Below the mountain were surging cries: the warriors' prayers and shouts of slaughter, and the Zapotec god-descendants' wails and rites. Yet when those fierce sounds of life and death drifted up to the Royal Tent at the mountaintop, they became only faintly heard calls, a backdrop to Xolotl's contemplation.
Over the past twenty-eight years, he had spent nearly half his time amid war. He had long since grown used to such sounds of killing; they even felt familiar to him. And what he was thinking about now was still distant campaigns and wars, from the Eastern Sea to the Western Sea.
"This year is 1496 AD, and only now has the Castilians' second large-scale Expeditionary Force fleet appeared! According to Xiu Maoying's letter, Columbus was once imprisoned by the King of Portugal for a year and a half... What exactly happened in between? How, exactly, was European history affected, and what sort of turn did it take? In the second Castilian fleet of the old history, would there have been any so-called 'demon elites'? Would there have been companies of Castilian veterans who had taken part in the holy war? How long will this participation by the Kingdom of Castile's army continue, and how much strength will they commit?"
"Counting the time, the long Italian Wars should have already begun, shouldn't they? The situation in inland Europe, by all reason, should not currently be disturbed by the butterfly of Mesoamerica. At this moment on the Italian battlefield—France, Venice, the Italian city-states, the Vatican, the princes of the Holy Roman Empire, Naples, Aragon, and Castile—half of Europe is locked in scheming and slaughter. Just how far has it gone? The Aragonese cannot possibly give up the territory of Naples, and Fernando is full of ambition. He will certainly drag Queen Isabella