In late autumn, the Mexica highlands were still covered everywhere in emerald-green long grass and evergreen trees that never shed their leaves. Great flocks of migratory birds had returned from the cold north, circling over the distant mountain forests as they peered at the bustling scene here, crying out in a wild chorus of "yo, yo." Based on the limited experience of their bird lives, anywhere these two-legged beasts moved about on such a large scale, there was always food to be found. Sometimes it was grain, sometimes dead bodies... Of course, there would also be danger here, especially those red-haired hunters whose arrows flew with terrifying accuracy.
"Main God! So many big birds—if we could shoot one down and add it to the meal... tsk, tsk! What a pity I don't have any Dog-kin who are good shots under me... Pah! Those wild dogs with their damn accurate arrows shot one of my eyes blind! Otherwise, I'd be a Level 4 Warrior by now, maybe even a Military Merit Noble..."
The military-farm leader Tai Shishan tilted his head up slightly, looked at the sky, spat with a "pah," then turned his gaze back to the road ahead. On these second-grade county roads built last year, he walked quickly and steadily. Before long, a relay station of no small size appeared before his eyes.
It was called a relay station, but in truth it was a large sprawl of crude sheds, without even a proper wooden house, only one half-built longhouse of timber. Wisps of cooking smoke rose from the broad open space between the sheds and the longhouse, and from far away came the fragrant scent of grain.
"Main God! How nice!..."
But when he saw this crude relay station that had not been built long ago, the military-farm