The Mysterious Ixtal

...Outside eyes, the Kumungu Rainforest was a barren wasteland. It had none of the fertile soil, convenient transport, mild climate, or other advantages that ordinary people took for granted.

So merchants who came to Kumongra to import grain were always puzzled by the locals' intense attachment to their homeland. The Kumongrans seemed to regard their rainforest-surrounded home as the resting place of their souls, and absolutely refused to leave.

Whenever they asked familiar Kumongran grain merchants while their porters loaded grain onto ships or carts, the merchants would only chuckle and respond with polite reserve. It didn't matter that just the night before they'd been drinking together, flushed with wine and calling each other brothers.

It was as if that hot, humid forest, filled with deadly insects and terrifying plants and animals, concealed some unspeakable treasure.

For that very reason, many explorers added the "lost treasure" of the Kumungu Rainforest to their lists of dreams. But those who actually set out to find it were often astonished, once they entered the forest, to discover that there was nothing about the place that suggested it held any treasure.

Only after venturing into the Kumungu Forest did explorers who imagined that its humid, mosquito-infested depths concealed some hidden marvel discover that... it really was just hot and humid, with mosquitoes everywhere.

Even those who steeled themselves and formed small expeditions would, after traveling five hundred li into the rainforest, despairingly realize that there really was nothing here but rainforest.

In time, the Kumongrans' knowing, enigmatic smiles became a running joke among those in the know. No one bothered to go exploring in the depths of Kumungu anymore. Almost all expeditions in the rainforest were confined to the delta at the mouth of the Python River and the area within a hundred li