And with that, the long Volume Four is finally over! It ran a full seven or eight hundred chapters, two million words, almost two years—much, much longer than expected... The contents of this volume were very complex, so here is a summary.
Volume Four began with the protagonist's wedding, extended outward from the Mexican Plateau, and started advancing three different threads, all of which can be regarded as main plotlines.
The main plotline on the plateau was blood and fire, war and conquest. The Eastern Expedition to Tlaxcala Valley, the Eastern Expedition to the Totonac coast, even extending all the way to the Eastern Expedition against the Maya. Hidden within this were countless contradictions and conflicts: the power struggle between the Alliance and the Kingdom, the struggle over succession rights between the Divine King and the protagonist, the struggle over aristocratic centralization within the Alliance, the struggle and union between divine authority and royal authority, the missionizing and assimilation of conquered tribes, the Kingdom's gradually independent right to interpret religion, the Rubber People narrative borrowing the mantle of Olmec inheritance... From politics and military affairs to religion and culture, struggle, compromise, and cooperation were everywhere. This was a great age like the late Spring and Autumn and Warring States period!
And the many tribes on the plateau, amid brutal wars of conquest and fanatical religious spread, were gradually moving toward a unified state fused from feudalism and religious law, gradually establishing an identity based on a national narrative. From a loose tribal Alliance, they were moving toward a theocratic feudal Kingdom. And the plagues that were soon to come would be the key to condensing national identity, expanding the scope of divine authority, and enfeoffing the whole of the Americas...
Unfolding from the plateau, the two main plotlines of the