"The Sky God's great white mountain, Golminanggiyan alin, the sacred Changbai Mountain."
"The Sky God's Great River, Sunggari ula, the sacred Songhua River."
"The Sky God's lake, Abkai Omo, the sacred Heavenly Lake."
"Changbai Mountain is white as bone, the Songhua River silver as a belt, Heavenly Lake bright as the blue sky! The sacred ancestors walked down from the mountain peak, and that is the ancestral source of the Baishan tribes."
The Neyin River was a tributary of the Songhua River. It flowed past the sturdy wooden houses of the Neyin Tribe, and also past harvested fields, and the camp where the tribute horse caravan was stationed. The Changbai Mountains towered in the distance, the reflected gleam of the snowcapped white peaks illuminating the sky at the turn of late autumn and early winter, and also illuminating the boundless Forest Sea and the mountain ranges. The Jurchen elders of the Neyin Tribe beat the Leather Drum and sang the epics passed down through their tribe. The moment those hoarse, rugged voices opened, it was the "sacred" ancestral source of the Changbai Mountain tribes, utterly different from the "Wildmen" of Huligai.
In truth, since ancient times, Changbai Mountain had been the unchanging core faith of the Jianzhou tribes, and it had also established the Three Changbai Mountain Tribes' unique culture and status among the Jianzhou Jurchens, and even among the Liaodong Jurchens. A hundred years later, the creation of the Jurchen community would, without question, also be inseparable from a focused effort to win over the Three Changbai Mountain Tribes.
"The wind from the northern foot dries the Salt, the mist of the Hun River lifts the drumbeats high, and the birchbark boats returned from the hunting lines are overturned on the terrace to dry. Deer antlers serve as door