exceedingly disconcerting manner. At the first indication of these
celestial movements a sudden blindness came upon Yin, and all power of
thought or movement forsook him; nevertheless, he experienced an
emotion of flight through the air, as though borne upwards upon the
back of a winged creature. When this emotion ceased, the blindness
went from him as suddenly and entirely as if a cloth had been pulled
away from his eyes, and he perceived that he was held in the midst of
a boundless space, with no other object in view than the sacred rock,
which had opened, as it were, revealing a mighty throng within, at the
sight of whom Yin's internal organs trembled as they would never have
moved at ordinary danger, for it was put into his spirit that these in
whose presence he stood were the sacred Emperors of his country from
the earliest time until the usurpation of the Chinese throne by the
devouring Tartar hordes from the North.

As Yin gazed in fear-stricken amazement, a knowledge of the various
Pure Ones who composed the assembly came upon him. He understood that
the three unclad and commanding figures which stood together were the
Emperors of the Heaven, Earth, and Man, whose reigns covered a space
of more than eighty thousand years, commencing from the time when the
world began its span of existence. Next to them stood one wearing a
robe of leopard-skin, his hand resting upon a staff of a massive club,
while on his face the expression of tranquillity which marked his
predecessors had changed into one of alert wakefulness; it was the
Emperor of Houses, whose reign marked the opening of the never-ending
strife between man and all other creatures. By his side stood his
successor, the Emperor of Fire, holding in his right hand the emblem
of the knotted cord, by which he taught man to cultivate his mental
faculties, while from his mouth issued smoke and flame, signifying
that by the introduction of fire he had raised his subjects to a state