Chapter 80: The Meteor Plains, The Ice Age
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
The Demigiant corpses laid quietly on the grass. As their blood dried, it attracted countless flies and mosquitoes.
Meng Lei frowned and said, “You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to, but you shouldn’t have come to the Magical Beast Forest depths and loitered about here. It’s too dangerous!”
Abbe had nothing to say to that.
Meng Lei then asked, “What are your plans now? I’d suggest that you should either leave or go to the forest’s outer boundaries. That way, your life won’t be at risk!”
“I understand!”
Abbe nodded silently. Then, as he held his chest, he turned around and left. “Thank you for saving my life. I will repay the favor for sure!”
Meng Lei became somewhat worried instead when he saw how Abbe was behaving. He couldn’t help but ask, “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Wherever my legs take me, I guess!” Abbe replied coolly.
Then, without even looking back, he left and, in no time, disappeared into the depths of the forest.
“That fellow...”
Meng Lei was rendered rather speechless.
“Forget it, just do whatever you want. Why should I bother that much about him if even he himself doesn’t cherish his own life?”
Meng Lei shook his head and began to examine the Demigiant corpses instead. These guys were pretty strong, and their bodies were on par with Sixth-Grade Warriors.
If the six of them joined hands with one another, together with their earth-controlling ability, they would have a fighting chance even if they encountered Seventh-Grade Warriors.
Surely there’ll be quite a lot of good stuff on them, right?
“Ding! Dropped item detected. Will you pick it up?”
“Yes, pick it up!”
“Ding! Assimilation successful. Host’s Physical Body Constitution +91!”
After some rummaging, Meng Lei indeed found a spatial magic device on them. It was a brass ring that looked simple, classy, and unadorned, yet bold and unconstrained, and was very characteristic of a giant’s style.
“Let’s see what’s inside of it...”
He released some spiritual power, which slowly spread into the spatial ring.
“That’s all there is inside?”
Meng Lei’s brows drew together at once. The space inside the ring wasn’t big, only about ten cubic meters at best. Apart from a small pile of magic cores, there were only a few pieces of clothing, armor, maces, roasted meat, and other things like that.
There was nothing else other than these!
“Can you even call yourselves Demigiants when you’re even poorer than me?!”
Meng Lei was sorely disappointed. He swore and grumbled incessantly as he flung all the clothes, armor, maces, and whatnot out of the ring. Only Demigiants could use those things; to him, they were nothing but rubbish. Naturally, rubbish should be discarded.
“Hmm? What’s this?”
At that moment, something resembling a parchment manuscript fell out of a piece of armor and caught Meng Lei’s attention.
Parchments were something considered very primitive. Apart from the poor that lived in far, remote mountainous regions, nobody would usually use something like it.
Those six Demigiants evidently weren’t poor, so why would they carry a parchment manuscript on them?
Puzzled, Meng Lei picked up the parchment manuscript and took a look at the contents. Crooked, twisted lines covered the manuscript, forming a simple map that looked somewhat similar to military tactical maps used in olden times.
Apart from that, there were no text, symbols, or references on it at all. Meng Lei couldn’t tell what kind of place the map was depicting, either.
“Who was the one that drew this map? I promise not to kill you if you come forward now!”
Meng Lei curled his lip in despise. Just as he was about to toss it aside without further thought, Ol’ Amos unexpectedly popped up and said, “Don’t discard it yet! Let me take a look at it first.”
“It’s just a useless picture. What’s so interesting about it?”
Meng Lei grumbled in response but passed him the map anyway. A frowning Ol’ Amos began to examine the map, and the more he did, the deeper he frowned. After a long while, he finally said, “This thing... It looks rather familiar!”
“Eh?”
Meng Lei raised his eyebrows and asked in puzzlement, “Ol’ President, isn’t this just an ordinary parchment map?”
“It is indeed an ordinary parchment map,” Ol’ Amos replied with a small nod. “But the terrain depicted on it—six mountains surrounding a lake—is no ordinary place. That’s the terrain unique to the Meteor Plains!”
“The Meteor Plains?” Meng Lei’s brows furrowed slightly.
“What? You’ve never heard of even the Meteor Plains?”
As Ol’ Amos’ expression turned sour as though he was about to launch into a reproachful lecture again, Meng Lei hurriedly replied, “I’ve heard of the Meteor Plains, of course. It’s located in the great wastelands in the far north and inside the Beast People Empire!
“It’s said that a long, long time ago, a star from beyond the horizon had fallen and landed in the far northern wastelands. Over the course of time, people started to refer to that area as the Meteor Plains, meaning ‘the land where the stars fell’!”
“That’s not a legend but something that had really happened.”
Ol’ Amos gave a slow nod. A hint of nostalgia came over his features, and he said, “It happened during my childhood. I can still remember it as clear as day. That night was just like any other night. My family and I had just had our dinner, and I was playing with my younger sister in the courtyard.
“All of a sudden, a shooting star came falling from beyond the heavens. With a long trail of fire dragging at its end, it streaked across the sky and lit up the entire night sky!
“That shooting star had first appeared in the skies above the Fairy Empire. As it traveled from the south to the north, it streaked all the way across the Fairy Empire and Magical Beast Ridge before it finally landed in the great far northern wastelands.
“In the instant it landed, even the Fire Dragon Kingdom countless kilometers away in the distance could feel the intense tremors caused by its landing. A gray, dusky mushroom cloud rose from the ground and rushed tens of thousands of kilometers up into the sky, so high that it was several times higher than even Mount Almighty Theodore’s Tomb, the tallest mountain in Heaven’s Vault Continent!
“The earth continued to shake, and a great number of buildings caved in. The night sky became as bright as day, and this brightness lasted as long as several minutes in the entire sky before it gradually dimmed!”
Ol’ Amos’ eyes glistened, a look of astoundment still contained within them. “It was a sleepless night that night, and we waited all the way until daybreak, only to find out that the sky had been completely blocked out by dust!
“As far as the eye could see, dust blocked out the sun and also obstructed our sight. Just like a great fog in winter, we could only see as far as five meters from where we stood. Beyond that, nothing was visible because the meteor’s fall had set off too much dust into the air.”
Meng Lei gave a slow nod and said, “I can see why it would blot out the sky and cover the sun, but the scale of the aftermath is a little too big.”
“I was still young at that time. In the beginning, I’d found it interesting, and I had a lot of fun playing hide-and-seek with my buddies, but it wasn’t long before disaster fell upon us!”
Ol’ Amos took a deep breath and went on. “The temperature began to drop sharply and rapidly, and a snowstorm actually broke out in the Fire Dragon Kingdom during June and July!”
“A snowstorm?!”
A huge jolt went through Meng Lei. Fire Dragon Kingdom was right next to Magical Beast Forest and had a tropical
rainforest climate. Temperatures were high all year round, and June and July were even the hottest periods of the year.
Snowing during a season like that? How inconceivable!
“This sudden abnormality didn’t garner much attention. Instead, everyone found it rather novel, except that the dust covering the sky didn’t show any signs of dispersing even as time passed, and the temperature continued to drop.
“Ever since then, the Fire Dragon Kingdom has turned into a nation of frost. Commoners freeze to death every day, and livestock and wild beasts die in even larger numbers.”
Ol’ Amos sighed and said, “You can imagine what it’s like in the other kingdoms when even Fire Dragon Kingdom has it this bad, not to mention the Beast People Empire far away in the great northern wastelands.”
The Ice Age!
These three words involuntarily surfaced in Meng Lei’s mind.
Temperature imbalance, layers of ice covering the land, extremely cold climates, a drop in sea levels, a great number of animals dying out... That was exactly what the Ice Age was!
Moreover, the Ice Age often signified the extinction of living things. What a striking similarity there was between the scene Ol’ Amos was describing and the Ice Age...
“What happened after that, Ol’ President?”
Chapter 81: The Missing Meteor, The Golden Leaf
“After that...”
Ol’ Amos’ eyes were deep and bottomless. As he sank into far, distant memories, his voice also turned aged like that of someone who’d lived through a great many changes.
“In the 10-odd years that followed, the whole continent turned into a nation of frost. Countless living things died, and all the major empires and every single race suffered heavy losses.
“Among which, the Beast People Empire had the highest death toll. According to the post-event statistics, 3/4 of Beast People Empire’s commoners had died, and 1/5 of their nobles were implicated.
“The Beast People Empire was awfully powerful back then. The power that their empire held firmly outstripped the Dragon God Empire’s and the Titan Empire’s. However, this event dealt the Beast People Empire a heavy blow that shook their very foundation, and they ended up becoming the weakest power among the four great empires.”
“3/4 of the commoners... How merciless!”
Meng Lei was incredibly blown away. No matter where commoners were always the social strata with the highest population count. According to statistics, there were currently more than 200 billion commoners in the Beast People Empire!
A death toll that reached 3/4 of the commoner population...
Hiss!
That was a whole 150 billion people!
If all the other commoners that’d died in the whole continent were to be included, this number would probably be multiplied several times. One could see from this just how merciless that disaster had been!
“It was very merciless, indeed. We Magicians study the intrinsic nature of the heavens and earth, hoping to get a glimpse of the true essence of nature. Yet in front of the universe, we are simply so insignificant...”
Ol’ Amos shook his head lightly. “Even a powerful Saint Domain wouldn’t count as much in the presence of the universe. They are nothing but a drop of water in the vast sea, a speck of dust in the universe.”
“And then? What happened after that, Ol’ President?” Meng Lei asked eagerly.
“After that, in order to improve the situation, the four great empires started to cooperate with one another. They assembled all the earth-elemental, water-elemental, and ice-elemental Magicians in the whole continent to lay down the dust and make it settle. The Magicians then gathered the moisture in the air and began a grand, spectacular dust-clearing operation.
“Something worth mentioning here is that our Fire Dragon Magic Academy, as well as many other magic academies, were precisely established during that period of time, with the objective of grooming Magicians, especially earth-elemental ones.”
Ol’ Amos continued to go down memory lane, and he said, “Thanks to generations of predecessors’ consistent and persistent efforts, sunlight began to shine upon the earth again. The sun rose in the east once again, the ice and snow melted, and the temperatures turned warm and mild.
“Everything finally returned to what it was like in the past.
“We had succeeded, succeeded in chasing away the ice and frost!
“It was just a pity that the lives that have already disappeared would stay forever buried in the ice and snow, never to return again.”
“How horrifying and heartrending!”
Meng Lei heaved a small sigh, his emotions rather complex.
“Ever since then, all the races in the continent busied themselves with licking their wounds and recovering their strength, and Heaven’s Vault Continent instead welcomed a rare era of peace. It was exactly during that period that I’d broken through to Saint Domain.”
Ol’ Amos said with a sigh, “After I achieved Saint Domain level, I headed to the Meteor Plains right away. I wanted to see for myself just what exactly the star from beyond the heavens that’d caused such a huge ruckus was.”
“The star from beyond the heavens?”
Meng Lei’s eyes lit up.
“Yet when I arrived at the Meteor Plains, the star from beyond the heavens had already long since vanished, leaving behind only a massive impact crater!”
Ol’ Amos shook his head and said with a smile, “At that time, there were many other people with the same thoughts as me. In fact, a lot of people believed that the meteor capable of causing such a disaster must surely be some kind of impressive treasure.
“This resulted in experts from every nook and cranny of the continent constantly making their way to the Meteor Plains to survey the place and search for fallen treasures in the following several hundred years. However, despite searching everywhere, they returned empty-handed.”
“Why didn’t they find anything?” Puzzlement filled Meng Lei’s eyes. “A gigantic meteor like that couldn’t have possibly been fully destroyed upon landing, right? Who could’ve taken it?”
“That’s hard to say.” Ol’ Amos shook his head with a laugh. “There’ll always be someone stronger out there, and there is no limit to how high one can go. In the whole of Heaven’s Vault Continent, there are certainly people who were capable of taking the fallen meteor. At the very least, I was capable of taking the meteor during my pinnacle!”
“Fine!”
Meng Lei curled his lip in response. It was only then that he remembered that he was currently in Heaven’s Vault Continent, a powerful advanced martial arts world where individuals’ offensive abilities could reach terrifying heights.
Meng Lei asked again, “What happened after that?”
“After that, over the course of time, the treasure-seeking trend gradually died down, and no one paid any more attention to the Meteor Plains,” answered Ol’ Amos.
“So, that’s the history of Meteor Plains,” muttered Meng Lei to himself.
Then, he looked at the parchment in his hand again. “So, this parchment manuscript is a map of Meteor Plains?”
“Yes! During my time, exploring Meteor Plains was something very trendy. How did that saying go again... ‘You can’t call yourself an expert if you’ve never been to the Meteor Plains’?”
Ol’ Amos nodded and said with a smile, “It was exactly because of that that maps of Meteor Plains were everywhere. Even a Meteor Plains map bought from a roadside peddler would be way more detailed than the one depicted on that parchment manuscript in front of you.”
“Sigh! So, after all has been said and done, this is just an ordinary map. And here I’d thought that I’d gotten some kind of impressive treasure!”
Meng Lei was greatly disappointed. A bout of flames burst forth from his palm, and he promptly burned the parchment. Ol’ Amos didn’t stop him, either. He’d explained so much only because he’d found the map familiar to the eye earlier, and not because there reall
y was something unusual about the map.
Burned? So be it, then. No biggie!
As the parchment burned into ashes, a golden sheet of unknown substance dropped out of the parchment and fell onto the ground.
“What’s this?”
When Meng Lei picked it up, he discovered that it was actually a leaf about the size of an infant’s palm. It looked like an elm tree leaf, except golden-yellow throughout. It was full of dense, packed veined patterns and seemed as if it was forged from gold.
“Let me take a look at that!”
Ol’ Amos took the golden leaf from Meng Lei. He held it in his hand and began to inspect it closely, but the more he did, the more astonished he became. “How strange! This thing can actually shut out my spiritual power!?
“This is really weird. I still can’t get through it!
“But that shouldn’t be the case...”
For a brief moment, Ol’ Amos mumbled to himself, failing to make any discovery even after half a day. This greatly surprised him, and he remarked, “This golden leaf looks ordinary, but it’s a unified entity and can completely shut out my spiritual power. I can’t tell what it’s really made out of at all. Even this old man here has no idea what it is!”
“Even you can’t tell what it is, Ol’ President?”
Meng Lei examined the golden leaf closely, his eyes glittering brightly. “Might this be some kind of treasure? Hehe, let’s give it a go right away!”
Meng Lei bit on his finger and broke the skin surface. Then, he dripped a drop of blood onto it.
“What are you doing?” Ol’ Amos was bewildered by Meng Lei’s actions.
“Dripping blood to claim ownership, of course!” Meng Lei smilingly explained, “There is a group of well-read and knowledgeable amazing people in my hometown. After much painstaking efforts and observing innumerable predecessors and almighty masters, they’ve concluded this bit of wisdom—when one is dealing with things they are unfamiliar with or things that are difficult to make an accurate judgment of, dripping blood to claim ownership is the way to go. If you can really successfully claim ownership of it, you’ll strike it big. Even if you can’t, you don’t lose out at all!”
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