Night had sunk low, and great swathes of bonfires had been lit; Bamboo Flute sounded, accompanied by songs drifting from afar. The aroma of food wafted into the distance, and the warriors' joyous voices clamored through the camp. The entire main camp of the Mexica Northern Route army stretched for several miles, filled everywhere with the joy and celebration after victory!
Avet wore his royal robes and sat cross-legged in the great tent, still gripping the Divine Staff tightly in his hand. He watched the various legion commanders laugh and celebrate, his heart relaxed and at ease. The months of campaigning flashed through his mind; scene after scene poured into his thoughts, as clear as if they were before his eyes.
In December, the Mexica Alliance launched the divine war, mustering its entire army and swearing oaths as they set out.
Avet wore his royal robes and held the departure ceremony for the Eastern Expedition on the square before the Great Temple. The Elder sat on a rattan frame and briefly attended for a short while, accepting the kneeling salutes of the leaders of the various states. Afterward, amid the cheers of the people of the capital, roaring like mountains shouting and seas thundering, Avet formally offered sacrifice to the ancestors, prayed to the Main God, and declared the beginning of the Eastern Expedition!
The great army marched east, shaking the four fields; every tribe under heaven panicked at it, while the Tlaxcalan fully contracted their lines!
The eighty thousand soldiers of the Northern Route army—five Royal Legions, four City-State Legions, and one elite militia corps—set out in succession toward the northeast. Then the ten legions gradually spread out, surging into the southeast of Atotonilco, engaging the Tlaxcalan one after another.
In this era, due to the limits of logistics