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As he looked around, Yan Xiaobao stopped in his tracks, montarily unsure where he might locate the object he was searching for.
"Hello, young one." A voice belonging to an elderly man sounded nearby, and Xu Yue imdiately turned to face the old figure walking toward him. The elder’s face held a gentle smile, exuding a sense of calm. Dressed in a gray robe and moving noiselessly, the elder made Yan Xiaobao feel a flicker of wariness—though he soon realized the elder was rely an ordinary librarian.
"How may I assist you?" The elder spoke in a lodic voice, imbued with a sense of ancient wisdom. On the whole, Yan Xiaobao felt at ease in his presence but remained cautious as his gaze t the elder’s eyes while politely acknowledging him.
"I need a map of the continent. Do you think you can help find it?" Yan Xiaobao offered a faint smile, a sudden surge of excitent welling up from deep within his spirit.
The elder thought the smile was ant to be polite, but Yan Xiaobao felt Lan Feng’s emotions brimming over.
Lan Feng was not entirely foolish. Despite lacking social graces and moral principles, Lan Feng’s intellect far surpassed anyone Yan Xiaobao had encountered before. The word "map" imdiately conveyed Yan Xiaobao’s intentions.
Yan Xiaobao respectfully followed the elder. Though nothing outside particularly caught his attention, he couldn’t suppress the quiet smile blossoming deep within, as his excitent and joy spread throughout his body. This was a mont of profound significance for Lan Feng.
The library was far larger than his initial assumptions, spanning an extraordinary scale. Although it wasn’t layered across levels, the mountain-top hall stretched hundreds of ters high, with towering bookshelves as far as the eye could see.
The elder led Yan Xiaobao to a wall. The rock face was riddled with doors leading to small rooms carved into the mountain. The room the elder brought Yan Xiaobao to had evidently not been opened in countless years, as the thick layer of dust on the door handle attested. It took all the elder’s strength to pry it open.
As the chanism finally ca to life, loud thuds echoed through the library. When the door creaked open, a gust of stale air escaped and assaulted Yan Xiaobao’s nostrils, causing him to wrinkle his nose slightly.
The elder clapped his hands, and a faint light illuminated the walls, casting a shimring glow across the room. The chamber was relatively small, with a round stone table dominating most of the space. It had been carved from the mountain itself, lending an earthy yet slightly chilling atmosphere to the room, which had clearly not been sealed.
The walls were lined with stone shelves, covered with scrolls. Yan Xiaobao carefully picked up a scroll and moved toward the round table at the center. He observed the elder from the corner of his eye, curious as to why the man lingered to watch him. Even if the elder noticed Yan Xiaobao examining the maps, there was no way for him to know why Yan Xiaobao needed them.
When Yan Xiaobao began unrolling the first scroll, the musty sll of old parchnt wafted through the air, and the map began to crumble slightly. Yan Xiaobao couldn’t help but wonder why the map had been kept in such a room, though it offered no answers. Instead, he picked up more scrolls.
At first, he handled smaller scrolls, but he soon ca across ones that contained city maps of the three allied nations. He then turned his attention to larger maps. The search took far longer than Yan Xiaobao had anticipated, as he had to be exceedingly cautious with the ancient maps to prevent them from falling apart. But at last, he found the map he had been seeking.
As he spread the large map across the stone table, a radiant smile broke across his face. He studied the full expanse, gaining a deeper understanding of the new nation he had lived in for ten years.
The elder had been watching him intently. When he realized that Yan Xiaobao truly was searching for a map of the continent, his eyes narrowed slightly. Most students who sought maps used this as a pretext, but in reality, they were looking for maps leading to treasures in the regions of the mythical beasts.
A low whistle escaped Yan Xiaobao’s lips as his gaze swept across the map. Lan Feng had previously told him that the four Divine Beasts had created the continent and then evenly divided it among themselves. Now he understood just how true those words were.
The continent itself was nearly rectangular in shape. In several places, indentations had ford where the sea had swallowed parts of the land over the years, creating peninsulas. Yet it was evident that this land was originally divided into four equal parts, with a cross-shaped mountain range splitting the continent into four cohesive countries.
Yan Xiaobao quickly located the Sun Kingdom in the lower-left corner of the map, knowing that was where they currently were. Above the Sun Kingdom lay the breathtaking landscapes of the Divine Domain. The Spanish Empire neighbored the Divine Domain, and below the Spanish Empire—next to the Sun Kingdom—was the Moon Province.
As Yan Xiaobao examined the map, the three allied nations were illustrated with stunning detail. Mountains, cities, rivers, and forests had all been ticulously depicted. However, in stark contrast to their ticulous portrayal, the map barely outlined the Abyss. Only the outer edges of the country were rendered; even the coasts were left unfinished, marked instead with straight lines. It was clear that no one truly knew what existed in that part of the continent.
"This is strange," Lan Feng remarked after studying the map for a while. "The Sun Kingdom lies below the Sky Blue Dragon Kingdom, but who could have imagined that my holand has now beco a place of curse."
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢
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