The Prelude to Yanhuang

Yan Huo spent seven years unifying Mars, only to destroy its last remaining ecosystem with his own hands. Huang Tian proposed seventeen plans to save the world, and every one of them was rejected. At last, an old spaceship carried twelve people toward Earth. The ship broke apart in the atmosphere, and only two survived, crashing into a primeval swamp. They taught the primitive people dressed in animal skins how to make fire, craft bows, smelt bronze, and write. They built the first city, fought the first war, and established the first laws. Then their successor, the young leader they had raised themselves, “revised and unified” all the records on the cliffs. Every mention of “those who came from beyond the sky” was scraped away with a knife. But the storyteller by the fire could not be controlled by a single command. Five thousand years later, all Chinese people call themselves descendants of Yan and Huang. The two names that were erased were passed down through the voices of two thousand generations, all the way to today.