"Rumble!"
It was clearly the beginning of winter, yet thunder boomed across the Miao Borderlands!
This thunder was anything but ordinary: rapid, loud, and piercing, drilling straight into people's brains, like metal grinding against metal, like a divine dragon roaring in fury.
Rolling thunder shook the Miao Borderlands, startling hibernating insects into emerging early, frightening snakes and scorpions to death with shattered gallbladders, and leaving beasts trembling.
Yuyang was such a warm place, yet in this early winter, snowflakes actually fell east of the West River!
This snow was anything but ordinary, its flakes as large as sleeping mats. Where it landed on vegetation, the plants withered; where it landed on water, ice formed instantly; where it landed on people, even the circulation of their magical power was affected. The snow blew from west to east, dressing the eastern bank of the West River in silver and white.
The Nanpan River basin in Dianwen-the lands of Kunming Prefecture and Longchi Isle-was famed for its springlike weather throughout the year, its warm breezes and fertile plains. A wooden stake tossed into practically any patch of ground could sprout. Yet this early winter, the western bank of the Nanpan River was gripped by bitter winds and miserable rain, falling ceaselessly, with no knowing when it would stop once it began. Fist-sized hailstones mingled with the raindrops, pounding deep pits into the ground one after another, smashing vegetation to pieces, knocking birds from the sky, and reducing insects and beasts to pulp.
An east wind blew here constantly, sweeping west of the Nanpan River, driving a chill straight into the gaps between people's bones.
Along the southwestern border of Xiang, purple miasma sealed the frontier.
The earthly baleful fire cavern on Rotten Peach Mountain erupted like a volcano. Brilliant, bewitching