"Thump, thump, thump! A-lang! Mongke Temur's white horse shattered the ice of Jingpo Lake beneath its hooves. The tail banner of the white horse rolled up the clouds over Badao Ridge, and the name of Odoli was branded into every warhorse's hoofprint."
"Thump, thump, thump! A-lang! The Wild Jurchen Uta chased after the hoofbeats and bit at them, the whistle of birch bark like vines tangling the feet. 'Leave the gyrfalcon, leave the fish-skin sheath!' Southward, southward—our ancestors' soul banners drifted to the southeast, and the Bone Arrow quiver sank into the heart of the Hu'erhai River!"
The roe-deer-hide hand drums of the Jurchen tribes went "thump, thump," and the old men of Hu'erhai Guard sang, telling of more than half a century of migration south. In this, Hu'erhai was the Mudan River, while Hu'erhai Guard lay at the river mouth where the Mudan River and the Songhua River met. It was the ancestral land of the Jianzhou Jurchen, and the site of later Yilan County. Zuwaro listened closely, keenly catching the key details.
"Mongke Temur? Jingpo Lake? Odoli?"
"Ancestral Priest, earlier they were singing about the origin of Jianzhou Guard—the Huligai tribe, led by Ahachu. Now they're speaking of the origin of Jianzhou Left Guard—the Odoli tribe, led by Mongke Temur. The two tribes migrated south one after another, forming Jianzhou Guard and Jianzhou Left Guard. The various tribes of the two guards intermarried with one another and were deeply connected, and they also rebelled together during the Chenghua years, only to be pacified by the court's great army."
"Jianzhou Guard? Jianzhou Left Guard?"
Zuwaro was thoughtful, committing these awkward names to memory, along with the tribal history in the orally recited poem. Then the song chanted by the old men of Hu'erhai Guard suddenly changed in tone, becoming