After taking a wife, Tengir continued his felicitous life among the people of the Village, and the prosperity of all multiplied with each passing day. But that night when he consecrated his marriage with Divine-Stream-Princess, he caused a profound change in her, for now her belly was swollen and was growing with every passing week. Seeing as his household was about to be bigger, he made plans to construct a larger and more adequate dwelling. After the lumber had been obtained from the tree farms, the rock from the quarries, and ceramic tiles from the ovens, he recruited artisans to build the new house, which was to be called the Perennial Estate.
The whole estate had two courtyards, an inner courtyard in the southwest and a larger outer courtyard in the northeast. A wide entrance hall was on the southern side of the inner courtyard and it led straight across that courtyard to the main hall, where Tengir's apartments were. The apartments contained rooms for sleeping, eating, sitting, bathing, reading and writing and miscellaneous activities. On the west side of the inner courtyard was a spacious hall for storing goods, weapons and food, and it was also where meals were prepared. On the two corners of the eastern side of that same courtyard were two towers which were twice as tall as the other buildings. Atop them one could see for several miles in every direction so as to know the approach of friends or foes. The outer courtyard had two halls on its northern and eastern walls, which contained all-purpose rooms and guest suites. A channel of water was dug coming in from the north and going out through the south, where the residents might fetch water to wash themselves with or drink. In the outer courtyard, ever manner of elegant plant and stately tree was planted to give the place the airs of a celestial paradise.
This garden also grew sundry kinds of herbs and roots that were useful both for cooking refined dishes and treating ailments of the body and spirit.
In the eleventh month of that year, Divine-Stream-Princess saw a dream where a horse with flying feet was running across the night landscape. In the sky above its head, no constellations were visible but the Dipper, magnified several times and spinning on its axis in a manner reminiscent of a cartwheel. The very next day she gave birth to twin boys. One had fiery orange eyes that looked like a horse's mane, so he was called Thousand-Horse. The other had black eyes that sparkled like a starry sky, and so he was called Eternal-One.
Thousand-Horse and Eternal-One were brought up in the Perennial Estate, and Tengir saw to it personally that they lacked nothing and gave the utmost attention to their proper rearing and education. He imparted to them all of his wisdom accrued over the many decades he had been alive, from the ways of hunting and fishing, to reading, writing and counting. He initiated them into the martial arts, too, and Thousand-Horse was especially adept, mastering the sword, the bow and arrow, the spear and so many other weapons. As he grew up, he proved extraordinarily strong, able to lift boulders and slabs of metal that would take dozens of ordinary men to budge. But his brother, Eternal-One, was never so inclined, instead spending his days beneath the shade of a tree where he would read the books and recite the songs made by his father and other Spirits, to see if he could not penetrate into the world's mysteries one and all. When he went out to hunt with his father and brother, he would often get lost gazing at leaves, blades of grass, absorbed in the different kinds of insects and the particularities of the shapes of the trees, fascinated by how complex and manifold all of nature was. Over the years he wrote down his observations of the world in an ample trove of volumes that cannot be enumerated here.
The next year, Divine-Stream-Princess was with child again, and when she gave birth a beautiful girl with hair the color of the morning sky came into the world. The girl's face was fair and bright, and because of its striking resemblance she was given the name Dawn-Brook. Her mind was incredibly bright too, for only at one year of age, she could already speak as though an adult, and at only three years, she could read, write, sing and play musical instruments. However her body was very delicate, and her spirit had a tendency to fall out of it from time to time and roam all over the more subtle realms, where she was acquainted with all sorts of marvels. This unusual endowment made her keenly attuned to the rhythm of things great and small, and she was wise and perspicacious. Her poise was sanctified and she conducted herself with the utmost purity, sincerity and deference for life and civility. She also had an unconquerable love for all living creatures, able as she was to talk to animals, beasts and even monstrous beings.
When Thousand-Horse came of age, a wandering star spirit happened to be sojourning in Tengir's country and came to the ceremony. He watched Thousand-Horse wear a grown man's overcoat for the first time and suddenly was stricken by a vision. When he came to, he told Tengir what he had seen. When Tengir asked him: "What is your prognostication?" the star spirit replied: "Half of the realm is destined to be his." And Tengir asked further: "How shall he conquer it." The star spirit said: "With this." And he produced from his bag a black, glossy sword and presented it to Thousand-Horse. Reverently receiving it, he sensed its strange power; he asked the star spirit: "What is this sword's name." "Name it whatever you like, young master; what is Fated is not named by another." "Because it looks just like the night sky, I will call it the Galaxy Sword." The wandering star spirit left the country the next day and was never seen there again. The sword became Thousand-Horse's most valued treasure, and he trained with it daily. No question, it multiplied his cultivation by several fold.
Eternal-One came of age the next month, for even though he was born at the same time as Thousand-Horse, his father did not want to hold two ceremonies in the same month. While the ceremony was being held, an old man whom no one had ever seen before showed up and, announcing himself as the Hermit of Tortoise Mountain, asked to present a gift to Eternal-One. Tengir sensed the old man's extraordinary spiritual powers, and was certain he was a kind of god or immortal, so he allowed it. The old man gave Eternal-One a turtle shell necklace, and as soon as he had done so he left without explaining what it was. It did not seem to contain any special powers, but Eternal-One accepted it reverently anyway, because he was certain that it was profound in one way or another. Some men, when they saw this, got angry at the old man for giving him such a useless object and wanted to catch him and make him account for what he had done, but Tengir told them to stand down. The old man was never seen again.
For years the strange necklace was a mystery to Eternal-One, and he wondered why the workings of Fate had dropped it into his hands without so much as a single word to its significance. His curiosity drove him to experiment with it in every way imaginable: he sketched it, sculpted it, described it in prose and in verse, he dropped it, threw it, smelled it, tasted it, and listened to the sounds various things made when tapped against it. But there seemed to be nothing special about it at all. He thought to himself: "There is nothing more to do with it; the only thing I haven't done is to destroy it." He lit a fire in the woods and tossed the turtle shell necklace into it. But as the flames were surging up from it, shapes began to appear on the shell. The shapes turned into patterns, and the patterns into writing. The writing said: "Half the realm is destined to be yours." Astonished, he rescued it from the fire, and carved this question into the shell: "How shall I conquer it." The fire did its work, and the answer appeared: "With these." He again rescued the turtle shell necklace from the fire, and from that day on it was his most valued treasure. No doubt, his cultivation increased greatly thanks to it.