A squad of Kingdom Warriors in Leather Armor ran along a county road in the Capital Region. The man at their head had Feathers stuck into his back and a belt tied with letters—the messenger who had come from the clouds.
Behind the messenger stretched endless Milpa farmland. Corn stalks two palms high had sprouted in the fields, bean stems as thin as fingernails coiled around them, and pumpkin leaves as large as half a palm spread out. The new shoots had only just grown, and the rainy season had already arrived; they only needed watering once each day at dusk. And now, in the morning, tens of thousands of villagers and serfs were busy in the fields. They hoed out the weeds that kept sprouting, poured on the village's well-rotted manure, and even, carefully and devoutly, buried finely ground "Stone Fertilizer."
"May the Main God bless us! May there be no insects, no harm, no flood, no disaster! May the Pumpkins grow wild, and the Corn harvest be abundant!..."
The villagers' prayers carried into the flourishing Great Lake. Hundreds of Canoes and Catamarans shuttled endlessly across the lake's surface, carrying goods from the countryside and bringing back tools and vessels produced in the city. Two newly built dikes had enclosed a southern stretch of freshwater lake, where small Warrior boats still patrolled the water.
At present, on the lake surface enclosed by the white dikes, there were already a full hundred qing or more of Mexica Chinampa Floating Fields, divided into separate plots. These Floating Fields had their borders fenced off with wooden rails, and the middle was planted densely with Chili vegetables, spices and herbs, and sacred Cacao Trees. Farther out, even more Floating Fields had already had their supporting wooden piles driven in; once the busy farming