Have you ever failed a final exam?

Completely blew an important presentation in front of your boss,

messed up a job interview,

or taking the last shot or swing or throw in a game,

only to miss what was supposed to be an easy score.

And then you felt the burden of you being the reason

that your team lost. I'm guessing you have. We've all failed something and it almost always stinks. Failure sucks.

It makes us feel awful, embarrassed, maybe even angry, insecure.

What it doesn't normally do is lead to you telling everyone that you've had some sort of

religious epiphany based on you being a god and then raising a massive army taking over a huge amount of land

ruling it for over a decade nearly overthrowing one of the largest empires in the world

and being responsible for tens of millions of deaths.

That is not a normal reaction that people have to failure, but it is how

Hong Shukwan reacted.

Born into a peasant family in rural China, Hong was a child prodigy who seemed to have a bright future ahead of him, but then contrary to the expectations held by his family and nearly every member of his entire village, he failed the incredibly important life-altering Chinese Civil Service

exam. Not once, not twice, not three times, four times. And with that last failure, his

chance for upward mobility in Chinese society for changing the future

not just for himself but for his entire family was over. The stress and the shame of his failure

caused him to fall into some sort of coma or at least be extremely sick for a full month during

which time he had these crazy fever dreams where he was the younger brother of

Jesus Christ destined to destroy a race of literal demons, and create a heavenly kingdom to rule over all of China.

Hong began when historians will later name the Taiping Rebellion,

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