On January 1, 1946, the New Republic of the New Xanadu sent telegrams to nations around the world announcing its founding. It invited more than 150 countries, including China, the United States, and the Soviet Union, to attend the ceremony, openly declaring that this was the first Mutant regime in human history and would forever be a utopia for Mutants across the globe.
The nations that received the news wore varied expressions.
They quickly realized they had been played. According to the original plan, these Mutants were supposed to die or be injured, then completely fracture and never unite again, much less establish a nation.
Yet now, let alone suffering casualties, they seemed to be living quite well. They could even flaunt their power and issue a proclamation of statehood.
That was right. In every country's eyes, this proclamation was nothing but a display of swagger, all because of its name.
Many people had imagined what the Mutants might call their country after founding it. Opinions differed, but everyone agreed on one thing: it would definitely begin with X.
By then, everyone already knew what the X-gene was. Many Mutant organizations named themselves X-something, and many Mutants gave themselves codenames beginning with X. Whenever Mutants were mentioned, that X was what came to everyone's mind.
But no one had expected it to be Xanadu.
Just from the spelling, it was clear that it did not look much like English. There were exceedingly few English words ending in u. It looked like a loanword no matter how one saw it.
English had perhaps more loanwords than any other language, but this one was particularly different, because it had been transliterated. Its original word was Shangdu—yes, the capital of the Yuan Dynasty.
This word had now come to mean an idyllic paradise