Black Myth: Wukong Who is the person with the highest power?

  In the game "Black Myth: Wukong", it was ordered by the Jade Emperor that Yang Jian came to Huaguo Mountain and killed Sun Wukong. It can also be said that whether in the setting of the game background or in "Journey to the West", the person with the highest power is the Jade Emperor!

  So who exactly is the Jade Emperor? Why does he have the highest power among many immortals?

  In "Journey to the West", the Buddha said that the Jade Emperor had abandoned his country to cultivate Taoism since childhood and only after 1,750 kalpas did he become the Jade Emperor. "Kalpa" is a religious term. The formation and destruction of heaven and earth is called a kalpa, and one kalpa is 129,600 years. So the Jade Emperor has undergone hundreds of millions of years of cultivation before occupying that high position. However, in the historical genealogy of Taoist mythology, the Jade Emperor is much younger.

  When Taoism was founded, there was actually no dissemination of this great god, the Jade Emperor. The Way of Five Pecks of Rice regarded the Supreme Lord Laozi as the highest god and also worshipped the three great gods of the Heavenly Official, Earthly Official, and Water Official. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Tao Hongjing, the patriarch of Maoshan Mountain, arranged the seating order for immortals and compiled it all into the book "True Spirit Position and Occupation Chart".

  Tao Hongjing listed all the existing Taoist immortals at that time into seven ranks, and each rank had a main god and left and right attendant gods. At this time, there was no mature Jade Emperor yet, but there was already a prototype: that is, in the "True Spirit Position and Occupation Chart", the central position of the first rank of the listed divine genealogy is the Primordial Heavenly Lord of Jade Purity, and the eleventh on the right side of the first rank is the Jade Dao Lord; the nineteenth on the right side is the High and Supreme Jade Emperor.

  Whether it is the Jade Emperor or the Jade Lord, their status in Tao Hongjing's ranking is not high. Of course, this "not high" is relative to the status of the Jade Emperor in later generations. Tao Hongjing is the patriarch of the Maoshan Sect. The Maoshan Sect passes on the Shangqing Dharma Talisman and regards the Three Pure Ones as the highest gods. After all, the Jade Emperor and the Jade Lord are ranked in the first rank of gods.

  During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there was already the saying of the Jade Emperor. Tao Hongjing's master's master, Lu Xiujing, was proficient in the Taoism methods of Shangqing, Lingbao, and Tianshi Dao and was respectfully called the Three-Cave Mage. Lu Xiujing once said that the status of the Jade Emperor in Taoism is equivalent to the status of Kṣitigarbha Buddha in Buddhism. Kṣitigarbha Buddha is one of the seven Buddhas of the past and has a very high status in Buddhism. It can be seen that the belief in the Jade Emperor had already formed during the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

  As for the origin of the Jade Emperor, the explanations are rather chaotic. In the Tang Dynasty, there were Taoist scriptures that said that the Jade Emperor was actually the incarnation of the Three Pure Ones. "Tao is the most revered and always exists in the Three Pure Ones. It emerges from above the heavens. For this reason, it is called the Heavenly Lord. Sometimes it is called the Jade Emperor, or sometimes it is called the High Emperor, conforming to everything." It seems that the Jade Emperor is just an incarnation of the Three Pure Ones.
In "Yunji Qiqian", which is known as a small Taoist canon, there is a similar statement: "The Three Heavenly Lords of past generations are the Primordial Heavenly Lord of the past, the Supreme Jade Heavenly Lord of the Present who is currently in charge, and the Jade Morning Heavenly Lord of the Golden Palace in the future. The Three Heavenly Lords also have ten titles, the first is 'natural', the second is 'infinite'... the ninth is 'Jade Emperor'." These statements naturally conform to the sayings of Taoist immortals but do not conform to the habits of ordinary people.

  Since ancient times, ordinary people have been used to being governed by emperors. There is an emperor on earth, and naturally there is an emperor of heaven in the heavens. In ancient times, there were indeed emperors of heaven or gods. In Taoism, if it is replaced by the Three Pure Ones, it does not conform to people's habits. Therefore, in the Northern Song Dynasty, a new deity that combined the Jade Emperor and the Jade Lord into one was created. This is the Jade Emperor who is the head of the Four Sovereigns.

  The third emperor of the Song Dynasty, Zhenzong, especially revered Taoism. In the fifth year of Dazhong Xiangfu, Emperor Zhenzong personally worshipped the Jade Emperor in the Chaoyuan Hall; in the seventh year, he honored the Jade Emperor with the holy title of the Supreme One who Opens Heaven, Holds the Talisman, Records the Calendar, Contains the True Essence, and Embodies the Tao, the Great Heavenly Emperor. In this way, the Jade Emperor was officially formed. So, the Jade Emperor has truly existed for only a little over a thousand years. This is much shorter than the 1,750 kalpas as mentioned in the legend of "Journey to the West".