War Among Gods and Men―The Wisdom of Tao: A Blasphemous Pilgrimage

At the advice of his court officers, Emperor Zoe paid a pilgrimage to the temple of Goddess Woman Wa, who had saved the Middle Kingdom from destruction by mending a cosmic crack in the sky during early human history. Dazzled by the beauty of her icon, he fell in love with her. To express his lewd desire, he left a poem on the walls of the temple wishing to have her in his harem. Goddess Woman Wa was angry at this blasphemous act and wanted to punish Zoe by destroying his empire, Shang. Three elves were summoned to her presence to carry out the punishment. One of the elves was a fox which had acquired the wisdom of Tao. She took over the body of Dar Gee, the beautiful daughter of one of the lords under Zoe. Dar Gee became Zoe's favorite woman. She framed a charge against the formal queen, who was the daughter of one of the four highest ranking Dukes, and had her murdered. She subsequently became the queen. Zoe then used a false pretense to summon the four Dukes to the capital and then executed two of them, one being the father of the murdered queen. Heirs of the two murdered Dukes then mutinied and began rebellion. Jiang Sarn, a Taoist from Sect Eulicidatus, was sent to the human world to prepare for a full scale revolution. Jiang Sarn became the prime minister of the most powerful Duke, West, of the Zhou Fiefdom. As the revolutionary war escalated, Zoe sent his most capable warrior-Taoist, Imperial Teacher Wen to lead an army to subdue Duke West. However, another sect of Tao, the Interceptus, sided with Zoe and sent disciples from this sect to the aid of Zoe. The Patriarch of Sect Elucidatus also dispatched his disciples to aid Jiang Sarn. Challenges of the abilities of Tao between these two sects commenced and escalated. Magic weapons (Dharmaratnas) and magic feats (Fa Shu) were displayed in the battle fields. The other Sect, the Anthropodus, did not send any disciples to join the war, but in general it sided with Elucidatus whenever needs arose. Ten matrices of war were erected by disciples of Interceptus to test the abilities of the Tao of Elucidatus. Volume 1 ends with a stalemate between disciples of the two Sects.

丘宏義，康乃爾大學博士，上海出生，臺北長大，旅居美國，環遊世界，時代雜誌（Times）曾冊封為「最優秀的美國科學家」。丘博士任職於美國國家航空暨太空總署（NASA）擔任天文物理及太空科學專家長達35年，曾在知名大學如哥倫比亞大學、耶魯大學、紐約市立大學石溪大學等兼任教授，著有科學著作130餘篇、書籍十餘冊、科普中文譯作十餘冊、科普文章十餘篇等。美國聯邦政府退休後與海外華人菁英創辦漢世紀集團與EHGBooks微出版公司，並且擔任資深合夥人兼任總裁，帶領漢世紀技術團隊致力研發華人世界科技與人文的資訊解決方案：2008年帶領漢世紀推動臺灣加入聯合國教科文組織（UNESCO）贊助的世界數位圖書館（World Digital Library），2012年帶領漢世紀開發全球第一套Amazon微出版漢字標準資訊解決方案（Amazon Micropublishing Chinese Solution）。

Dr. Hong-Yee Chiu, Ph. D. Cornell University, has a long and distinguished career as a space scientist with NASA while holding professorships in Columbia University, Yale University, among others. He has been actively promoting Sino-Century Cultures in Great Washington D.C. Area after his retire from U.S. Federal Government NASA. Being the Founder and President of EHanism Group and EHGBooks Publishing House, Dr. Chiu has written many books in Chinese as well in English and he has been paying attention to the trend of digital-publishing and micropublishing research.