When the first child of Tengir and Divine-Sunflower-Princess called Towering-Justice was born, Tengir performed physiognomy on him. Then, he made this decree: "The New Earth is vast, but only one can rule it. Let there be no quarrels among the brothers and sisters as to who it shall be, for I decree that only the firstborn of the union of the New Earth shall inherit it."
Towering-Justice was set up in his own wing of the palace. After he became old enough to walk and understand words, Tengir went there every day to give him instruction in all things, including all arts he knew both mundane and spiritual. Tengir caused him to memorize every line of the Law, and also the contents of several books composed by other members of the house. He also made him temper his body daily through martial cultivation. By the age of ten, he had memorized all the books and could recite any line at will, and there was no weapon he could not handle well. Even though he had already learned everything there was to know by that time, his father made him continue to hone his abilities for the next few years.
In his thirteenth year, Towering-Justice wore a grown man's gown for the first time. On that day he was summoned by his father Tengir to the throne room of the Cloud Palace. Seated on his divine throne, Tengir said thus to him: "Now from on high when I look upon the face of the Earth below, I see that many are those who are my relatives and my descendants that now people the near and far corners of the Earth, now severed from us, from their native heaven, owing to the last calamity. And now so much time has passed that the elder tribes have split into younger tribes, and the younger into even younger, that are now pitted against one another in never-ending and pointless strife. On top of that, they are all in danger of forgetting the wisdom I originated, which is preserved only in the hands of a few, and if things continue to go the way they are going, that few will go extinct and the Earth will bathe in darkness. Though I have many children here with me in the Isles of Heaven, all more than capable rulers, not a single one of them has what you have, for you possess the essence of the New Earth. Now that you have come of age, are wise enough and can hold your own in a fight, I command you to descend to the surface of the Earth and unite the tribes and bring the Law and the light back to them, to renew the springs of virtue, truth and wisdom. For I decree that the human world is yours to rule. But the surface of the New Earth is a dangerous place full of diseases, defilement and other forms of evil. And the air there is dense unlike the rarefied air that we breathe here in the Isles of Heaven, which you have been accustomed to breathing for your entire life. For that reason, the form you take on the Earth will decay with the years until it can no longer sustain your spirit, at which time your mission will come to an end and you will return here to the Isles of Heaven. Thus the time you shall spend on the surface of the Earth is about one hundred years, and you must complete your work within that span of time." Tengir then fashioned with his own hands a golden seal inscribed with the words: SEAL OF THE LORD OF THE EARTH, THE SON OF TENGIR. He then took the Emerald out of the Great Staff and, taking another stone in his hand, smashed the Emerald against it, causing it to split into two chunks, but shortly after breaking apart, the two smaller Emeralds grew in size until they were equal to the original Emerald, and they were identical. He gave one of the Emeralds to Towering-Justice who accepted it along with the seal.
He put Towering-Justice in charge of a hundred men, fitted them all out with cloud chariots pulled by winged steeds, and loaded up cart after cart with supplies and provisions. This included a thousand bolts of silk, three thousand bolts of cotton, forty crates of divine medicine, sacks containing the seeds of every specie of elegant tree, flower and bush, fifty vats of heavenly wine, six hundred fifty fathoms of reinforced hemp cord, three hundred sheets of fragrant dyed paper as well as several hundred blank scrolls and codices, and two thousand gold bullions and six and a half thousand silver, along with countless articles that need not be enumerated. The train was over a mile long.
As soon as Towering-Justice's cloud chariot reached the surface of the Earth, he gathered fifty men from his retinue and designated them as heavenly scouts, and these he commanded to fly in every direction and behold all of the land within the four edges of the world where the descendants of Tengir were resident. Each one was equipped with a cloud chariot of his own, so they were able to cover many hundreds of miles per day. The fifty men that remained, he had begin the labor of preparing the land for habitation, for that country he originally touched down at was naturally flawless, not inferior even to the celestial realm he had just departed, yet sparsely inhabited as though by a divine prohibition; he named it the Central Meadows. There was always a breeze that kept the air fresh and stirred the grasses and flowers, causing them to churn like the waves of the sea and swirl like the clouds, and the plains appeared to go on forever in every direction, although a translucent wall of mountains hung in the north and east. At the very spot his chariot touched down he put up a sacred wooden pillar--a nondescript conifer's trunk whose branches and bark had been stripped away by a sacred knife--which he surrounded with a fence. The twenty-five-foot pillar he gave the name the Axial Dendron. In the vicinity of the Axial Dendron, he built a temporary lodge out of grass and reeds he intended to live in while making preparations to assemble the men who were worthy of ruling the world alongside him.
When the divine scouts returned, they reported that, in the lands that surrounded the Central Meadows--from there all the way to the four edges of the world--there were hundreds of regions and districts. And in between the regions and districts were liminal zones of seas, forests, deserts, wastelands, and so on. In these latter zones, no man could live, but the former were inhabited by myriads of peoples. Many were those whose blood and customs betrayed descent from Tengir, but many more who were strange of appearance, habit and speech, but some of these, by the necessities of life and enterprise, had over the years come to dwell in proximity to the sons of Tengir, even mixing stock with them, and their multiplication was fruitful, but fruitful also was the ramification of the ways of men in matters of speech, right and religion, and the true mixed freely with the false and befuddled. Naturally the scouts discovered that the condition of the Law of Tengir varied greatly among the tribes who claimed to profess it, with those whose speech and customs were the most familiar having more faithfully kept to the tradition. Among great swathes of others the Law was largely absent (even when it was claimed to be present), or existed in tiny and corrupted shards, in every case owing both to the introduction of the unfamiliar and its own entropy. Even still the number of people who had no ties to the race of Tengir whatsoever, and who carried on their own ways in accordance with their own ancestors and gods, was greater by far, for the changes of time had dispersed the uncountable tribes of the Earth and spread them as quickly and as completely even as sand when it is kicked up beneath the surf.
One morning, he was wading through the knee-length pampas as it bathed in the dew when he heard the clamor of swords and a succession of throaty grunts. He went right away to the source of this disturbance, a small clearing in a cluster of brush, where two men nobly arrayed were grappling with one another. The crunch of grass from Towering-Justice's approach alerted the two men to his presence, but one look at his shining countenance, which they might have mistaken for the ascendant sun had it not been capped by a halo of jet black, was enough to cause their hands to fall off of one another. They put away their swords, and Towering-Justice said thus: "Gentlemen, why are you quarreling?" And one of the men, having fully taken in the sight of the one who had just come down from Heaven, said thus: "Sir, I have never met you before, but your face I have seen a million times in my dreams. Are you not a descendant of Lord Tengir?" And Towering-Justice responded thus: "Not only am I a descendant, but I am his son. I am called Towering-Justice." The first man addressed him thus: "I am the True-Pillar Lord, descendant of Tengir through his son Goes-With-Heaven." The other, thus: "I am the Great-Frith Lord, descendant of Tengir through his son Thousand-Horse." After all three men had bowed to each other, Towering-Justice spoke thus: "How fortunate I am to have met you today, for I have just arrived here from the Isles of Heaven on a mission given to me by my father, to set up earthly rule in accordance with his Law and cultivate the continuity of the Ages." He then produced the Golden Seal to substantiate his claim, but the two lords were already saluting him. The True-Pillar Lord said: "There is no need to prove your words with that divine artifact, my lord, we already know you are telling the truth, for when we saw you just now, we noticed your perfect countenance and knew instantly that Tengir's blood is in you in large proportion. How little we were prepared to learn that you are the son of the great god, when in this world a son of his has not lived in several centuries. Please allow us to offer our services on behalf of your divine mission, to serve Tengir our Progenitor and promulgate his Law to every corner of the Realm." Towering-Justice accepted their vassalage, made them pledge to dedicate their lives to the Law of Tengir, and then took them to his lodge, where he had his servants feed them fresh game and give them Tengir's wine to drink.
The next morning, Towering-Justice awoke to the sound, yet again, of quarreling, and when he went into the meadow he saw that, right at the base of the Axial Dendron, the True-Pillar and Great-Frith Lords were fighting with swords again. He walked till he stood about a fathom or two away from them, and because the sun had barely risen, he cast a shadow upon them so deep it all but swallowed them. Aware now of his presence, the two lords fell off of each other and saluted him. Shaking his head, Towering-Justice said: "When I saw you put aside your differences yesterday to pledge to dedicate your lives to the Law of Tengir, I trusted that, even after a thousand years yet alone a single sunrise, you would never let yourselves be consumed by petty feuds, and so I did not probe further into your affairs. If you profess to obey the Law of Tengir, why do you quarrel in the presence of your lord?" And the Great-Frith Lord replied thus: "My lord, you are right. We are not worthy of serving you until our differences have been settled. Please grant us leave to fight until we are satisfied, at some location where the ugly noise will not disturb you, then we will return and resume serving you." And Towering-Justice said: "No, that is not what I meant! Whether you quarrel here or at some place out of your lord's earshot it is all the same, for when it is a matter of Law, it is as though one's lord is always present and poised to judge, just as when it is a matter of goodness and purity, the eyes of the deities are there even in the darkest chamber. Tell me, is your quarrel a matter of Law." The two lords said in unison: "It is." And Towering-Justice: "What is the matter? True-Pillar shall speak first."
The True-Pillar Lord pled thus: "Three years ago my dear mother passed away and was interred with all the due rites at Fresh-Hill. Being as she was a great lady, numerous fields were hers in life, and following the protocol of the Law these were to lie fallow for five years out of respect to the soul of the deceased. But five springs have not passed--as I said it has only been three--and already a few of the fields have been appropriated by members of the Great-Frith clan, and wheat is growing there. This is despite my having marked the fields with sacred stakes." And Towering-Justice said: "Alright, I see. Great-Frith, speak." And the Great-Frith Lord said thus: "The households who appropriated the taboo fields were detached from the rest of us and so had few to rely on for food, but they managed to get by for quite some time. The Law as it has been passed down to me, by my father and his father before him, states that the prohibition time of a deceased lord or lady's fields is three years, not five, which is why when three years were up, they planted, hoping to alleviate their hunger and establish themselves well. They meant no disrespect to the lady, even informing me that they worshiped at her tomb on several occasions and intend to dedicate the first fruits to her, as is our custom when it comes to serving the spirits of the land we use." When he had weighed both sides with keenness and delicacy, Towering-Justice decided thus: "When I was a boy, Tengir had me memorize every line of the Law, so there is not a single dictum or passage that is unknown to me, or incorrectly known. The true Law states that the fields of a deceased lord or lady should lie fallow for five years. But in this case, because the families who appropriated the land only did so out of desperation, it would be cruel to forbid them. That does not mean they are without sin, for which, I decree, they should render one-fifth of their harvest to the True-Pillar clan. If you think this fair, gentlemen, then do as I say, and never quarrel again." Both the lords agreed and stopped fighting.
Towering-Justice reflected on this matter, seeing that conflicts of this nature were bound to happen again so long as the Law as passed down in clans contained errors. And so he summoned the two lords, telling them: "Go back to your native districts, gather your retinues and all your relatives, and return with them to set up house here in the Central Meadows, for here shall be the center of our new Realm, where one true Law shall be promulgated. Because I have seen the true Law at work in your edification, I trust your council in this matter, and with you I intend to author the first pages of the new Realm." The two lords received his words as they would have gold and saddled their horses to set off at once.
The True-Pillar and Great-Frith Lords returned within a couple weeks with their entourages consisting of almost a thousand households each. They brought with them innumerable horses, oxen, sheep and other livestock, various types of grain, and iron, bronze and gold. They set up lodges alongside that of Towering-Justice. The next day, he held council with the lords. At the meeting, he said: "Show me the volumes that hold the Law according to your clans." And the two lords each brought out a volume that contained the Law as it had been passed down to them from ancient times. Towering-Justice had each of the volumes read out loud and so compared against the authentic Law his father had imparted to him. Numerous passages were found to be in contradiction, and both heterodox volumes also contained expansive new sections not found in the authentic Law. Towering-Justice ordered that the contradictory sections be deleted, while the new sections were to become the topic of debate: their principles and logic were were discussed among the lords before a decision was made whether to keep or delete them. And so a new Law containing the expansions and commentary was produced and agreed to by Towering-Justice and the two lords. This took a few weeks.