The Ruin of the Paldean Empire is one of those epic, world-changing events for which it seems that every historian favors a different explanation. Was one of the Treasures of Ruin responsible, or were all four? Or were they simply an effect of the ruin, not the cause, appearing in the Dark Ages because no kings were left to hold them back?
There are two different versions of the Wo-Chien legend in particular, and they are of strikingly different character. The first speaks of a peasant girl who was to be taken away to become the emperor's concubine, but who first wrote on a wish tablet her desire that the whole Paldean Empire collapse – a tablet she affixed unwittingly to the back of this pokemon. The second holds that Wo-Chien created a ruinous blight which left farmers with no choice but to ransack granaries or starve – and when even the granaries did not suffice, it became every man for himself, and civilization did not survive.
The two legends do not explicitly contradict one another, so attempts have been made to reconcile the two – with Wo-Chien, like Jirachi, as a creature to which one must word their wishes extremely carefully. Yet they consistently speak to opposing views of this pokemon, and of civilization itself. Even today, there are those who argue the Ruin of Paldea was not such a bad thing – and those who believe that wild pokemon and obstacles overrunning the roads built under the Paldean Kings is far too high a price to pay for our modern and peaceful age.
Whether we like it or not, we live in the Second Age of Wo-Chien today; it is out there somewhere, mistaken for an abandoned castle overgrown by grass, and it is having the time of its life.