A knight who ruled over a corner of the Ice and Snow Wilderness had come to Great Xia—especially at a time like this, and to a place like Xuanyuan Hill, no less, appearing in a place like the Ten Thousand Treasures Garden. From the silent yet faintly eager expressions on Elder Gulas and old Wild Bear Dali's faces, Zhang Tie could easily detect a measure of restraint and caution.
For some reason, though he still had no idea why the two had come to Great Xia, seeing them—especially those bearskin coats they wore—made Zhang Tie feel as though he had spotted poor relatives from his hometown amid a prosperous city. There was a sense of familiarity, but also an inexplicable pang of sorrow.
In a place like Xuanyuan Hill, if you asked a thousand people where the Sacred Ice Island Kingdom was, probably 999 of them would be utterly baffled; they had never heard of it. Compared with Great Xia, the Sacred Ice Island Kingdom was simply too small and too poor—so small that one could not even find it on a map. And indeed, one could not. As far as Zhang Tie knew, the update cycle of Great Xia's official maps generally did not take into account territorial changes in tiny barbarian-borderland countries like those on the Weiyi Subcontinent. If they had to account for changes in all those small nations, Great Xia's official maps might need updating more than 365 times a year.
Official maps published by Great Xia were generally updated once every three years. If the Sacred Ice Island Kingdom formally established diplomatic relations with Great Xia and received official recognition, then three years later, the kingdom's full name would appear over the northern Ice and Snow Wilderness of the Weiyi Subcontinent and its nearby waters.