Those who delight in listening to obscene performances shall have their lifespan reduced by three months for each occasion. Those holding official scholarly honors shall have their honors suspended or deferred. Those who commission obscene performances shall have their lifespan reduced by one suan for each occasion. Should harm arise therefrom, they shall be reborn as beasts for one lifetime.
Those who delight in reading obscene books shall have their lifespan reduced by half a month for every three occasions. Should this conduct bring on illness, their lifespan shall be reduced by three years.
Those who seduce others into committing licentious acts shall incur punishment mitigated by two grades below the offence actually committed. The same penalty applies to fathers or elder‑brothers who connive at licentious conduct by their juniors, as well as those who connive at such conduct among their servants.
Magistrate Lu states: Under these netherworld penalties, no licentious offence may be treated with the slightest leniency. Incestuous transgressions are especially grave. Whether an inferior violates a superior or an elder wrongs a youth, the offenders shall all fall into the Uninterrupted Hell after death. In the present age, moral customs have greatly declined. Such offences frequently appear among official households and scholarly descendants. Long‑infected by bad habits, they grow accustomed to vice, deluded and devoid of shame, not knowing where their fate shall end. The divine immortals had no alternative but to petition the Jade Emperor to openly promulgate the netherworld penalties throughout the mortal world without any concealment. Those who read these penal codes and resolve to repent shall have their sins mitigated. Those who practice loyalty and filial piety shall have their sins mitigated. Those who accumulate merits and virtues shall have their sins mitigated. Should one read this text yet refuse to repent and reform, and instead utter slander against it, one shall surely suffer evil retribution or be struck by lightning. Those who believe sincerely in this scripture and spread it widely shall be blessed accordingly: those who pass it on to one hundred people shall gain an extra ji (twelve years) of lifespan; those who spread it to two hundred people shall be granted children if they are childless; those who spread it to three hundred people shall gain an extra two ji (twenty‑four years) of lifespan; those who spread it to four hundred people shall enjoy prosperous descendants; those who spread it to five hundred people shall enjoy successive official careers and scholarly honors; those who spread it to one thousand people shall have their names recorded on the Red Registers; those who disseminate it across the whole world shall become immortals after death. Spreading it among ten wealthy persons counts as spreading it to two hundred ordinary people; spreading it to one government official counts as spreading it to one hundred ordinary people. All these provisions were memorialized to the Jade Emperor by Emperor Fuyou and sanctioned for enforcement.
Note: When condemned souls endure kalpas in hell, each kalpa means undergoing the torments of one hell‑realm once. Suffering in the netherworld differs greatly from mortal‑world punishment. Though a condemned soul perishes under torment, it is restored to bodily form only to undergo the same tortures anew. Only upon completing its appointed kalpas is that particular karmic debt discharged. If other offences remain, the soul shall suffer further hellish torments according to its guilt. As recorded in Dongxuan Ji (Records of the Mysterious Netherworld), for those guilty of licentious transgressions, repentance and good conduct during mortal life shall bring about remission of their sins after death. Those who refuse to reform even unto death shall be transferred from the First Hall to successive halls of judgment, to endure torment in the Heart‑Piercing Hell, Bronze‑Man Hell, Kidney‑Slicing Hell, the Rat‑Gnawing Hell, the Boiling‑Cauldron Hell, the Cart‑Crushing Hell and other great and minor hells. Those guilty of incest shall additionally be cast into special incest‑related hells, or confined eternally in hell to suffer manifold tortures. Among punishments for licentious wrongs, incest carries especially heavy guilt. Condemned souls endure numerous kalpas in each of the aforementioned hells; only when these kalpas are fulfilled may they pass into transmigration. One cycle of rebirth counts as one kalpa. Furthermore, two texts, Jinke Jiyao (Essentials of the Golden Code) and Lunke Jiyao (Essentials of the Wheel Code), set forth detailed articles on rewarding virtue and punishing evil. These nether‑world statutes likewise contain provisions for remission, aggravation of penalties, and offsetting of guilt, manifesting that good and evil are distinctly distinguished, with not the slightest deviation. By consulting the two Code texts together with Dongxuan Ji, one may perceive that karmic retribution is credible and well‑attested.
Note: Jinke Jiyao (Essentials of the Golden Code) was revealed through planchette‑writing by Emperor Wenchang at Chenjinlin, Leigu Bridge, Liling County, Hunan Province, in the sixth year of the Xianfeng reign of the Qing Dynasty (1856). This code was originally ordained by the Supreme Emperor and kept secret inside a jade casket. Emperor Wenchang earnestly petitioned for the Celestial Mandate to have it promulgated among mortals in the human world, expounding the Heavenly Statutes, also known as the Yang Laws. These laws punish earthly misdeeds and unleash disasters and karmic tribulations to chasten the hearts of wrongdoers. In the third year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing Dynasty (1877), the Literary Emperor and the Martial Emperor petitioned the Jade Emperor and received his approval to issue Lunke Jiyao (Essentials of the Wheel Code), laying open the nether laws. These statutes judge people’s sins and inflict punishments within the hells to chastise condemned souls. Afterwards, numerous immortals collated and supplemented its contents. This book carries forward the divine tenets omitted in Jinke Jiyao. The full manuscript was transcribed via divine planchette‑writing and disseminated far and wide across the human world.
Appendix III Rules of Merit and Demerit of Divine Emperor Wenchang — Supplement on Sexual Misconduct
Merit Rules Against Licentiousness
1. One merit for maintaining no lascivious thought for a full day and night.
2. One merit for keeping no obscene books or lewd‑paintings in one’s possession. (This shall also include not keeping pornographic videos and the like.)