The Great Lord gives the command: establish the state and pass it down through the generations.
As they discuss the Yi states and the changing of dynasties, Zixu listens as Dai Zong surveys the seventeen generations and thirty-one emperors of the Shang kings, then shares his strange speculations about those several “Jia,” like the story of Emperor Tang of the Great Tang offering sacrifices to pray for rain.
Inspired by their discussion, one day in the third month of late spring, Zixu, now in the upper grades of elementary school, accepts an invitation from Dai Zong, a friend he met at school who is two years older, to attend a reading club at his house.
They then have a thoroughly ordinary discussion about a series of somewhat regrettable stories involving the Ji royal house, around the foundations of the thousand-year-old city walls at the former site of “Shang City,” before and after the State of Zheng was founded at the dawn of the Spring and Autumn period.
