"Splash! Splash!"
The Cold Wave from Siberia blew across the vast earth at the end of the fifteenth century. Across all of Northeast Asia, grain yields fell year after year, and the farming line gradually shifted south. The majestic power of nature's extreme cold was like an invisible giant hand, driving countless Wildman tribes south from the endless Forest Sea. Along the entire Heilongjiang, thousands of li from the Mongol Plateau in the west to the sea mouth in the east, everything had been plunged into a chaotic frenzy of Wildmen migrating south and the tribes slaughtering one another to survive.
And farther south from Heilongjiang, along the banks of the Songhua River that flowed into its middle reaches, lay another boundary line of brutal slaughter. The tribal conflicts along this line were broadly divided into two camps, Mongol and Great Ming. The scale of the killing was larger, the duration longer, and the forces involved even more numerous: Mongol ten-thousand-household tribes, Mongolized Jurchen tribal alliances, Sinicized Jurchen tribal alliances, Great Ming reinforcements, and Wildman tribes moving south. All of them bled without end between this Song'ali Ula! Among them, the focus of contention for all sides was, without doubt, the lush Songnen Plain—eight hundred li of fertile land centered on Harbin, suited to grazing and farming, fishing and hunting alike!
"By the Song'ali River, the black earth is three feet deep! It fattens the ears of grain and the horse herds, feeds Wild Boar and gyrfalcon full.
Oxen pant white breath, deer shadows slip into the woods. The river is like a silver belt, the sky like a great drum.
Strike it once, and the road lights up—truly a fine place of the Sky God!"
At this time, under the combined pressure of the Mongol tribes moving east and