“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
