History says that Daji was a vixen. Di Xin is a tyrant. Makino defected, Lutai set himself on fire, and his destiny returned to Zhou.
But history was written by Zhou people.
The truth is: Emperor Xin abolished human sacrifices, replaced living people with pottery figurines, promoted ministers from common people, and pushed the territory of the Great Shang to the East China Sea. Daji was the only one in his life. The old nobles hated him, and the Zhou people took advantage of this hatred to turn the rumors of "wine ponds and meat forests" and "enchanted concubines seducing the Lord" into an ironclad case for three thousand years.
The truth lies in a cauldron deep in the ancestral temple.
That tripod is called Jiuding, it was cast by Dayu and consecrated by Xuanniao. Wherever the birds pass and everything they see, everything flows into it. People's words can be false, but birds can't deceive them. The day Daji touched the black bird pattern on her fingertips, she saw the history book three thousand years later. She saw the fire in Makino, the smoke in Lutai, and the posthumous title "Zhou" pressing on Di Xin's name like a red-hot iron.
She tells him how they will lose.
He was silent for a long time and asked, "Do you believe it?"
"I believe it."
"If destiny is like this, I will act against it."
Jiuding only shows the naturally occurring future. Every time they change a step, the road ahead becomes darker. However, Emperor Xin still recalled the Eastern Expeditionary Army, and Daji still dragged her overdraft body into contact with the tripod again and again. Not to win. It is to let the truth stay in heaven and earth for a moment longer.
Three thousand years later, archaeologists retrieved the tripod from the soil of the Yin Ruins. Someone discovered that the misread "Zhou" in the oracle bone inscriptions may have never been Zhou. Between the lines on the tripod's body, there was a cold and bright tear stain in the corner of Xuanniao's eye.
The Shang ode has not yet been completed, and the black bird will not deceive him.
——The truth will be late, but there will always be a bird to bring it back.
