guessed it. The name is first attested in a 7th century CE Daoist treatise. There's already a Zhao Yong who's already a real 3K character, so I suspect he's the one fans guessed correctly way back when.

Be that as it may, the use of Zhao Sheng as the name for 8th G is actually more interesting in many ways because he's now been elevated into a Daoist demigod from someone who might have been closer to Kong Ming in character (using Daoist tricks to build up a thin mystical veneer).