Since then, he'd come to realize more than just vaguely that there didn't seem to be as many high ranking members of the civil service as there used to be. That coincided with his sudden appointment to his new position in Finance. But what was more unnerving was the statue he passed by every day.

As a small child, he remembered his father taking him to the temple. He pointed out the demons to his young son and stressed the lessons to be learned. But when they got to the end, even his father paled and whispered. "This one, this one is the worse of them all. One to be truly feared."

Now every day, he passed by a statue every day that looked like the demon that had even scared his father.

As the problems surrounding him grew - he knew there had been better times. He knew that things hadn't always been the way there were now. Emperors didn't use to be clowns around whom it wasn't safe to be around. He knew there hadn't always been peasant uprisings. He knew that the Empire was created by Heaven as the only true world of human beings and that everything outside the wall was a land of ghosts. But in the intervening 3 months, he'd seen no less than 3 emperors.

When Zhu Yijun had died, he was succeeded by his son, Zhu Changluo who did the Empire a favor by dying almost immediately. Some say it was due to sexual exhaustion and was somehow related to the 8 concubines his lady wife had presented him.

The current Emperor, Zhu Youjiao, had succeeded his father. The person of the Emperor was supposed to sacrosanct but instead of poetry, this one only seemed interested in carpentry.

CARPENTRY An emperor! And it was even worse. It was strongly whispered that he couldn't even read much less write poetry!

Conditions in the Empire worsened every day under the rule of the eunuch the Emperor had put in charge while he built cabinets. It seemed like there was a new popular uprising every day.

Lu Wang knew it, knew it down to the depth of his soul that it was that demon who haunted his dreams and the hallways he had to walk. His venerable father had told him it was the most dangerous of them all. Let them try to tell him that it was a statue of Zhongxian, most beloved minister of the First Emperor. He knew better and every day he could see the power and corruption of the demon grow until finally he hatched a plot to rid himself and the Empire of the demon.