NOVPUBThe sound of quiet footsteps echoed in the ancient stone fort. They crossed the long-standing stone steps, pushed open the dusty stone doors, entered the expansive stone hall, and stopped before an aged slab of stone.
Xiulote halted his steps. He glanced at the stone slab in the hall that had withstood the test of time, the wooden-panel murals, and the artifacts of gold, silver, and jade, and spoke with solemnity.
"Sage Jatili, we have arrived. This is the place in the Royal Palace where the sacred texts are kept."
Jatili nodded gravely. He moved forward eagerly, extending a trembling hand to gently touch these precious relics as if caressing delicately breakable pottery.
"The river turtle lives under the pines in the water. As the river turtle grows old, the Divine Tree looms ever taller... since accepting the heritage at the age of twenty-four, I have spent a full thirty-six years in their company! On the night when the Capital City fell, I fled the Royal Palace in haste, thinking I would never see them again..."
The well-versed elder, rarely losing poise, revealed a tumult of emotions. After careful examination, he turned around and offered an apologetic bow to the lord below with a wry smile.
"Your Highness, I apologize for the display..."
Xiulote shook his head gently and returned the bow earnestly.
"Seeing this, I can only hold you in the highest respect."
The two exchanged bows, then shared a smile. Jatili then straightened his demeanor. With a composed smile, he led Xiulote to the front of an ancient stone slab.
"Your Highness, please allow us to start here! You must have heard of the legend of the five Sun Eras. The world was conceived from nothingness, and the gods became the supreme Suns in turn. The world was destroyed by the hands of the gods, the Sun set, and life withered. These cycles of events have, to this day, reached the fifth Sun Era. This first stone slab tells of the four past Eras."
Xiulote looked at the huge stone slab. It was engraved with four simple and archaic panel drawings, each centering around a sun radiating light.
"Your Highness, the sun being at the center of the stone slab is an entity revered by all tribes under the heavens. To unify all the people under the heavens for all eternity, we must begin with the myth of the Sun, weaving a complete and credible story."
Hearing this, Xiulote’s expression turned serious, and he nodded slowly.
"For all the people, for thousands of eternal seasons... Sage, you understand my intentions! The great undertaking I wish to accomplish can only be aided by you within this Fief!"
The myth of the five Sun Eras had been circulating for a long time, even among the various Maya tribes in the East, although different tribes had different mythological expressions. For the vastly different tribes of the world, this shared mythological origin might be one of the few places where a consensus could form.
In the heart of the young King, there was always an ambition as grand as that of the First Emperor. He intended to not only personally craft a vast Empire and drive the transformation of eras but also to meld the various tribes of the Wilderness into an inseparable national whole. This immense process was much like the Han, Zhao, Wei, Chu, Yan, Qi, and Qin during the Celestial Empire’s Warring States period eventually merging together as one Han people.
To achieve this grand vision, Xiulote had ample ambition, patience, and time. The tribes of the world were physically similar and intermarried with one another. The various tribal cultures had been barbaric for a long time, with no established linguistics and the concept of ethnicity not yet emerged, and even their written language was still in its rudimentary stages. This was the last and best opportunity for integration on this vast, isolated continent, to build a truly unified nation!
To lay the foundation of this unification, aside from having uniform writing, gauge, religion, and law, it was necessary to start from the source of culture and weave a connecting bond.
The bond for all the Xia was the lineage of the descendants of Yan and Huang, the Dragon’s progeny, the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, the rituals of Zhou and historical records. Similarly, the Mexica Alliance that conquered the tribes of the world also needed a tall Divine Tree with interconnected roots, a myth of a common origin, to form a solid cultural bond. This myth needed to be inclusive enough, credible enough to be accepted by all tribes and align as closely as possible with known history to withstand scrutiny from future generations.
It was with such a vision that the young King repeatedly searched in Qinchongcan City, inviting the knowledgeable elder from Prepetcha to come and recount the epics of the lake dwellers’ heritage. After some probing in the great hall, both parties implicitly understood and tacitly agreed with each other.
Xiulote glanced at the elder’s calm smile and once again carefully observed the stone slab, noting the differences between the Aztec Sun mythology and the Prepetcha Sun mythology.
The Aztec mythology was inherited from the Toltec people, each Era marked by different symbols of civilization and different deities as the Sun.
The first four Eras were: the first Era, the era of the four Jaguars, with the primeval Sun God Tezcatlipoca as the deity; the second Era, the era of the four Winds, with the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl; the third Era, the era of the four Rains, with the Rain Divine Tlaloc; the fourth Era, the era of the four Waters, with the river and lake Goddess Xalchiuhtlicue.
On the stone slab of the Prepetcha heritage, the first Era displays a Jaguar alongside a human holding aloft a torch and Long Spears; the second Era has sweeping winds with a crying rubber tree; the third Era shows vast rains with towering pyramids; the fourth Era has spreading floods with canoes traversing between islands.
