"The wolf and the lion traveled together," Grandmother Wolf's voice echoed through the cave. "They visited many places in the Lands Between and fought powerful foes. The Lands Between were much more dangerous then than they are now. There were Fire Giants as big as mountains, Ancient Dragons soaring through the skies, and many strange creatures from elsewhere."
"From elsewhere?" Zhao Si's throat hurt a little. "You mean the Numen?"
"No, no, not just the Numen. The Numen were a relatively gentle race. They had a civilization too, and built beautiful Eternal Cities," Grandmother Wolf said with a smile. "They were just unlucky and were forced to live underground."
Right, because Astel had bombarded them with huge meteors. These Numen might have been relatively gentle, but that did not rule out a tendency to court death. In any case, they had angered the Greater Will, and then kept getting hit by meteorites. Zhao Si thought that after the nameless Eternal City was struck by meteors, the surviving Numen had probably moved underground, traveling along underground rivers before finding suitable underground spaces to build new cities.
In other words, Astel had not smashed the Eternal City underground. It was impossible when he thought about it. If someone aimed meteorites at a city, how could the city avoid total destruction, its people avoid complete annihilation, and the whole thing fall straight underground? How could they get that lucky? If the Greater Will wanted to wipe out a race, it would never deliberately leave survivors.
Hiding underground was both a kind of "sealing" and a form of protection. At least it made it harder for Astel, the Fallingstar Beasts, and the Black Kings and White Kings to attack the Numen. The greatest disadvantage was that they could never see the real starry sky