One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) is a collection of ancient Persian folk stories, and Yu believes that these accounts all truly happened.
At the time, a Zoroastrian monk felt that these stories were deeply meaningful and could enlighten people's hearts. Under the guidance of the divine, he began gathering these folk tales together, devoting himself to the work from his youth all the way into old age.
In fact, the "Ming Sect" in The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber was modeled after Zoroastrianism, and the "Sacred Fire Order" within the Ming Sect also has its origins in Zoroastrian tradition.
Zoroastrianism is considered one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions. It once served as the state religion of the Persian Empire (under both the Achaemenid and Sassanid dynasties), with its influence spreading throughout the entire Middle East. Zoroastrianism was transmitted into China along the Silk Road, where it was widely practiced among Central Asian Sogdian merchant communities and some Han Chinese during the period from the Northern and Southern Dynasties through the Tang Dynasty. Because of its veneration of sacred fire, it came to be popularly known as the "Fire-Worshipping Religion." Today, it has approximately 100,000 to 200,000 followers worldwide.
In that era, the vast number of Islamic believers had encroached upon the space for Zoroastrian faith and called into question the existence of its deities. But being a minority religion does not mean that its divine beings are false — many such religions contain righteous teachings and legitimate paths of cultivation.
The stories collected by this Zoroastrian monk were all related to religious faith, or were accounts of personal spiritual realizations that people had written down — making them relatively solemn in nature. In order to make these stories accessible and easy for the world to read, the monk — with divine permission — rewrote and expanded them in a narrative style, making them more compelling and engaging, and thus gave rise to this collection that has been passed down through the ages.
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