Heart of the Dragon: The Oracle by Peter Man (The Saga of Shangala #1)

Victoria, a teenager adopted from China as a baby, lives a sheltered life in Toronto, until one day, in the blink of an eye, her whole world becomes dust in the wind. Her adoptive parents are killed in a fiery car crash. Victoria soon learns that powerful people have sent killers after her. She must evade these dangerous assassins while taking a perilous journey to China to look for her biological parents. In the course of her incredible odyssey, Victoria jumps out of a plane mid-flight without wearing a parachute, gets in a car chase on a sea-bridge in China, falling off the bridge into the sea below while trapped in the car, hangs outside the window at the top of the tallest building in China, wrestles with a hungry tiger, jumps off a cliff, and kills three grown men with one arm. Many of the secrets surrounding Victoria's mysterious background are encoded in China’s ancient writing known as Oracle Bone script. She wears a pendant of ancient jade pieces on which are carved oracles of the apocalypse described as Stopping-of-the-Sun. The reader will help decipher some Oracle Bone glyphs. Victoria’s amazing story is interwoven with China’s first historical queen from the Shang dynasty (circa 1200 BCE) who was also a seasoned warrior. The warrior queen's name is Fu Hao. One of Fu Hao's battles with a neighbouring tribe directly affected Victoria and her biological parents. Victoria's story describes this Shang era battle in Homeric detail. Fu Hao's undisturbed tomb was discovered in 1976, an eventful year for China, and a pivotal year for Victoria. Victoria is also linked to a barbarian tribe in northeastern China which came into being shortly before the Han dynasty (circa 200 BCE). Years later, these barbarians and their descendants would go south to rule large parts of China for hundreds of years. They were the Xianbei and the Khitan. While the barbarians changed China, they eventually became an integral part of China. To this day, many countries still mistakenly call China and Chinese Khitai and Khitan. The English Cathay is a derivative of Khitai. China in history suffered many foreign incursions, and large parts of the country or the entire country was for most of its history ruled by foreign tribes. But China's strength is its culture, and China always vanquishes the conquerors, not with its sword but with its word. Victoria's story is also the story of China. The most important Chinese words that represent China, Shang, and Han are explained as never before explained—directly from the Oracle bone script, and based on historical and archaeological facts. Victoria learns the origins of the Chinese and other ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians, ancient Egyptians, the Semitic people, and the Indus Valley civilization. They are all related to a mythical paradise planet known as Shangala, which colonized the red giants Betelgeuse of Orion and Antares of Scorpius, the latter known in China as the Heart of the Dragon. Victoria's story is full of myths; mysteries, science, technology, culture, and art. While the dragon represents China, Victoria's adventures are connected to another Chinese mythical creature, the Chinese unicorn most popularly known as Qilin or Kirin. One-eyed characters seem to be everywhere, and so are secret descendants of the Shang, Confucius being one of them. When the secret Shang clans are not getting involved in Victoria's life, they would be getting involved in world events, causing dynasties to rise and fall. Victoria would learn that some of these Shang descendants, whose tribe name is synonymous with merchants, today are hiding in plain sight in major corporations and insititues. The most inexplicable mystery is the number eleven. Almost every time numbers are mentioned, eleven shows up. Just when Victoria seems to have overcome every difficulty and has reunited with her parents, her biggest test will come at the very end, in the way described by the prophesy of the Revelation.