The True Story of the Arabian Nights: Yu's Incarnation
This is an incarnation story of Yu Menglong that he shared with us himself, through one of his secondary souls.
We were concerned that the topics we usually discuss are too heavy, and that everyone's emotions and mental state might not be able to sustain them over the long term. So Yu Menglong shared some interesting anecdotes from the experiences his secondary souls had across their cycles of reincarnation. Yu wants everyone to guess which character he plays in this story — the answer will be revealed at the end.
One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) is a collection of ancient Persian folk stories, and Yu believes that these accounts all truly happened.
At the time, a Zoroastrian monk felt that these stories were deeply meaningful and could enlighten people's hearts. Under the guidance of the divine, he began gathering these folk tales together, devoting himself to the work from his youth all the way into old age.
In fact, the "Ming Sect" in The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber was modeled after Zoroastrianism, and the "Sacred Fire Order" within the Ming Sect also has its origins in Zoroastrian tradition.
Zoroastrianism is considered one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions. It once served as the state religion of the Persian Empire (under both the Achaemenid and Sassanid dynasties), with its influence spreading throughout the entire Middle East. Zoroastrianism was transmitted into China along the Silk Road, where it was widely practiced among Central Asian Sogdian merchant communities and some Han Chinese during the period from the Northern and Southern Dynasties through the Tang Dynasty. Because of its veneration of sacred fire, it came to be popularly known as the "Fire-Worshipping Religion." Today, it has approximately 100,000 to 200,000 followers worldwide.
In that era, the vast number of Islamic believers had encroached upon the space for Zoroastrian faith and called into question the existence of its deities. But being a minority religion does not mean that its divine beings are false — many such religions contain righteous teachings and legitimate paths of cultivation.
The stories collected by this Zoroastrian monk were all related to religious faith, or were accounts of personal spiritual realizations that people had written down — making them relatively solemn in nature. In order to make these stories accessible and easy for the world to read, the monk — with divine permission — rewrote and expanded them in a narrative style, making them more compelling and engaging, and thus gave rise to this collection that has been passed down through the ages.
But the figures within the stories are all real people, including those at the very origin of all the tales in One Thousand and One Nights: the Persian king Shahryar and Queen Scheherazade.
The Story of Scheherazade and the King
King Shahryar had fallen under the influence of a cult that demanded human sacrifice — young girls were killed as offerings, some of them his own consorts, others innocent maidens taken from among the common people. Everyone in the kingdom knew of this, and it spread fear throughout the land. Families with daughters rushed to marry them off early, before the army could come and take them away. This is how the custom of early marriage for women came to take root in that region.
The king had a minister named Vizier, whose own family had daughters. His eldest and second daughters had already been given to the king as consorts and had met their end. Now his youngest daughter, Scheherazade, was nearly fourteen years old. He had exhausted every effort to find her a husband — and yet the daughter herself volunteered to marry the king.
But Scheherazade set a condition: she asked the king to wait until she came of age, and during that time he must cease the sacrifices — otherwise she would not consent to the marriage. The king was no virtuous man; on the surface he agreed to this demand, for Scheherazade was exceptionally beautiful, with porcelain skin, luminous and clear, and two large, bright eyes. But in secret, this wicked king continued his evil deeds. He had not stopped searching for young women — he had merely moved his crimes from open ground to the shadows.
Scheherazade saw everything. She bravely went to the palace alone and asked the king why he had broken his promise. The king replied with a face full of hatred: the world owed him this. When he was still a prince, the people of the palace had bullied, suppressed, and hurt him, yet no one had come to his aid — everyone had looked down on him. It was only after he killed the previous king on the pretext that his royal brother had violated his wife and seized the throne that people finally regarded him with respect. Even so, his reputation among the people had already been thoroughly ruined — he was known as a fratricide who had stolen his brother's wife. This drove the king's mind to further darkness, and compounded by his misplaced faith in a cult that amplified his hatred, he still believed himself to be in the right.
Scheherazade had a younger sister, Dunyazad. Because of the king's obsession with cult sacrifices, Dunyazad had been hidden away by her family in a mountain monastery from a young age, to practice cultivation far from harm. One day, the king's soldiers arrived at the mountain monastery and seized Dunyazad. While in captivity, Dunyazad resolved to sacrifice herself and die for her faith. When news of this reached the minister Vizier, he collapsed in despair and fell gravely ill — his last two daughters were both about to be taken from him.
Just as Dunyazad raised a blade to end her own life, the king and his soldiers appeared and stopped her. They asked what she wished for. Knowing the king's character, Dunyazad realized that being set free was out of the question. So she told the king she wished to marry him together with her elder sister Scheherazade and become a queen alongside her — for it was the custom of that time to allow a man multiple wives. The king agreed.
On the day Scheherazade and her younger sister Dunyazad were married to the king, everyone who knew them and everyone who had only heard of them wept, unable to bear the grief — for it meant that two more innocent young women were about to be sacrificed and killed by the king.
The minister Vizier lay in his sickbed. He looked at his two beloved and beautiful daughters and said: “Children, live on. Rely on the strength of your faith in the divine, and live by the wisdom that the divine has bestowed upon you.”
In the deep of night, the two girls were brought to the palace. The king said: tomorrow, one of you must die. Speak — who will go first? Dunyazad said: "Most esteemed king, when my elder sister was young, she traveled to several places in the company of our mother and her attendants, and encountered many stories and wondrous events — things that perhaps even Your Majesty has not heard of!"
Dunyazad cast a meaningful glance at her sister. Scheherazade understood at once, and replied: "Sister, the esteemed king has seen and understood far more than we ever could. What little traveling I have done — how could it possibly compare to the vision and wisdom of our great king?"
Basking in the sisters' praise, the king felt a rare sense of ease and well-being. It had been a very long time since anyone among his people had spoken well of him — all he ever received from them were messages filled with suppressed fury and silent resentment, for he had harmed countless young women.
"Very well! Scheherazade, let us hear your story. If you tell it well, I will spare you from death tomorrow — though your sister may not be so fortunate!" the king declared with pride. Scheherazade then pleaded with the king: if they were to die, let them die together — she and her sister could not be separated. The king agreed. After all, it made little difference to him whether he killed one or two.
Scheherazade's stories were magnificent. But the specific content was not the tales found within One Thousand and One Nights — those were added by the monk to give the collection breadth and readability. The king was utterly captivated, so entranced that he was even reluctant to sleep. Yet when dawn began to break, at the very most thrilling moment, Scheherazade stopped.
"Go on! I was enjoying it so!" the king said impatiently. Having been awake the entire night, he was exhausted — and yet he couldn't bear to hear the end without hearing the ending. At this moment, the two sisters knelt down before him. "Your most esteemed and noble Majesty, at this hour you should be holding court and hearing the voices of your people. Please allow us to help you dress and refresh yourself."
The king waved his hand in irritation. "No! This story is too good — I must hear it to the end!" To his surprise, the two sisters fell utterly silent. Through writing, they conveyed to the king: as the ruler of a nation, the affairs of the state and the welfare of the people must come first. Until nightfall arrived, and until the king had fulfilled his duties as sovereign, they would not utter another word.
The king was helpless before them: if he killed them, there would be no more story to hear. He had no choice but to spare them. Waited upon in silence, the king went off to the morning court session, and the two sisters finally breathed a sigh of relief.
And so it went — each night, Scheherazade used stories as parables to remind the king to govern for the good of the nation and its people, and to put an end to the abductions of young girls and the sacrificial killings. Each time she reached the most gripping moment, she would stop. Gradually, the king at last came to understand the sisters' kind intention: knowing the king could not be reached through direct remonstration, they had chosen instead to guide him through gentle persuasion by means of allegorical tales.
Under the sisters' guidance through storytelling, they did not lose their lives. Instead, they transformed the king's cruel and tyrannical attitude toward the world. The king resolved to govern well, according to the principles of goodness found in the stories. And in accordance with Dunyazad's own wishes, he sent her back to the monastery to continue her cultivation.
This is the first and the last — and the greatest — story within One Thousand and One Nights.
That king later became a wise and enlightened ruler of his age, accumulating great virtue and merit.
And that Zoroastrian monk who gathered and compiled the stories of One Thousand and One Nights — that was Yu.
Did you guess correctly?