So analysis.
First, getting the correct context, we must begin at the end:
Last records of the Priest Meng Dizi, during the reign of Emperor Si, later executed for sedition against the Duke of Hui.
Emperor Si - This is before An/Inexorable Justice and what little we know suggests he was a relatively weak Emperor.
The author here is a priest - a keeper of tradition who's seeing those very traditions be defiled.
This is the last letter he wrote before he was executed for sedition, so you can presume there was a longer communication before it, and he is probably not cussing out the rulers of the province for fun.
Why must you pester me so, lordling. I am here on but obligation. I have no interest in whatever games it is you wish to play with the court.Leave this old man be!
Compelling religious elites to attend court is a classic show of power.
Dragging them into your politics is also classic - if he was wiser he'd give them some face and they'd content themselves with trivialities.
He did not and he became a challenge.
Hmph, your words are as gnats and I have swatted them all before. You lovers of imperium are all the same, you dismiss and deride our traditions. Primitive you call us. Not all tribes of men had the fortune to grow up in a cradle, built by god beasts and dragons, surrounded by an order which merely needed to be found, not built. When my ancestors were setting the seasons, yours were still playing the courts of dead gods. We speak to our land, sing with our spirits, craft our homes hand in hand with the gods of the land, and you call us weak for failing to dominate as you do. Where are your scales, dragon? Your horns, your whiskers, your claws. You seem to have misplaced all your lordly might.
While this rings true, it should be kept in mind that his speech overlooks the rather numerous and potent Beast Kings that Tsu had to beat into line(or those turned to his side), or that the Celestial Peaks' Dragon ruins are more hazard than boon, without a dragon's might and majesty to suppress them with.
He is calling out the reader - one who acts
like a dragon, but is worse, because they are not mighty, yet behave like they are. Presumably a Hui.
Different contexts, different solutions.
The works of the dragon gods would likely consider Tsu's mix of diplomacy and force to be confusion, deceptive and generally weak. They would react with hostility.
Were humanity in the Emerald Seas to seek to solve the Emerald Seas like a puzzle with a singular solution, they would fail, for the riches of the forest can support many mighty Kings, all of who behave differently.
We are not weak, we are not soft. We accomplish more together with our land than we ever could in trampling it, moulding it to whatever momentary whims may not even last a century. Our schools of geomancy know this and need not your harsh lord of angles. The Nameless Mother is the world and the contours of her flesh persist for eons, changing only on a scale which only the longest lived may glimpse. It is not foolish to tap into that rather than try to impose some artificial order, invented by a man living in an artificial land.
This part here is more philosophical at first glance - clean lines and sharp angles or contouring to fit the terrain?
But if you think about it, the Celestial Peaks are situated in mountains, space is at a premium, where it is not hewn out of stone and rendered level by the dragon gods. They cannot follow natural contours, there are none to perceive. Space efficiency, well contained effects that do not verge onto those of older ruins. These are key to survival there.
That, and ancient city planners throughout the world tend to favor straight lines and clean angles - its just easier to organize large projects that way, even if things are never quite as simple as white room projections suggest. Even Imperial China made use of long straight lines and square angles for large scale constructions, for all that the principles of chinese geomancy suggests that such things will carry and project killing intent as opposed to gentler, curved and rounded forms(which tends to be reserved for interior usage, or smaller structures like pagoda towers which can be built both round and regular, whereas if you tried such a thing with a city wall its a cointoss whether your walls will meet correctly)
Actually leveling terrain to do so in a forest however, is a pain in the ass, you'd disturb everything and waste an appalling amount of resources simply to make it easier to draw lines on paper.
It will support more people, you say, but why need we expand like locusts on their breeding flight? There are enough of us to rule our lands, enough of us to see the safety of our settlements, enough of us to do our duties to the gods. What good precisely will come from doubling or tripling the numbers in our cities. Ah yes, more taxes and levies for the throne, yes how could I forget the most important factor.
Talking clean past each other here.
The Emerald Seas is an incredibly rich land. Trees abound with fruit, the soil is rich for crops, and the forest full of game.
The Celestial peaks are thin and near barren lands by contrast, all the living space is artificial and maintained by organized labors.
Sure, they'd inevitably expand beyond what they have, but the raiding culture of pre-imperial ES provided a vent for population excesses, and should they have the strength and prosperity, they could always renegotiate the deals from a better position - after all the ES style of spirit relations were always individual deals with individual spirits, the successors could forge newer terms to account for the newer age.
And at the same time Meng here is being uncharitable towards his conversational partner - the Peaks are aware of population control. Without it their geography is just plain uninhabitable...to be honest it looks a bit like a more experienced debater baiting out a known talking point and then using that to cast the other party in a bad light.
Your order is not wanted here, your help is not wanted here, least of all because we know it false. It has always been false, a trick to replace us, to change us. You made kings of the Xi and to what end, to subjugate our neighbors, who had been all but brothers for millenia. You couldn't even be content with tribute, nay your dogs demanded blood and control, and both they received.
We know this part. They came in, looked at the mess of factions left behind as the long lingering aftermath of the Weilu's internal conflicts, and decided to unify it by force.
Thats when the Hill Tribes and Cloud Nomads changed from sometimes friendly sometimes hostile to a more hostile facing, in the face of unrelenting hostility.
Meanwhile, there is likely no small amount of culture gap going on here - the pre-Imperial Emerald Seas practiced raiding culture, as did the Hill tribes and the Cloud Nomads. Some level of low level fighting would be practically constant...which as far as the Imperial culture is concerned would be banditry (yes, this is almost certainly still going on in Ebon Rivers, but they were never as weak as the Emerald Seas were, and joined voluntarily rather than by the sword), and responded to appropriately with extermination.
And then came your puppeteers, the Hui, who have made of our faith a laughingstock. The words of the Pure One have disappeared from the minds of men, and only memories of hedonism and the self aggrandizement of the Hui remain. It makes this old man's fists shake with rage to know that such arrogant fools call themselves Teachers, call themselves Pure. As if all it takes to rise above this cruel world is to never lift a finger in labor or hardship, to never know want or connection! As if the overcoming is not how one comes to know themselves and the delineation of their path.
A hint at the original forms of the Dream Cult.
Before it plunged into escapism.
Might be drawn from Taoist Mythology under the Three Pure Ones?
The First is the Great Tao/Great Path, the embodiment of the primordial universe where all was One.
The Second is the power which divides Yin and Yang, then further divides the elements, creating Law/Process.
The Third is the sage who teaches the Law and brings civilization.
In this setting, however, that cannot fit as-is, assuming the mythology of the Father and Mother are sufficiently universally true, but...we know the Weilu were Yin-Yang cultivators, and maybe they want to reach for the perfected union of the Mother and Father, as they sought before all the murder ruined it?
Would their higher philosophers then seek a perfected union of the two? Did they succeed and ascend to a higher plane?
Might be something to keep an eye on as we poke into the Dream cult business further.
Then there are our beasts, and O does the hypocrisy burn. The great clans are exempt from your distaste naturally, as you dare not face their strength. But for consorting with our kin, whose chains Tsu himself shattered the skulls of their gods, we are savage. You tell us it is a foul thing for children to see our companions as kin, that it degrades their humanity, degrades their loyalty to their own kind. In this the extent of your ignorance is revealed. The beasts which live beside us, which have helped us build,which have defended our homes against nomad, enraged spirit and conqueror alike, and have died beside us when we failed are far more our kin than men such as you in your far away mountains and keeps, ever and always taking from us.
But that is the trouble with imperials. You covet the aesthetic, the appearance of order and unity. Our ways offend for the simple fact that they are not your ways, not due to any true objection. You look upon us and are offended to not see a mirror. You will take the world and erase everything which does not match your soulless peaks if you could.
This part though.
This isn't just culture differences or differing environments.
They just don't like different.
But yes, come tell me more how you are improving our lands, bringing your roads and buildings which clash with the spirits and crush agreements older than the sage. Tell us how we are better packed into hovels where disease spirits and misery breed, in buildings which have no spirits, no bond to kith and kin who live within their walls. Tell us more about how barbarous our ways are in letting our children grow with companions four legged as well as two. Tell us that we are savages, little better than the wretched tribes of the Wall. How we will be much improved by answering to your lords and ministers rather than our councils and elders.
..We pay our tithes. We grant our tribute. But it is never enough, for you conquerors of Qin. All must be alike, all must submit, all must obey. Deviation punished.
We have no intentions of rebellion, we just wish you to leave us alone.
I'm kind of wondering at what point did a simple desire for imperium turn into contempt, or if it was the root for that ambition?
