"Witnessed by the blood‑eyed Chief Divine! The Duoyan Sanwei, also called ’Wuji Yete’, or the ’Wuliangha Three Guards’. And this ’Wuji Yete’, ’Wuliangha’, in fact are the same as the ’Wuzhe’ our Tribes often speak of, all carrying the meaning of ’Mountain Forest’. So these Duoyan Three Guards were originally Tribes dwelling amid the Mountain Forest, and with our Jurchen Tribes of the Mountain Forest, our ancestors were actually very close; there were many intermarriages, and communication was very smooth. You could say they count as Tribes that are half Mongolia and half Jurchen; it’s only because the Mongolians grew powerful that they began to call themselves Mongolia. If one day we Jurchen rise up, they could also turn into Jurchen..."

"When the Grand Ancestor Emperor was alive, he campaigned many times against the Northern Yuan Remnants and brought these ’Wuji Yete’ Tribes to heel, and formally enfeoffed the three guards. Among them, the ’Duoyan Guard’ originated from the ’Wulianghai Tribes’, which is to say, from the descendants of the Thousand Houses of ’Zhe Lei Mie’, one of the Four Hounds enfeoffed under the tent of Genghis Khan. And the ’Tai Ning Guard’ originated from the ’Wengniute Tribe’, a proper royal domain tribe of ’Wengniute’, that is, the descendants of the Tribe of Temuge Ochijin, Genghis Khan’s youngest brother. As for the last ’Fuyu Guard’, it originated from the Forest Sea of the North, and can be regarded in general terms as the ’Forest People’, a branch of the ’Wuliangha Thousand Households’. Although they themselves claim to have the bloodline of Genghis Khan’s second brother Zhuo Chi He Sa’er, in fact the various Mongolian tribes do not acknowledge it. Just like the Forest People of the far North, the majority of their Tribespeople are North Mountain Wild Men who came southward, their language also close to ours, only under Mongolian influence they became Mongolians..."

The Chief of Harman Tribe Ali stretched out a finger, dipped it in the bloodstain on the Altar, and drew three red circles in the blank spaces on the map. He certainly did not know the precise bounds of the three Tribes; most likely even the three Tribes themselves, perpetually migrating, constantly fusing and splitting, were not clear about it. But a rough marking was still within his power. When he spoke of the North Mountain Wild Men, he even lifted his head and cast a meaningful glance at the bewildered Maha Agudah. Maha Agudah’s eyes bulged as he hefted the newly forged Stone Hammer in his hand, and Ali shrank his neck at once, then went on pointing at the map.

In fact, if this Chieftain of the Maha tribe had not led his people south into the Heilongjiang River Basin, but had gone south into Mongolia instead, then after a generation the Maha tribe would have become a branch of some small Mongolian tribe, becoming part of the ’Wuliangha Thousand Households’, instead of any later Shengshu Jurchen. In these past years, countless Tungusic Tribes, driven by that invisible great hand of cold calamity, have thus come south from the boundless Forest Sea of the North. Those Tribes that entered Mongolian territory ended up becoming Mongolia. Those that entered the lower Heilongjiang River became Jurchen. Among them, Mongolia still has the transmission of the Golden Family bloodline, with a clearly defined attribute of blood. But the Wild Man Jurchen and the later Man Clan are much more truly a geographic concept..."

"In the eyes of the Mongolians, the blood of the Ancestor determines far, far too much! The original standing of the three Tribes among the Northern Yuan Remnants, too, was ranked by blood origin: the Tai Ning Guard with the Golden Bloodline stood highest, the Duoyan Guard with the Hound‑of‑Merit bloodline came next, and the Fuyu Guard with the Wild Man bloodline was lowest... And the initial placement of the three guards was likewise: the ’Fuyu Guard’ farthest to the north, the ’Duoyan Guard’ in the middle, and the ’Tai Ning Guard’ farthest to the south..."

"Yet, witnessed by the Ancestors! After the Grand Ancestor’s death, Taizong the Emperor’s pacification of the three Tribes changed everything! The three Tribes were turned into three guards, becoming the Emperor’s followers of the utmost loyalty. They followed Taizong the Emperor in raising troops to ’Pacify the Difficulty’, fighting from Mongolia all the way to Nanjing. Then they followed Taizong in campaigning against Mongolia, fighting from Nanjing back to the Northern Desert... Among them, the strength of the Duoyan Guard was the greatest, and the battle merits they earned were the most. In the later grants of the Yongle Period by Taizong, the Duoyan Guard also received the richest rewards, moving south to lie below the Tai Ning Guard and gaining lush pastureland... Furthermore, the court set up dedicated trading markets in both Kaiyuan Guard and Guangning Guard, allowing the three guards and all the Shushu Jurchen tribes to obtain urgently needed articles of daily use, including the most precious Ironware..."

The Chief of Harman Ali wore a look of reminiscence as he recounted the "grace of Taizong" passed down from generation to generation. In this Hanized Jurchen version of the tale, Ming Taizong Zhu Di is almost born as a great Khan of all peoples, subduing Mongolia and the Jurchen Tribes, founding the Empire at its very height. And all the followers of various peoples who followed Taizong the Emperor—whether Mongol, Han, or Jurchen—received abundant enfeoffments and rewards, from the individual up to the Tribe!

That was an age of expansion and martial exploits: as long as you could fight, even if you were from another race or a Eunuch, you could rise in rank and be enfeoffed as marquis, and share in the power of the Empire. The benefits of the Duoyan Three Guards’ attachment to the Ming Dynasty far surpassed those of following the impoverished Mongolia, and they were never blocked by the court at the trading markets, being able to obtain a vast supply of goods from the Han Land.

But after Taizong’s death, the Ming Dynasty gradually changed, turning toward a Civil Official‑dominated era of guarding the inheritance and rule by letters, and toward an ever stricter distinction between Hua and Yi... Beyond doubt, in this change, the men of war lost their power, and the Eunuchs were suppressed. As for the alien Mongols and Jurchen? They vanished entirely from the superstructure of the Empire, rejected from its circles of power, and slowly turned into true ’Barbarians’!

"Witnessed by the Chief Divine! Taizong the Emperor Zhu Di?..."

Hearing these distant tales, Zuwaro’s eyes flickered. He did not know how much of the history stories from Ali’s mouth were in fact true. But in his heart, this figure of Taizong the Emperor was probably much like Your Majesty Xiulote: a man able to gather heroes from all Tribes and select and employ them heavily! What set his imagination further roaming was that, after the death of the Divine King Grand Ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, Taizong’s seizure of power through the ’Pacification of Difficulty’...

"Ahem! Stop, don’t think too much! Chief Divine protect us! Yongle... Yongle? That reign title again?"

Zuwaro drew back his drifting thoughts and looked toward that spot inside the collapsing Yongning Temple. That stone stele, inscribed with the establishment of the Nurgan Metropolitan Authority and carved in The Eleventh Year of Yongle, was still lying quietly in the corner of the Temples and Shrines. And the Ming Dynasty’s expansion in the Yongle Period seemed to extend far beyond this single place of Nurgan, reaching farther and farther west, farther and farther north, all the way to the Duoyan Three Guards and even the more remote Northern Desert.

"Witnessed by the Ancestors! After Taizong the Emperor died, the relationship between the Duoyan Three Guards and the court began to deteriorate sharply... In the end, during the change at Tumu Pass, they turned to the Wala Mongolia... As for now, they are the main force of Mongolia’s right wing in Liaodong, especially the Duoyan Guard, the southernmost and most powerful of the three Tribes. They firmly occupy the Luan River Basin, threatening the crucial fortress of Guangning held by the court, and even threatening the West Liao Corridor that links to Liaodong. And the fact that the court moved the seat of Liaodong Town from Liaoyang to Guangning was precisely to guard against them!..."

At this point, the Barbarian Chief Ali’s expression turned wistful, and he let out a sigh for no clear reason. He knew the cruelty of the cold natural disasters did not only force the Jurchen Tribes in the Mountain Forest to head south in search of survival; it likewise forced the Duoyan Three Guards to move south. And had the court been able to provide enough Money and Grain, the three guards might not have turned to Mongolia—just as Liaodong’s Nurgan Metropolitan Authority was also able to be sustained through Money and Grain. But in the end, the choice of the court...

"Ancestor Shaman, among the Duoyan Three Guards, the Duoyan Guard lies close to the border wall, occupying the old lands of Da Ning Guard and controlling the Songliao Plain. Their distance from us is the greatest; it is hard for us to make contact, and there is no need to. The Tai Ning Guard is at the Taler River area, pasturing between the Songliao Plain and the Kerqin Archer Grassland, so contact with them is still rather far. Therefore, the nearest and easiest to approach, and the ones closest in kinship with our Jurchen Tribes, are the Fuyu Guard..."

"Chief Divine preserve us! As long as we row our Large Ship and go south all the way along the Huntong River, passing the Wusuli River estuary and reaching the Songhua River estuary, then follow the Songhua River westward, crossing through the heartland of the Haixi Jurchen, until we reach those broad pastures where the rivers meet, we will encounter the small Tribes of the Fuyu Guard grazing there! After that, buying horses from them is quite easy; it’s just bringing them back that is harder..."

"Witnessed by the Ancestors! According to the Han Land’s way of speaking, that place was once truly a land of prosperity—it was the Shangjing City of the Jin people! What? You ask what sort of people the Jin people were? Mm... perhaps they too were a Jurchen Tribe? As for where exactly Shangjing City was, it seems no Tribe has ever actually seen it; it’s only written about in books from the Han Land..."

The Chief of Harman Ali scratched his head; as to whether the ’Jin people’ were a ’Jurchen Tribe’, and where exactly ’Shangjing City’ lay, he himself was not at all sure. After all, the various tribes had all surged southward in confusion, bloodlines fusing and alternating. The so‑called ’Liaodong Jurchen’ of this time and the ’Jurchen’ who went south in the Jin Dynasty were separated by three or four hundred years, with not the slightest blood connection or transmission left. And this so‑called ’Jurchen Race’, before the Old Slave unified the Tribes and rose, was in truth even more of a geographic concept. Just as the Haixi Jurchen belonged to that Haixi region, and the Jianzhou Jurchen belonged to that Jianzhou region, while the Wild Men did not even have a contiguous region to their name...

"Ali, this place where one can meet the ’Fuyu Guard’ and buy many horses—what is it actually called? What do you usually call it in daily speech?"

"Oh! Ancestor Shaman, that place has very shallow Water, very lush pasture, many Flying Bird, and it is well suited for crossing the river. So, for all the surrounding Tribes who hunt and pasture, when they ride their horses in migration, it is the most suitable shallow Rivermouth ford for crossing... So our Tribe calls it ’Harbin’! A flat shallow bank where the Goose descend—a place that is easy to ford!..."