Three Reasons

The great bluestone hall was ancient, solemn, and austere, the Main God's emblem hanging high and gleaming. Beneath the pure-gold Sun Hummingbird sat three people facing one another in silence, along with a simple hand-drawn map.

At that moment, the young king straightened his spine, lowered his finger, and pressed it onto the east of the map—on the lower reaches of the Tampico River, near the river mouth by the Caribbean Sea. His face held a resolute certainty of victory, as if he were proclaiming the Main God's destined will.

"I want Cuxicapan—Otter City!"

"The Huastec capital, Otter City?!"

Gilim's expression changed abruptly, and his face turned grave.

Otter City (present-day Panuco) lay roughly eight hundred li northeast of the Lake Capital, at the lowest downstream point where two branches of the Tampico River converged, only one hundred li from the endless great lake to the east. It was the core heartland where the Huastec tribes gathered, a hot lowland plain of jungle and mudflats, and even more so a border of the world that the Mexica Alliance had never touched.

Even the late ruler Montezuma, when he campaigned against the Huastec Alliance and forced them to submit, had never truly fought his way to Otter City. In legend, that place was the divine realm ruled by the God of Storms, with a climate of fierce heat and heavy rain, where terrifying storms could sweep through, destroying villages and leveling tall houses and trees. Likewise, at the height of the rainy season, the lower reaches of the Tampico River would swell into floods, drowning the farmland and mudflats along the river. And farther east of Otter City, beneath the coastal swamps, unknown evil was hidden—legend spoke of natural deep wells that ceaselessly flowed with black water.

In the tropical lands