Seven Killings Made Him Emperor. Then It Made Him Kill Them All.
A 500-year-old scholar found two birth charts for China’s founding emperor. One was propaganda. The other explained everything—including the body count.
Act 1 · Darkness
1344 CE. The final years of the Yuan Dynasty. Drought, locusts, and plague descended on Haozhou simultaneously.
Zhu Yuanzhang was seventeen. Within half a month, his father, mother, and eldest brother all died—starvation, disease, one after another. The family was too poor to afford a burial plot or a coffin. He and his second brother wrapped the bodies in rags, carried them up a hill, and dug the graves with their bare hands.
Then he walked into Huangjue Temple and shaved his head. Not because he believed in Buddhism. Because the temple had food.
The temple couldn’t hold either. Within two months, the abbot ran out of grain and sent every monk out to beg. “Alms-seeking” was the polite term. The reality was standing on the street with a clay bowl.
Zhu Yuanzhang picked up a wooden fish and a begging bowl and wandered for three years. He crossed Huaixi and Henan, witnessing the lowest depths of a collapsing empire—corpses on every road, warlords butchering villages, humans eating humans.
Three years later he returned to the temple. The country had fully disintegrated. A childhood friend named Tang He sent him a secret letter: join Guo Zixing’s Red Turban rebels. Someone discovered the letter and was about to report him.
The stakes were lethal. Under that kind of pressure, no one can think straight. He walked to the Buddha statue and cast divination blocks three times.
First cast: Stay in the temple? Ill omen.
Second cast: Run? Ill omen.
Third cast: Rebel? Auspicious.
He left the temple and ran. Never looked back.
Act 2 · The Legend of the Dragon
More than 170 years later, a book called Sānmìng Tōnghuì (《三命通會》) was published.
The author, Wan Minying, was a Ming Dynasty jinshi—a scholar who had passed the highest imperial examination. He compiled an encyclopedia of BaZi (八字) analysis, cataloging charts across every social class. Among them: the chart of Zhu Yuanzhang. But the version he recorded wasn’t the real one. It was a version that folk fortune-tellers had passed down orally for generations.
That version: Wùchén year, Rénxū month, Dīngchǒu day, Dīngwèi hour.
The four Earthly Branches—Chén, Xū, Chǒu, Wèi. In BaZi, each corresponds to a vault: Metal Vault, Wood Vault, Water Vault, Fire Vault. All four open at once. The system calls this “the Four Seas unified.”
The original text:
「大林龍出值天河，四庫土全居九五。」
“The Great Forest Dragon emerges to meet the Heavenly River. Four Vaults of Earth complete—destined for the throne.”
The Great Forest Dragon is the Nayin (納音)—the tonal resonance—of the Wùchén year: a dragon born from the Great Forest. Dīngwèi hour’s Nayin is Heavenly River Water. Dragon meets Heavenly River. All four vaults open. The four seas converge into one.
The author continued:
「天下皆沾雨澤，必為九五之大人也。」
“All under heaven is bathed in rain and grace. This must be the great one who sits upon the throne.”
If this is your first encounter with the system, this probably makes you think: alright, maybe there’s something to this. A beggar’s birth chart encoded a dragon ascending to heaven.
But there’s a problem.
Act 3 · The Debunking
The author, Wan Minying, was a scholar by training. He did something almost unheard of in the fortune-telling world—he checked the national historical record.
He left this note in the book:
「戊辰明太祖考國史……與傳者不同，當以國史為正。」
“In the Wùchén year, I cross-referenced the Founding Emperor’s chart against the official dynastic history... it differs from the transmitted version. The official history must be taken as correct.”
The perfect Four Vaults chart was fake.
Folk fortune-tellers, eager to flatter the founding emperor, had reverse-engineered the theoretically perfect configuration. Chén, Xū, Chǒu, Wèi—all four vaults present, dragon flying through heaven. A textbook emperor’s chart. But Wan Minying checked the Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty and found the actual birth data was completely different.
Then he did something even more interesting.
He didn’t delete the fake. He published both versions.
Why? Because the Four Vaults configuration was too theoretically perfect to waste—the best teaching case for explaining just how powerful “all four vaults open” could be. Even if it wasn’t Zhu Yuanzhang’s chart, the configuration itself was real.
Use the false to illuminate the true.
At the end of the passage on the fake chart, he added one line:
「此亦有因而言。」
“There is a reason this was written down.”
But the fake chart holds a deeper secret.
If you actually run the “perfect” Four Vaults configuration—Wùchén, Rénxū, Dīngchǒu, Dīngwèi—through the system’s own logic, it still encodes a tyrant. Just a different kind.
The fake chart’s Earthly Branches contain Chǒu, Xū, and Wèi—a triple clash. The classical verdict:
「丑戌未何以謂之恃勢……入貴格則公清平正，人多畏懼。」
“Why are Chǒu, Xū, and Wèi called Punishment of Power?... When this enters a noble chart, the ruler is rigid and absolute—all people live in fear.”
Power crushing everything beneath it. The entire empire afraid.
The personality profile of all four Earth branches present is even more brutal:
「土旺辰戌并丑未，凡命逢之多性執……性惡性剛兼性急，觀之外貌似溫和，怒髮衝冠奈觸何。」
“When Earth dominates with Chén, Xū, Chǒu, and Wèi all present, the temperament is stubborn beyond measure... cruel, rigid, and explosive. On the surface, they appear mild. But once provoked—rage beyond all restraint.”
Calm on the outside. Touch the nerve, and the world burns.
The fake chart’s Day Master is Dīng Fire, surrounded by a wall of Earth—Wù, Chén, Xū, Chǒu, Wèi. Fire produces Earth. The entire chart is saturated with Hurting Officer (傷官) energy. And Rén Water in the month stem—the legitimate authority figure—gets hit head-on. The classical term: Hurting Officer clashes with Officer—”calamity without end.”
If the fake chart were real, Zhu Yuanzhang would still have killed. But his motive would have been pure arrogance—a born conviction that every person under heaven was beneath him, and anyone in the way gets crushed.
But the real Zhu Yuanzhang was a tenant farmer’s son. Parents starved to death. Brothers scattered. Three years begging on the street. A man who crawled out of a pile of corpses doesn’t carry the DNA of aristocratic entitlement. He killed because he was afraid.
The fake chart’s tyrant kills from arrogance.
The real chart’s tyrant kills from fear.
The fortune-tellers thought they had engineered a perfect dragon’s destiny. But the system doesn’t lie. No matter how you alter the data, the tyrant’s true nature is still there. Just expressed differently.
Five hundred years ago, a practitioner of the system knew this was propaganda. He chose to record it—and simultaneously flagged: take the official history as correct.
A system’s credibility doesn’t come from its ability to generate mythology. It comes from its practitioners’ willingness to debunk their own. And the system is more honest than its practitioners—even when the data is falsified, it still tells you the truth.
Act 4 · Sun Rising from Earth
So what was the real chart?
Wùchén year, ninth month, eighteenth day. Bǐngzǐ day, Jǐchǒu hour.
The book’s description:
「干陽熒而時逢己丑，出乎地而照耀山川。」
“The Yang stem glows like fire, and the hour meets Jǐchǒu—rising from the earth to illuminate mountains and rivers.”
No dragon. No four seas. No Heavenly River.
Bǐng Fire is the sun. Jǐchǒu is cold, late-autumn earth before dawn.
One sun, rising from the deepest darkness and mud, breaking through the ground in silence, lighting up the mountains.
The text continued:
「丙日逢己丑時，是日出土上之象，順而麗乎天，大明之德。」
“A Bǐng day meeting a Jǐchǒu hour—the image of the sun rising from the earth. Following its course, radiant against the sky. The virtue of Great Brightness.”
The virtue of Great Brightness—Dà Míng.
The dynasty this man built was called the Ming.
Not a dragon fabricated to flatter him. Not a perfectly engineered Four Vaults setup. The structure was there from the moment of birth—a sun rising from frozen earth—written quietly, impossibly, into the coordinates of his arrival.
Once that force ignited, it never stopped. Once the gears of fate begin to turn, there is no reversing them.
The beggar who had fought stray dogs for scraps joined a rebel army, tore through a fractured empire, climbed over the corpses of warlords, and ascended to the highest seat of power on the continent.
He built the Ming Dynasty.
But the story doesn’t end here.
Act 5 · The Price
A sun born in the coldest hour of the darkest night—what happens after it reaches the zenith?
Back to his real Four Pillars (四柱). Bǐng Fire—the sun—is his Day Master (日主). The Heavenly Stem of his birth month, Rén Water, has a name in BaZi—Seven Killings (七殺).
Seven Killings represents extreme danger, violence, enemies who can turn on you at any moment. The classical texts describe the psychological state of carrying this star:
「兢兢如抱虎而眠。」
“Sleepless and trembling, as if embracing a tiger in bed.”
Sleeping with a tiger. You don’t close your eyes. You know the beast beside you could wake at any moment and tear your throat open.
The sun that clawed its way out of frozen mud was surrounded by water trying to swallow it. He conquered the empire, sat on the dragon throne—but his subconscious never left that night when he was seventeen, digging graves for his parents with bare hands. Every founding general who had fought beside him, every decorated commander—in his eyes, they were all tigers waiting to wake.
To face the tiger that never stopped waking, his chart gave him a weapon. The Earthly Branch of his birth hour, Jǐchǒu Earth, carries the name Hurting Officer (傷官).
《三命通會》 describes the Hurting Officer:
「傲物氣高，心險無忌憚……常以天下之人不如己，而人亦憚之惡之。」
“Arrogant and lofty, ruthless without restraint... always considering all under heaven as beneath him—and others fear and loathe him in return.”
Ruthless without restraint. He wasn’t ignorant of what he was doing. He knew exactly. Deep-seated fear evolved into the most extreme paranoia—he had to eliminate every potential threat before it could move first.
In 1380, he executed his prime minister Hu Weiyong. Then he did something more extreme than murder—he permanently abolished the position of prime minister. China would never have one again. The six ministries reported directly to the emperor alone. The last institutional check on imperial power, ripped out by the root.
He codified it into dynastic law:
「以後嗣君並不許立丞相，臣下敢有奏請設立者，文武群臣即時劾奏，將犯人凌遲，全家處死。」
“No future emperor shall appoint a prime minister. Any minister who dares propose it shall be impeached immediately—the offender flayed alive, the entire family executed.”
Not just “don’t restore it.” Anyone who suggests restoring it: flayed, entire family killed.
In 1382, he established the Jǐnyīwèi—the Embroidered Uniform Guard—a secret police force answering only to the emperor. They surveilled every official’s words and actions, interrogated, sentenced. The regular judiciary didn’t dare intervene.
The scholar-official Qian Zai wrote a poem complaining about how exhausting his job was: “When can I return to the joy of fields, and sleep until the rice is done?” The next morning at court, Zhu Yuanzhang confronted him about it.
A poem about wanting to sleep in. The emperor knew about it the next day.
In the early Ming, officials settled their family affairs every morning before court. They weren’t sure they’d come home alive. If they returned safely, the entire household celebrated like a holiday.
His chart’s Earthly Branches carried a violent opposition—Chén (year) clashing with Xū (month). The classical texts call this Punishment of Power (恃勢之刑), and state plainly that when this configuration enters a chart of extreme rank:
「人多畏懼。」
“All people live in fear.”
The Hu Weiyong case, the Lan Yu case—over 40,000 people executed in the purges combined. The Qing Dynasty historian Zhao Yi’s verdict:
「借諸功臣以取天下，及天下既定，即盡舉取天下之人而盡殺之，其殘忍實千古所未有。」
“He borrowed his meritorious generals to conquer the empire. Once the empire was secured, he killed every last one of them. His cruelty is without precedent in a thousand years of history.”
Borrowed them to win the empire. Empire won, killed them all. Unprecedented cruelty.
He didn’t kill because he was powerful. He killed because he was afraid.
And his methods ensured that all under heaven feared and loathed him in return—“others fear and loathe him.” The sun reached its peak. The cold water didn’t vanish. It all turned to steam. The entire empire trembled in the heat of his burning.
Act 6 · The Mirror
“Sun rising from earth” is not a prophecy. It doesn’t say he was destined to be emperor. It doesn’t say he was destined to be brutal.
It describes a structural tendency: breaking through darkness, pushing upward under pressure, standing when everyone else falls. The same force, born into a scholarly family during peacetime, might produce an iron-fisted reformer or a CEO everyone fears. Born into the Great Famine at the end of the Yuan—parents dead, reduced to begging—the same force, activated by extreme deprivation and terror, took the most violent path available.
Structure is locked at the moment of birth. Where it goes depends on what you choose—and the instinct behind that choice is your innate structural inertia.
But the structure of a life doesn’t only contain power. It contains fear. Zhu Yuanzhang’s Seven Killings kept him sleeping beside tigers for life. His Hurting Officer made him respond to that fear with maximum brutality. These weren’t learned behaviors. They were buried in the system’s base layer from the moment he arrived. Environment only determined the form of the eruption.
Your structure contains your power too. And your fear. They might not be called Seven Killings or Hurting Officer. But they’re there. They’ve been there since the moment you were born.
They can carry you through the ground and into the light. They can drag you into the abyss after you’ve already reached the top.
The question was never “is my fate good or bad?”
The question is: do you know it’s there?
The same structure that builds empires can burn them down. If you want to see what yours is built to do—not what you wish it would do—subscribe.
What These Words Mean
BaZi (八字)
Literally “eight characters.” Your birth year, month, day, and hour each produce one Heavenly Stem and one Earthly Branch—four pairs, eight characters total. Over 500,000 possible combinations. These are the input parameters for the entire analysis.
Four Pillars (四柱)
Year Pillar, Month Pillar, Day Pillar, Hour Pillar. Each corresponds to a life phase: Year Pillar is early foundation and family environment, Month Pillar is career and social role, Day Pillar is the core self, Hour Pillar is legacy and late-life pattern. Zhu Yuanzhang’s story moves from the Year Pillar’s darkness to the Hour Pillar’s brutality—four pillars, four turning points.
Four Vaults (四庫)
Chén, Xū, Chǒu, Wèi—four Earthly Branches, each storing one vault. Chén stores Water, Xū stores Fire, Chǒu stores Metal, Wèi stores Wood. All four open simultaneously is one of the rarest configurations in BaZi—theoretically representing “all four seas unified” and the mandate of an emperor.
Bing Fire (丙火)
One of the ten Heavenly Stems. Represents the sun. A Bing Fire Day Master carries structural tendencies toward radiance, upward movement, and illuminating everything around it.
Day Master (日主)
The Heavenly Stem of the Day Pillar. Represents the self. Every element in the chart is read relative to this anchor.
Seven Killings (七殺)
The most aggressive control element targeting the Day Master—same polarity, maximum force. Represents extreme pressure, danger, and external threat. Classical texts: “Sleepless and trembling, as if embracing a tiger in bed.” Zhu Yuanzhang’s Bing Fire meets Ren Water in the month stem—Ren is his Seven Killings.
Hurting Officer (傷官)
The element the Day Master produces, opposite in polarity. Represents talent, rebellion, the impulse to break rules. Classical texts: “Arrogant and lofty, ruthless without restraint... always considering all under heaven as beneath him—and others fear and loathe him in return.” Ji Earth in his hour pillar is the Hurting Officer of Bing Fire.
Hurting Officer Clashes with Officer (傷官見官)
When the Hurting Officer and the Direct Officer collide head-on in a chart. The classical verdict: “Calamity without end.” Hurting Officer is the impulse to rebel and break rules; Direct Officer is the system and authority. When they meet face-to-face, the result is unending conflict and disaster. In the fake chart, Dīng Fire’s Hurting Officer (Earth) meets Rén Water’s Direct Officer head-on—an extreme case of this configuration.
Punishment of Power (恃勢之刑)
A punitive clash formed by Chén and Xū in direct opposition. Classical texts: “Chén-Xū clash inevitably invokes punishment.” When this enters a chart of extreme rank, the ruling style is: “All people live in fear.”
Nayin (納音)
The Five Phase tonal resonance assigned to each pair in the sixty-unit stem-branch cycle. Wùchén year = Great Forest Wood. Dīngwèi hour = Heavenly River Water. Nayin is the poetic imaging language within BaZi.
Where These Words Come From
《三命通會》 (Sānmìng Tōnghuì)
Wàn Mínyīng, Míng Dynasty, completed 1550
「大林龍出值天河，四庫土全居九五。」
「天下皆沾雨澤，必為九五之大人也。」
「戊辰明太祖考國史……與傳者不同，當以國史為正。」
「此亦有因而言。」
「干陽熒而時逢己丑，出乎地而照耀山川。」
「丙日逢己丑時，是日出土上之象，順而麗乎天，大明之德。」
「傲物氣高，心險無忌憚……常以天下之人不如己，而人亦憚之惡之。」(On Hurting Officer)
「丑戌未何以謂之恃勢……入貴格則公清平正，人多畏懼。」(On Punishment of Power)
「土旺辰戌并丑未，凡命逢之多性執……性惡性剛兼性急，觀之外貌似溫和，怒髮衝冠奈觸何。」(On Four Earth temperament)
Classical BaZi Texts (Seven Killings / Punishment)
「兢兢如抱虎而眠。」(On Seven Killings)
「辰戌尅制併衝必犯刑名。」(On Chén-Xū Clash)
「人多畏懼。」(On Punishment of Power in a noble chart)
「禍患百端。」(On Hurting Officer Clashes with Officer)
《明史·刑法志》 (Míng Shǐ—Treatise on Penal Law)
「胡惟庸、藍玉兩獄，株連死者且四萬。」
趙翼《廿二史劄記》 (Zhào Yì, Notes on the Twenty-Two Histories)
「借諸功臣以取天下，及天下既定，即盡舉取天下之人而盡殺之，其殘忍實千古所未有。」
