Nah, Eastasia will probably arise from the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Banzai!
Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree: A Nineteen Eighty-Four Timeline
- Thread starter Roberto El Rey
- Start date
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- Tags
- 1984 book derivative dystopia orwell
57
Bulawayo
There was very little to distinguish this riot from any of the dozen others that Captain Murphy had "moderated" in his years of service. The same sneering, contorted mouths were hoofing down the same blank, concrete-lined streets, pounding forth the same wild, bilious slogans about wages, or bread, or whatever latest grievance happened to be pestering the brutish hordes in the gold mines this season. Murphy had only the faintest idea of what the grey-clad negroes were clamoring about this time, as he had neither the time nor the inclination to acquaint himself with the local language, of which there were far too many dialects and clucking varieties for even the most educated European to master.
He could hardly rely on context, either, because Murphy was only vaguely aware of what had sparked this particular demonstration. He knew wages in the gold mines had been cut once again, but since the war had started, Salisbury's response to unwanted demonstrations typically came in the form of an especially abrupt form of "crowd control". After the tenth strike was ended in this way, the miners had largely stopped rioting altogether, and yet here they were screaming in the streets once again. Likely some ill-timed, separate incident had conspired with the pay cuts to push them over the brink; dredging his memory for an explanation, Murphy faintly recalled hearing of some unfortunate miner who had been punished especially harshly for failing to meet his quota, and expired later in hospital from a fractured skull. Murphy had little regard for the the riotous creatures, but on occasion he found himself wondering whether a land divided so strictly by color was really worth the blood that was spilled to keep it secure.
In any case, the reason for the riot was irrelevant: all that really mattered was the face.
On vast sheets of butcher paper, crudely drawn and crudely reproduced by artistically deficient miners, six or seven faces hovered above the black mass as it moved. It was the face of a man about thirty or thirty-five, with a huge, squarish pair of spectacles, dark skin and strange features. It was a wide African face, with a flat mat of fuzzy black hair and a wide African nose. A stern face, and yet somehow inherently distant, detached, as though perplexed by some unseen oddity. There was a kind of silliness in the long, forward chin that seemed to extend further out than it should have; it seemed, in fact, as though the entirety of the lower half of the face had been pushed forward, as if to resemble the bulbous mouth of a chimpanzee.
The numerous posters were, naturally, far too simplistic for most to make such detailed observations; to the untrained eye, the subject of the butcher-paper placards bore a closer resemblance to an actual chimpanzee than to a human face. But Captain Murphy knew better. That face was a part of daily life in the Federation—smashed, vilified, condemned, and ridiculed so frequently in the official propaganda than any evocation of its rather absurd features was enough to make any upstanding citizen shiver. In case any doubt remained, the captions—LONG LIVE MUGABE, written mercifully in English—revealed the posters' subject beyond any doubt. These signs truly were a blessing to Captain Murphy: to portray the chief enemy of the state in a celebratory way was known to be treason, which meant that Murphy could deal with these "traitors" the easy way.
As the strikers' dust-greyed overalls approached down the avenue, Murphy raised his baton; fifteen rifles were lifted.
"Ready!" Murphy was fairly certain that the officers' bullets were rubber.
Or were they? "Aim!"
Well, all the better if they weren't. After nine years as a police captain, Murphy was finally being considered for admittance into the League, and a few "decisive actions" on his part against a dangerous horde of "subversives" would go a long way to advancing his prospects.
"Fire!"
Lisbon
Rage.
The Lisbon he remembered, with its bright red rooftops, its rainbow of stucco exteriors, its skyline of elegant domes and spires, was beautiful. It was the Portuguese nation embodied, a maiden with deep blue eyes, ink-black, waist-length hair, and a warm, jovial smile. The Lisbon he saw, with its soulless concrete tenements, its oblong blockish buildings cast in monotone beige, its decay and deterioration, had been beaten, it had been disfigured nearly beyond recognition; its fragile nose bent and crooked after too many blows, its eyes swollen near-shut, its once-perfect complexion stained black with bruises.
Colonel Caetano had pounced at the chance to see his homeland again. Missions back to the Continent bore serious risks; League agents unfortunate enough to be captured were either shot in the head or were crammed into shadowy dungeons where God only knew what sorts of pagan atrocities were practiced. But after a decade spent languishing in Africa, a chance to see the Seven Hills one more time seemed well worth the risk of whatever grotesque tortures the Communists could ever administer.
Or so Caetano had thought. Now, as he guided the Avia with its overstocked trailer over the greyed streets and saw how brazenly the soul of the city had been punctured, hot rage bubbled in his mind. The only thing stopping his hand from reaching for his pill now was the thought of revenge on the nihilistic vandals who had eviscerated his home.
Caetano had known well in advance that the Mosteiro de São Vicente had been demolished and a concrete abomination erected in its place, but that didn't stop his stomach from convulsing when he turned a corner and came face to face with the hideous edifice. Struggling to keep the truck's steering wheel steady in his shuddering hands, he pushed the vast vehicle up the hill and brought it to rest alongside the north wall of the blemish, on the other side of which sat the vast archives of the ransacking marauders who had pillaged the nation with their ludicrous ideologies.
Checking his watch, Colonel Caetano saw how close he had cut it: it was three minutes to five. He frantically yanked the emergency brake, left the cab, locked the door and started off in the opposite direction. If God boathouse in which he was meant to conceal himself—
Halt!
Shit. Caetano's shoulder blades tightened as his alibi meandered elusively through his recollection. What exactly was he bringing to the facility, birth certificates or military records? Or was it both? He turned mechanically to face the officer, hoping the League forgers had made him a compelling set of identification papers.
"What's your business, comrade?"
"Just delivering records to the archives." Caetano damned himself for the unconvincingly informal response, but as he glanced back at the truck he realized that none of it mattered. He was barely two meters away from the bomb; if he could manage to stay in one spot for a minute or two his contribution to the Portuguese nation would be made, and God would absolve him of the consequences. "May I see your docum—"
And his eardrums burst. The blast shook the earth and rattled the foundations of every tenement in range—from across the harbor.
The two men turned and stared, stupefied, across the Tagus at the enormous cloud of fire and smoke that was rising against the reddened sky. A million of Caetano's trucks had just been unleashed onto the City of Light.
And just as the two men became so consumed by terror that they could barely move, the final truck detonated behind them, baptizing them again in angry fire.
Shanxi Province
The shells had not been raining down.
They were nothing like rain, which falls so peacefully, sprinkling the grass with dew as it softly bursts upon the earth. No, the shells had screamed. They were not content simply to fall; they had charged downward at destructive speeds, building up astronomical amounts of momentum and forcing the earth to swallow it all. The shells did not shower the ground with dew when they burst; they punished it. They thrusted the full force of their blasts into the earth, ripping the grass apart, scattering the soil and leaving nothing but sporadic patches of sickly dirt.
Arrows of white hot lead--hundreds of thousands of them--had been whizzing across the pinkish sky, slicing open the air and leaving mile-long trails of shadowy vacuum. One in every thousand struck flesh, shattering bones like glass or tearing ragged holes in organs. Corpses crumpled to the ground and waited to die, blood draining from their bodies as they lay on beds of bones and body parts. Thus came death: quiet, inglorious, unsanitary, pathetic.
And the ground had rumbled as it sucked away their lives, for the shells were pounding down like volcanic ash. Thousands at a time, they had seemed to rock the earth back and forth, stripping it of its right to revolve. Hundreds of tons of dirt was scattered into the air, choking the pinkish atmosphere with hellish clouds of haze and obscuring the sun, which had begun to retreat behind the Chinese mountains, leaving the wayward humans to destroy each other in darkness.
And then came the miracle: the sun rose again.
The flash was beyond blinding. For a moment, the sky disappeared, and it was impossible to tell one piece of the atmosphere from another as the air was filled—saturated—with light, mesmerizing and divine. Then the light subsided. The sky turned red, then orange, then pink as the light slowly receded backward toward the chasm; finally a great fireball came into view, towering perhaps a mile or two away above the dreaded spot where, mere moments before, a fierce enemy had been pouring hot hell onto the frightened men below. Now the fright had been supplanted by awe. The fortunate ones who still had their sight were entranced; they stood in the spell of the light, staring encapsulated until the thick smoke had finally been cleared away; time seemed at once to accelerate and stand still as untold hours disappeared into half a minute.
And when the remnants of the battlefield were cleared, the wrath of the beast was laid out, the verdicts of its judgement on display. The batteries that had barked the ashen shells were stripped, their measured perfections reduced to jagged husks. The scattered tents were wild torches, fire consuming the fabric as it flapped about in the chaotic wind. And the men were nothing. Their bodies had been soft, brittle things held together by messes of muscle; the heat and the pain of the beast had turned them into scarecrows, the force had whipped their charred hulks into dust and scattered them into the air—their selves had been obliterated. The soldiers sank to their knees in worship. That was death: all-powerful, fearsome, cleansing, beautiful.
But the awesome scene was blemished. A few of the men on the unfortunate side of the chasm had not been wiped out with their comrades; like loose threads hanging from an exquisite tapestry, they languished miserably on the barren earth, flayed and burned almost beyond recognition, staining the sanitized landscape with their bloody, warped shapes and disturbing the tranquil peace with their anguished screams.
The soldiers, kneeling in silent worship of death, regarded these abominations with silent fury. That they would dare to vandalize, that they would dare not to die when it was demanded of them! Commander Kim, observing the pristine expanse with equal rage, channeled the anger into his throat: ”Finish the job!” He cried in his best Mandarin Chinese.
Not one soldier had been raised within five hundred kilometres of another, yet each understood his duty. Kim watched as they sprinted over the wasteland, rifles in their hands and wrath on their faces. He watched these men—Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Cambodian—saturated themselves with radiation as they ran to finish off the victims that the beast had neglected to obliterate. Until that moment, the war had seemed unwinnable; none of the myriad factions had seemed capable of uniting against the Soviet menace, always rejected each other on irrelevant points of interest or dogma. Now, the path to victory was illuminated by the glint off the bloodstained bayonets: it would be this worship of death that would bring them all together. This reverence of destruction would bind the Asian race in its struggle—they would obliterate the enemy by obliterating themselves.
And, Kim told himself determinedly as he watched his men thrust their blades into the tortured creatures, he would be the man of destiny—he would be the one to lead.
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I guess I was wrong when I believed that Imperial Japan, with its "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", would be the core of Eastasia.
I was thinking of Hirohito's Eastasia or Yasuhito's Eastasia before this.
In case you haven't noticed, the Turtledove poll thread is finally up. Vote for UtSCT right here!
58
Well, we didn't win the Turtledove, but that doesn't bother me one bit. As long as someone out there is reading my stuff and enjoying what I write (and it seems as least 32 of you are), I am more than satisfied with the work I continue to put into this TL. Sorry about the long break; I wanted to wait until after the Turtledove poll closed, and since then I’ve been torturing myself over the particular wording of this entry for the past several days. Here it finally is!
Oh, and I’ll be wrapping up World War II fairly quickly. The actual procession of the battles isn’t particularly important by this point, more so the order that will emerge in postwar Europe. Although, I have been getting some good feedback on some of the War-related posts, so if I get enough demand I might go into some more detail.
Radio Speech by Senator Robert Taft, 19 July 1940
Not one Socialist plan or policy will bring about solutions or recovery in the long term. President Thomas may point to the negligible drop in unemployment figures since he entered office; and yet, a outrageously large segment of the American population remains destitute and impoverished. Never does he miss a chance to boast about the millions of jobs his Labor Corps has created; and yet, any man not content to sweep streets or dig ditches for the rest of life finds the factories closed off to new job-seekers, their profits strangled by excessive regulations and nationalizations.
President Thomas might propose that the federal government keep the unemployed half-alive through handouts and charities; after all, his egregious taxes on the rich generate such an enormous revenue that there must be enough money in the Treasury to feed every family in America for years, if so much of it were not wasted on corrupt union bosses and wasteful Socialist programs. But I tell you that this system would be the death of American freedom. Never mind that that kind of scheme would create such sloth and indolence among its victims that no man would have much of a reason to go looking for a job; never mind that inflation would reach even loftier heights than it already has, and drag businesses big and small even further down into the depths of insolvency. A system that doles out stipends like reduces the population to slavery. No man who feeds off government charity, no weary man who relies on the cold, uncaring hand of the government to push him through to the end of each day, is free. The limits on production must be abolished, the wage floors and price ceilings must be demolished, for it is only when every man has built his own road to prosperity can this country call itself free.
Speech by Governor Harry Byrd in Ottumwa, Iowa, 5 August 1940
The so-called Labor Empowerment Act will not survive the first day of Harry Byrd's Presidency, that I promise you today. My first act in office will be to destroy that law, to smash that tyrannical piece of Socialist thievery to pieces, that Satanic edict that has stolen so much from the hardworking, true American men that will stand against the tyranny of big government, whatever serpent’s skin it crawls into!
If there ever was conclusive proof that the Socialists don't give a damn about anyone outside New York or Chicago, it was that damned Act. The unions haven’t got a rat’s ass to give about the real America. It’s you who grow the food they eat, it’s you who milk the milk they drink, and how do they show their thanks? Every chance they get, they block up production, stop digging the coal that keeps you warm in December, and call their pet in the White House to pilfer the money from your pockets and put it in their fat, greasy hands. A vote for Harry Byrd is a vote against those big-lipped crooks, those treacherous cronies of the Socialist Party!
National Radio Address by President Norman Thomas, 18 August 1940
It should not surprise you to hear that I find practically all of Senator Taft’s words no less than appalling, repugnant, and outrageous; it is, after all, the grave mission of the Socialist Party to inoculate the people of this country against deceptions such as his, the lies and false promises that have upheld the corrupt verandas of capitalism for centuries. And yet, one of his statements has given me pause. While I would hardly call a drop of over eleven percent a “negligible” decrease in unemployment numbers, as Senator Taft has repeatedly done, it pains me to admit that in my first three-and-a-half years in this office, the plentiful fruits of socialism have not reached all Americans equally and fairly. An unacceptable high proportion of you remain jobless and destitute, and this can no longer be ignored.
Most of this is the fault of a Congress dominated by unscrupulous hacks, who for the past eighteen months have cared so little for their constituents as to shut down all legislation intended to relieve their economic distress, remaining loyal to the dictates of their own political cabals rather than to the pressing needs of the American people. But in part I must blame my own reluctance. Instead of pushing ahead with the changes the people of this country so desperately need, I have cowered, fearful of the backlash that would follow any true attempt to confront the corruption of the capitalist order. No longer.
If I have served you to your satisfaction, and if you judge it fit in November to renew my term in office, then my supreme task during my second term shall be to secure for the American people a right that is as crucial and unalienable today as the rights of speech and worship were one hundred and fifty years ago. When that circle of able statesmen enshrined the vital rights by which our nation is governed, they could not possibly have foreseen that the population they sought to protect from external oppression would be reduced, as they have been today, to capitalistic slavery--an institution that crushes its victims in the dual vice of subterranean wages and interminable hours, and whips the flesh from their backs with threats of jobless destitution. And if that circle were reconvened today, if its wise members saw a society such as this, where a man who cannot find a job is inextricably doomed to shiftless pauperism, they would require little deliberation to agree that it is the natural right of a working man to be employed. Any man who cannot secure from his corporate overlord a living wage or reasonable hours must have the choice to approach the state, and to find a vocation in the public service that allows his skills to be directed towards the general betterment of his peers and of our society.
If you have been betrayed by the promise that you may prosper if only given the liberty to find a job; if the threat of being tossed out on the street tomorrow brings you worse terror at night than any nightmare could; if you have spent years searching for even the most grueling, backbreaking job, and still watch your children’s stomachs tighten for the avarice of the monstrous corporate machine, I ask that you place your confidence in the aspirations of socialism. And if you have been failed time and time again by administrations content to stare at you in cold indifference, disdaining you for your station while offering you no routes of escape, know that the Thomas administration, in its second term, will make its peculiar mission to secure for all Americans the right--the fundamental, God-given right--to worthy employment.
Oh, and I’ll be wrapping up World War II fairly quickly. The actual procession of the battles isn’t particularly important by this point, more so the order that will emerge in postwar Europe. Although, I have been getting some good feedback on some of the War-related posts, so if I get enough demand I might go into some more detail.
Radio Speech by Senator Robert Taft, 19 July 1940
Not one Socialist plan or policy will bring about solutions or recovery in the long term. President Thomas may point to the negligible drop in unemployment figures since he entered office; and yet, a outrageously large segment of the American population remains destitute and impoverished. Never does he miss a chance to boast about the millions of jobs his Labor Corps has created; and yet, any man not content to sweep streets or dig ditches for the rest of life finds the factories closed off to new job-seekers, their profits strangled by excessive regulations and nationalizations.
President Thomas might propose that the federal government keep the unemployed half-alive through handouts and charities; after all, his egregious taxes on the rich generate such an enormous revenue that there must be enough money in the Treasury to feed every family in America for years, if so much of it were not wasted on corrupt union bosses and wasteful Socialist programs. But I tell you that this system would be the death of American freedom. Never mind that that kind of scheme would create such sloth and indolence among its victims that no man would have much of a reason to go looking for a job; never mind that inflation would reach even loftier heights than it already has, and drag businesses big and small even further down into the depths of insolvency. A system that doles out stipends like reduces the population to slavery. No man who feeds off government charity, no weary man who relies on the cold, uncaring hand of the government to push him through to the end of each day, is free. The limits on production must be abolished, the wage floors and price ceilings must be demolished, for it is only when every man has built his own road to prosperity can this country call itself free.
Speech by Governor Harry Byrd in Ottumwa, Iowa, 5 August 1940
The so-called Labor Empowerment Act will not survive the first day of Harry Byrd's Presidency, that I promise you today. My first act in office will be to destroy that law, to smash that tyrannical piece of Socialist thievery to pieces, that Satanic edict that has stolen so much from the hardworking, true American men that will stand against the tyranny of big government, whatever serpent’s skin it crawls into!
If there ever was conclusive proof that the Socialists don't give a damn about anyone outside New York or Chicago, it was that damned Act. The unions haven’t got a rat’s ass to give about the real America. It’s you who grow the food they eat, it’s you who milk the milk they drink, and how do they show their thanks? Every chance they get, they block up production, stop digging the coal that keeps you warm in December, and call their pet in the White House to pilfer the money from your pockets and put it in their fat, greasy hands. A vote for Harry Byrd is a vote against those big-lipped crooks, those treacherous cronies of the Socialist Party!
National Radio Address by President Norman Thomas, 18 August 1940
It should not surprise you to hear that I find practically all of Senator Taft’s words no less than appalling, repugnant, and outrageous; it is, after all, the grave mission of the Socialist Party to inoculate the people of this country against deceptions such as his, the lies and false promises that have upheld the corrupt verandas of capitalism for centuries. And yet, one of his statements has given me pause. While I would hardly call a drop of over eleven percent a “negligible” decrease in unemployment numbers, as Senator Taft has repeatedly done, it pains me to admit that in my first three-and-a-half years in this office, the plentiful fruits of socialism have not reached all Americans equally and fairly. An unacceptable high proportion of you remain jobless and destitute, and this can no longer be ignored.
Most of this is the fault of a Congress dominated by unscrupulous hacks, who for the past eighteen months have cared so little for their constituents as to shut down all legislation intended to relieve their economic distress, remaining loyal to the dictates of their own political cabals rather than to the pressing needs of the American people. But in part I must blame my own reluctance. Instead of pushing ahead with the changes the people of this country so desperately need, I have cowered, fearful of the backlash that would follow any true attempt to confront the corruption of the capitalist order. No longer.
If I have served you to your satisfaction, and if you judge it fit in November to renew my term in office, then my supreme task during my second term shall be to secure for the American people a right that is as crucial and unalienable today as the rights of speech and worship were one hundred and fifty years ago. When that circle of able statesmen enshrined the vital rights by which our nation is governed, they could not possibly have foreseen that the population they sought to protect from external oppression would be reduced, as they have been today, to capitalistic slavery--an institution that crushes its victims in the dual vice of subterranean wages and interminable hours, and whips the flesh from their backs with threats of jobless destitution. And if that circle were reconvened today, if its wise members saw a society such as this, where a man who cannot find a job is inextricably doomed to shiftless pauperism, they would require little deliberation to agree that it is the natural right of a working man to be employed. Any man who cannot secure from his corporate overlord a living wage or reasonable hours must have the choice to approach the state, and to find a vocation in the public service that allows his skills to be directed towards the general betterment of his peers and of our society.
If you have been betrayed by the promise that you may prosper if only given the liberty to find a job; if the threat of being tossed out on the street tomorrow brings you worse terror at night than any nightmare could; if you have spent years searching for even the most grueling, backbreaking job, and still watch your children’s stomachs tighten for the avarice of the monstrous corporate machine, I ask that you place your confidence in the aspirations of socialism. And if you have been failed time and time again by administrations content to stare at you in cold indifference, disdaining you for your station while offering you no routes of escape, know that the Thomas administration, in its second term, will make its peculiar mission to secure for all Americans the right--the fundamental, God-given right--to worthy employment.
stirlingdraka
Donor
I voted for you and I would vote for Norman Thomas in that election. The line you bolded will be relevant later right?
Deleted member 108228
Civil war? Or a Taiping Rebellion scenario with some wacky cult?
Good man? Unquestionably. Good President? Well—I suppose that’ll be up for interpretation.
When I bold phrases, it typically means that that is the vital part of the entry, the key concept I'm trying articulate, which you should make sure not to forget because it foreshadows what will be happening in future entries. Basically, when a phrase is bolded, know that if you retain none of the flowery language I like to smother my writings in, at least remember that vital tidbit because it will be important later. So yes, the line will later be relevant.
Damn. You're not kidding when you list your location as "Original Idea Headquarters", are you?
Deleted member 108228
Maybe we have Hong's son survive and live in secrecy until the warlord era. Where he can rise and begin the second Taiping Rebellion
Deleted member 108228
Let the Lord and his Two Sons watch in awe at what we will do. We will not let the wicked destroy our land of Heavenly Peace. We will save those who want to be saved. We will not let Hong's work be undone. Let them come, for we will prevail. Let Heaven come down to us, and fight with us. Long Live God, and the Two Sons!! Long live Eastasia!!
Deleted member 108228
Just a suggested idea. Trying to match the style
Jiangxi
Jiangxi
Justice.
It was the ideals of justice that kept many from going mad with power. It was this sense of righting the wrong that led men to do things seen as ungodly and unholy. Men burning villages filled with innocents and the destruction of lives. Yet this sense of doing it-the sense of making things right with some force in the world-was allowed and celebrated. The Americans showed that, yet somehow, in this part of the world that was forgotten some 80 years ago. What happened when you took the idea of justice and combine it with a godly motivation, it becomes fanaticism. It becomes pure insanity. It becomes the things you are disgusted by; wickedness. What sense of justice was lost when you had something to fight for? Is it really justice? Or was it just an excuse to be cruel? I was shown that when those Eastern Devils came. They did things to a people they never even met. They looted, raped, and tortured all because we were a group that they didn't like. Better yet, we were what they hated. We were.........INFERIOR.
What was it that made us hated? We were the same flesh and blood. We were made the same by the Heavenly Father and we were guided by the Heavenly Son. We were the same, yet we weren't. What was it that made us different? Was it the collective? The identity of the people? The cultures? Or was it something else........was it the individual? Was it the individual that created this hate. Was it the individual that cause this madness. We are the same people, yet when we look deeper we are different. We have different ideas and different views, and because of that.........we are seen as inferior?
I was told stories of my grandfather, Hong, for I was named. I used to admire the stories by old Lai told me when I was a boy; how the righteous one was guided by the Heavenly Father and the Brother. Oh, I loved how she used to tell me these stories. But, she is no more. Taken away by those Eastern Devils. What has she ever done to deserve this? She was a kind old lady, never having harmed a fly in her life! Why?!?! Why was it the fate of so many to suffer under that 'divine boot'. That little man in Kyoto-that wicked devil!!-was teaching us on how to be better. His own people worship him like a god. The kill themselves for him!! Yet they are just, but when we tried following the way of the Heavenly Father, we were tortured for it. 80 years from now, we 'God Worshipers' are still unjustly. Why??
It is the ideas of the individual that cause this? Was the ideals of certain people that created this mess. We in the past had achieved harmony through creating a sense of 'common-hood' yet it was always those few that ruined it, like that bastard SUN! If somehow, if someway we could 'further this unity and collective nature' if we could somehow.......
"Hong? Hurry up! We need to address the Central Command in 40 minutes. Grab what you need and get to it!"
Huh......back to business
The method of transportation had't really changed since those days. Sure there were cars, railroads and planes in China, but those were for the city folk. Those who could even afford luxuries made the countryman look in awe at how much has changed, but even still...most had to go the old fashioned way. I was one of them, for even though I was "The Heavenly Descendant", I decided to go on carriage to prevent my capture and to create a sense of homogeneity among these people, to eliminate the self in a sense. I mean, we have been living as normal people since Tiangfu escaped into the mountains, so why shall we indulge in it?
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