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
