The dead Hun Hunahpu is not wholly gone. The lords of Xibalba cut off his head and set it in the fork of a calabash tree, which had never borne fruit before and now suddenly hangs full; and they forbid anyone to approach it. But a young woman of the underworld, Xquic (Blood Moon), drawn by curiosity, comes to the tree, and the skull of Hun Hunahpu spits into her open hand, and by this she conceives the Hero Twins. Fleeing the anger of her father, one of the lords, she escapes to the world above, where she bears Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who grow up to become the greatest of heroes.
In time the twins descend to Xibalba in their turn, avenge their father by outwitting and defeating its lords, and, in the fullest understanding of the myth, bring about the resurrection of their father the maize god, who rises again from the underworld, an image echoed in Classic Maya art that shows the maize god reborn, sprouting from the cracked earth or the turtle-shell of the world. Hun Hunahpu thus embodies the great Maya theme of death and regeneration through the cycle of the maize: the god who dies in the underworld and, through his sons, lives again, as the maize is buried as seed and rises as the plant that feeds the people. The Maya remain a living people, and maize retains its deep cultural and spiritual importance in Maya communities today.