Chiyang Ji: the Fall of the Totem

1519, Tlaxcala Valley. The Spaniards came from the east with their horses, iron swords, and smallpox. The warrior Xiao Xicoten Carter gathered one hundred and twenty men, fought a bloody battle in the canyon under the cold light of the obsidian saw sword, and cut off the head of the war horse. They thought victory was in sight. But the Senate sent a letter of surrender. The person who handed down the book was his father. He was deprived of military power, forced to hand over his ancestral saw sword, put on Spanish cotton armor, and used an iron sword he was not used to, and walked towards the city of his Aztec brothers who had the same origin and species as him. In Cholula Square, the blood of civilians seeped into the cracks in the stones. On the causeway of Tenochtitlan, he heard the tribesmen behind him shout "Don't leave us". He jumped into the lake and never looked back. Only sixteen people came back alive. His wife, Viziliuitl, had been weaving. Black is night, red is blood, and white cotton is stars. She handed half of the cloth to him: "You take it with you. I'll keep half of it. When the two halves are put together again, you will come back." When old Xicoten Carter died, he held a broken sword in his hand - it was the relic of his eldest son who died in the battle. He chose to surrender, not because he was afraid of death, but because he was afraid that enough was enough. This is a novel about betrayal and fire. The totem has fallen, but the sound of the loom has not stopped.