On February 28, 1947 Taiwanese rose up against the oppressive and corrupt Chinese trustee government put in place by the allies following WWII. This event would become known as the 228 Massacre and would deeply pierce into the heart of Taiwanese society like a chilling wind. The events in late February and early March culminated in a brief period of Taiwanese control over their island. Then, on March 9, the 21st Division of heavily armed Chinese troops landed in the northern port of Keelung, sparking a bloody massacre of innocent civilians that continued unabated for weeks. The troops marched south and arrived in the central city of Taichung on March 13 under the cover of light armor and mounted machineguns. In a brave effort to resist the Chinese forces, several young people in central Taiwan formed a volunteer militia, known as the 27th Brigade.
Phuann Tsing-guan was a young man from the Sing-Ling Temple, who, it was said, could traverse the veil between the worlds of Heaven and Hell. He was known as the most capable medium for channelling the ghostly Eight Generals who protected his temple. When his partners in the troupe left to join the rebels of the 27th Brigade in fighting back the Chinese invaders, Tsing-guan made a solemn pact with them that he would leave his earthly body in the basement of Sing-Ling Temple to enter into the spirit world and steal the Book of Life and Death from Hell’s deepest and most blood-soaked pits. His purpose was to wield the sacred book as a weapon to control life and death in the mortal world and to protect his comrades’ lives in the eventual defeat of the tyrannical regime, which had brought murder and bloodshed.
Tsing-guan slipped between the worlds of life and death into the first layer of the Hell of the Mirror of Retribution, where he saw Taiwanese souls falling by the thousand into the void like a black rain. He was shocked to discover the brutality of the massacre was much more cruel and severe than he could ever have imagined. Moreover, those spirits, which had just suffered being flayed alive by the soldiers’ bayonets and humiliated before execution, still had to confront the tortures of Hell; an endless labyrinth of blood-caked punishment and bone scraping horrors. Tsing-guan realized his responsibility to his people, a realization that ignited his Godly Destiny, an unearthly power allowing him to smash through the gates separating the ghostly levels from the darkest, blackest reaches of Hell.
Before Tsing-guan could retrieve the Book of Life and Death, the Ghost King from the Tenth Level of Hell sent his ghostly mob to Sing-Ling Temple to freeze Tsing-guan’s mortal body and prevent him from unleashing Hell’s power into the world. Tsing-guan fiercely fought the legions of gods and ghosts, which hurled their contorted bodies in his path.
By March 16 there were only 40 remaining members of the 27th Brigade, which had been hunted down and eliminated by the overwhelming Chinese force. They retreated back to Sing-Ling Temple to prepare for a final bloody confrontation with over 2,500 Chinese regulars.
With wars being waged in both the spirit and mortal worlds, ghosts howled in horror and delight at the death and pain around them. The event marked a cataclysm between the worlds as forces, living and dead, clashed in what is known on Earth and in Hell as the Last Stand at Oo-gu-lam.
The Taiwanese volunteers were eventually ripped apart by the Chinese military, which outnumbered them by a ratio of 60 to 1. Tsing-guan’s body of flesh, which lay in the basement of Sing-Ling Temple, had survived the fighting unharmed, but his supernatural powers were revoked by the ghosts and gods from Hell for his intransigence. His soul returned to his body, but he was forbidden, at the risk of severe punishment, to return to the spirit world. Upon seeing the bodies of his comrades and family lying in the battlefield and his village reduced to ashes, Tsing-guan was devastated, taking his own life in a bid to re-enter hell. He hoped to reclaim the Book of Life and Death to avenge his friends and all the Taiwanese who died during the short-lived war of resistance. The tyrannical government also had to die.
As soon as his soul crossed over, Tsing-guan shot directly back to the Tenth Level of Hell. His anger blazed incandescent, radiating the full spectrum of his supernatural power. It was not enough, and Tsing-guan succumbed to the forces sent by the King of Hong-do, the ghostly city, and by the King of the Charred Face, who was actually one of the forms taken by Guan yim; the goddess of mercy. Tsing-guan was eventually subdued and stripped of his powers.
Tsing-guan had breached the sacred border between the mortal world and Hell, and therefore, the ultimate punishment was bestowed upon him. He was to become the Mirror of Retribution’s eternal guardian; the sole custodian of a massive polished glass, reflecting the evils committed by earthly souls in a searing grotesque spectrum, as they pass through Hell’s dreaded gates.
For the first ten years he gazed into the mirror at the deaths of his friends being tortured and killed by the tyrannical regime. In the first sixty years he gazed into the mirror at the overthrow of the tyrannical regime that had ruined his land. For another thousand years he gazed into the mirror as a new tyranny arose and became a blight upon the land. For another ten thousand years he balefully gazed into the mirror, glassy-eyed at the lingering demise of the human race. Still, he gazed into the searing images reflecting in the mirror for another one hundred million years as a new “life body” emerged onto the polluted grounds of the wretched earth. Tsing-guan gazed for one billion more years as countless souls passed through every manifestation of creature, between gaps of nothingness, until the six channels of transmigration finally came to an end. And, although there was nothing more to see in the mirror, he continued to gaze; eyes fixed on the void reflecting back at him.
After hundreds of millions of years, when time and space reach a final accounting and collapse into one, when the last soul in Hell serves its final sentence, all the ghosts, gods and asuras disappear as if they never existed, Tsing-guan will continue gazing into the mirror as the last soul in the universe… slowly fading into the nothingness from whence we all came, in front of the Mirror of Retribution, until the end of his sentence is served and his reflection fades into shadow, and the shadow fades into the last memory of all that ever was, and the memory fades into a distant echo… and then…. Nothing.

On December 7, 1941, with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the entire Asia-Pacific was engulfed in the flames of all-out war. In the wake of some key military defeats, the Japanese stranglehold on its vast empire was beginning to crumble, forcing Japan’s military leaders to recruit thousands of Taiwanese youth for military service. By that time, Taiwan had been ruled by Japan for nearly half a century and many Taiwanese were eager to fight the Americans, just as they had been instructed to do in school.
Wubus Bawan was an orphan whose parents were both killed during the Wushe insurrection against the Japanese government a decade earlier. As the Japanese strengthened their hold over the mountains, they sought to wrest more control over, not just the Seediq, but over all the Taiwanese in an effort to destroy their prior identities and replace them with a new Japanese imperial identity. They spared little effort in grooming a new generation of Seediq youth to learn the “Japanese Spirit” and become loyal subjects of an Empire that had hunted down and killed their fathers less than a decade before. Although these young men did not mark their faces with the dark tattoos of their fathers, their young minds were trapped in the searing torment of purgatory between their Seediq and Japanese Imperial identities.
At the age of twenty, Wubus decided to affirm his identity and join his Seeqiq comrades by enlisting in the Takasago Army; a group of soldiers recruited from several indigenous villages who signed up to join andfight with the Japanese Imperial Army. They, along with thousands of other Taiwanese soldiers, were to be sent into the battlefields of the Pacific theater, and engage in some of the heaviest fighting. These brave soldiers fought with tenacity and valor in an effort to demonstrate their commitment to the Japanese Empire as loyal citizens, and also to steel their minds in the crucible of combat.
The Takasago soldiers were descendents of a brave and powerful people from the mountains with a strong warrior tradition. They impressed their rivals with cunning, tenacity and skill on the battlefield to become the most revered and feared combat unit in the Japanese Imperial Army. For the first time, Wubus was treated to a taste of respect and admiration from the Japanese colonists. Through his bravery on the field of battle, he also found a sense of freedom to put is troubled mind at ease. Finally, Wubus felt a sense of release from his inner fight for identity and realized that he had fulfilled his sacred obligation to his ancestors to test himself in war and become complete as a Seediq man.
However, with the worsening of the situation, Japan kept losing in the war, and The Takasago soldiers had been seriously injured as well, including the Kaoru Airborne Unit, in which the whole crew volunteered for a suicide mission. On August 15, 1945 the great Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allies. Wubus and his surviving comrades in the Takasago volunteers returned home from service and resumed their lives high in the mountains of Taiwan.
Although Wubus was hoping for peace, the situation of Taiwan after the war was actually the opposite. As a result of the armistice, Taiwan was turned over as a trustee to the United Nations. The Japanese ruling era was ended, but an outside political force had stepped in right after. After two years of abuse and maladministration, Taiwan’s soil was again blackened in the blood of the 228 Massacre. Chiang Kai-sheck’s Chinese forces arrived at Keelung Harbor and immediately engaged in an orgy of killing that brought the stain of death to the Taiwanese from North to South. The young people living on the western plain organized a Taiwanese civilian militia to fight the overwhelming Chinese force. These brave, young patriots also carried a desperate plea to the mountains of Wushe, with the hope of recruiting the brave Takasago Army to join in the fight and defend their common homeland. For hundreds of years the ruling governments of Taiwan rose and fell like the grasses on the plain. The only thing that remained unchanged was their oppression of Taiwan’s people. Therefore, Wubus and the Takasago Army agreed to join the Taiwanese civilian militia and defend Taiwan from the random violence committed by the Chinese forces.
Vastly outnumbered by waves of Chinese soldiers, the Taiwanese civilian militia sustained defeat after bloody defeat. When the violence neared its end only a handful of militia soldiers remained alive. The last staggering remnants of Taiwan’s defenders pulled back to seek cover inside the Sing-Ling Temple as thousands of Chinese troops advanced upon the area to sate their thirst for vengeance. One of the ragged militiamen was Phuann Tsing-guan, a young man from the Shing Ling Temple, who chose to use his powers as a spirit medium to traverse the veil between Heaven and Hell and channel the ghostly Eight Generals who protected his temple in a desperate attempt to help him save the lives of his
comrades and change Taiwan’s bitter fate. With the dead and the dying all around, Wabus Bawan and the Takasago Army stood their ground and fought to the very last man. Each of the hardened rebels faced down the Chinese enemy as a martyr to protect Phuann Tsing-guan, whose physical body was lying fast in the basement of the Sing-Ling Temple.
Before crossing the chasm of death, Wubus prayed to the spirits of his ancestors, asking them to protect Phuann Tsing-guan, and to help him complete his mission in guarding the descendents of his land — to free them from oppression and tyranny. As a final act Wubus Bawan used his bare hands to carve two long wounds deep into his face. The lines scratched in his forehead and chin both sparkled with honor. He held up his hands, dyed red with the blood of his vanquished enemy, and so the Utux gratefully led him across into death as Seediq Bale.

世居台灣諸羅山的茶園主人陳明通，在一場大風雨中救助了窮困潦倒周亞詩，並與之結拜為兄弟。然而，他的義舉卻成為陳宅家破人亡的開始。

清領時代，台灣被視為化外之地，王法所不及，許多中國商人及盜匪伺機來台掠奪，而來自中國汕頭的周亞詩便是其中之一。陳明通對周的接濟，正為他製造了最好的機會。貪圖陳家財產與陳妻李昭娘的周亞詩，終於設局殺死陳明通，強暴陳妻李昭娘。昭娘不堪受辱，自縊於林投樹林中；而周亞詩並不至此罷休，仍意圖殺害陳子阿龍、斷陳家子孫。

墜入陰間的昭娘在冥冥中感受到其子生命危在旦夕，法力大作、掙脫陰陽分界的束縛，鬼魂急回陽世救子。當昭娘魂魄回到陳家宅院時，其子已被殺害、家產盡空，周亞詩早已逃回中國。喪子至痛的昭娘，靈魂深處的厲鬼本命被意外開啟，意決前往中國尋仇。

昭娘魂魄闖陽世、破壞陰陽倫常，天界與冥府動員各路兵將捉拿昭娘。厲鬼法力全開的昭娘歷經數度神鬼大戰，過關斬將，終究抵達中國汕頭，施法殺害周亞詩，並令其家人或瘋或亡。

….終得以復仇的昭娘，內心復歸平靜，靈魂暫歇…

剎那間，昭娘猛然氣息回復、重得肉身，驚醒的昭娘發現自己竟身在陳家閨房，而夫婿陳明通正請昭娘招呼剛救濟的友人–周亞詩！

原來，恨弒三界的昭娘遭神鬼共降罰責，永遠困於悲淒命運與復仇的「永劫輪迴」無盡循環之中。