Alliance Secrets, Books and Documents (Part 2)

The sunlight slanted faintly west, falling into the priests' great hall. The spices in the incense burner had already burned out, and a high-ranking priest was just about to add more, but the high priest waved a hand. Though the aura of the gods was soothing, inhaling too much was no good either.

"By the time we count it out, the arrests in Tlacopan should have begun."

The high priest smiled calmly, rose, and went to the rear hall of the priests to have some simple refreshments.

Xolotl sat cross-legged in the great hall, carefully reviewing the Alliance's household registers and field-acreage figures.

These numbers had been meticulously collected by village priests from every region, then estimated against the usual tribute quotas of each place, compiled layer by layer. It was obvious that their accuracy would not be very high. But in this era, they were important and rare secrets, the foundation for ruling a state, and also reflected the central regime's degree of control over the localities. Apart from the centralized Alliance and kingdoms, the remaining tribes under heaven probably did not even possess such rough figures.

"Divine Protection upon the Mexica Alliance, ruling the four quarters under heaven. The Great Temple is the center of all under heaven; the surrounding one to two hundred li are the capital region, incorporated directly under the Alliance, the fertile valley bestowed upon the Alliance by the Main God! The capital-region population totals more than 1.5 million, with about 500,000 able-bodied men, 8 to 10 million mu of lake-region Milpa, and a combined 15,000 hectares of lake-region Chinampa."

Reading this, Xolotl was slightly startled. The area within a radius of one to two hundred li around the Great Temple was the directly administered capital region? Calculated like this, not only the Holy