If you had to pick out the most chaotic place on the entire continent, it would have to be Wildfire Town.
Wildfire Town's real name was not Wildfire Town. In fact, it had several unofficial names — mostly because the question of who actually owned Wildfire was such a mess.
The town sat in the south of Wildfire Plain, on a stretch of land that three authorities refused to govern, and as for who owned it — the flag on the wall changed with every new king.
The Odin Empire to the north, the Byzantine Empire to the south, and even a few of the big bandit gangs had all been masters here at one time or another.
Wildfire Town's location was nothing to boast about, but it happened to occupy that most delicate point wedged in the crack between them. Wildfire Plain produced nothing else; it was all forest, valley and basin. The soil was barren there, the climate the strangest of all.
Every year, cold air sweeping down from the north gave Wildfire Plain a winter three months long. And after winter, warm sea winds pushed north from the south, blowing so gently that a person went limp and could not be bothered to move. The cold and hot weather of north and south crossed and met here, and the result was plenty of rainfall; in summer the ground turned to mud.
So on Wildfire Plain, winter was cold and dry, and summer hot and wet.
The Odin folk of the north, used to snowbound, freezing weather, could not adapt to the damp heat of the summers here. The Byzantines in the south, for their part, could not stand the dry cold of winter.
Add to that the fact that there really was nothing here worth a damn to the people's livelihood or the state's coffers, and it counted as a land of chicken ribs — all bone and no meat, too tasteless to chew but too wasteful to spit out.
Wildfire Plain had no other produce, but it had plenty of fierce beasts and native tribes large and small scattered across it like stars. These tribes were neither reliably good nor reliably evil: when there was business to be had, they raised a banner and became a mercenary corps; when there wasn't, they tied a cloth over their faces and went off to rob.
And there were the dwarf tribes nearby, the dirty, cowardly goblin hordes as numerous as ants, the swamp-ridden forests...
A place like this — unless the two great empires were getting ready to go to war, when they would use it as a buffer zone — nobody spared it a second glance the rest of the time.
The two great empires seemed to have reached a tacit understanding: if the Byzantines occupied the place, the Odin would be sure to attack; if the Odin occupied it, the Byzantines would be sure to send troops to drive them out. But neither side could really spare the strength to station an army in this godforsaken place for long, so as long as the other side hadn't taken the region, they simply let it be, and turned it into a stretch of land nobody governed.
As for the only town here, Wildfire Town, it had become a drifting ground for every complicated sort of people on the continent. A paradise for criminals, wanted men, pickpockets, thieves, crooked merchants, adventure teams, and all the rest of that complicated crowd.
A paradise with no government — that was the most fitting description of Wildfire Town.
Some time ago, several big merchant companies from Byzantium in the south had taken heavy losses to bandit raids, so they pooled their money to hire a mercenary tribe to drive the bandit gang off, and using the place as an important collection and distribution point for goods, declared the town under their "protection."
Wildfire Town had everything: cart shops, inns, taverns, gambling dens, brothels, along with secret strongholds of various bandit gangs; in the black market you could buy plenty of goods the authorities had banned, and there was the mercenary tribe exchange house as well...
This was a paradise for adventurers.
Honest, simple folk had best not live in a place like this.
Even a tailor in a tailor's shop in town might turn out to be an escaped convict who had been wanted by both great empires for years.
When Xia Ya Leiming walked into town, he did not draw anyone's attention. The ragged wolf-pelt robe he wore made him look more like a beggar, and the fire fork stuck through his belt would at most make people think he was "a beggar with something wrong in the head."
Just as Xia Ya Leiming was weaving through the streets of Wildfire Town like a starving wolf, a greedy gaze shot at him from the doorway of a shop by the roadside.
If one word could most precisely describe Duoduo Luo's appearance, that word would have to be: sleazy!
If an adverb absolutely had to be added, it would be "extremely, absolutely" sleazy!!
He was thin, dreadfully thin, skin and bones, yet his cheeks carried two stubborn lumps of flesh, and with a pair of slanted eyebrows and triangular eyes that leaked a sleazy, lecherous malice, even his smile made him look like that kind of creepy uncle out to lure little girls.
Put it this way: with looks like his, walking down the street at night, even doing nothing at all, he would be sure to draw the suspicious stares of the patrol soldiers.
He had once had a very "glorious" exploit. Back when he was studying in the royal capital, one evening on a small path he chanced to meet a lady. The two of them merely looked each other in the face once; the lady caught one look at Duoduo Luo's appearance, turned pale with fright, and then screamed "molestation!"
That brought the patrol guards running, and without asking any questions they tied him up and hauled him off. Duoduo Luo tried to defend himself, but all he got was one sentence: "You've got the sort of face that looks like it would molest little girls."
Luckily, the Duoduo Luo of today no longer had to suffer that sort of humiliating treatment.
The Duoduo Luo of today held the noblest profession on the continent — the noblest, bar none!
His official identity now was: His Esteemed Lordship, Master Mage Duoduo Luo.
Of course, that title was one he had given himself. In fact, Duoduo Luo was only a low-level first-rank mage, and — unfortunately — he was no longer young, and in the mage examinations he had been judged to have no magical potential left for further advancement.
The mage profession was noble, true, but that referred to those genuine high mages who could summon wind and call rain. A low-level mage like him, and one with no magical potential whatsoever, had only one way out: find a mercenary tribe and work as a hired thug for a bit of living money, and if he got lucky and ran into some rustic noble from the countryside who hadn't seen much of the world, he might even be taken on as an honored guest.
So in the royal capital or any other big city, Duoduo Luo had no chance of making it big; he could only run off to a backwater like Wildfire Town to try his luck.
And his coming to Wildfire Town had been a complete accident — he had gone bankrupt.
It was a ridiculous thing: mages were famous for their nobility and their wealth, so how could one go bankrupt?
Yet this was exactly what had happened to Duoduo Luo. In an ancient book he had chanced upon, he had found a method that could greatly boost his magical power. The discovery set his ambition ablaze, and he borrowed money from a merchant guild to buy up a great deal of magical material for this research. And then... unfortunately, his magical research failed, and most of the material was used up.
Even more unfortunately, he later discovered that the ancient book he had obtained was a fake antique forged by an antiquities dealer!
A mage, of all people, cheated by those despicable crooks who forged antiques! To Duoduo Luo this was nothing short of a colossal humiliation.
But even more, and yet more, unfortunately, the merchant guild he owed money to was a legitimate organization under the protection of imperial law, and to collect the debt they had even gone to the Church's Mage Guild in the royal capital to bring suit against Duoduo Luo.
Bringing suit against a mage for not paying back money he owed, and dragging the whole thing before the Mage Guild?!
This was a scandal the likes of which had not been seen in a thousand years! Duoduo Luo's reputation in the royal capital was in ruins; he had become a gigantic joke in the world of magic. In the capital, the fame of a little low-level mage like him had even briefly surpassed that of the long-famous great mages.
In the end, Duoduo Luo could only hide his name and flee far away, hoping to try his luck on Wildfire Plain, this land nobody governed.
And now, Duoduo Luo had spotted Xia Ya Leiming.
To be precise, his eye had been caught by a certain object hanging at Xia Ya Leiming's neck!
With a mage's eye, the very first instant Duoduo Luo saw the thing at Xia Ya Leiming's neck, he could not help but feel greed stirring.
It was a stone that looked a dull, drab gray, without the slightest luster.
But... by the almighty Lord above, Duoduo Luo dared to swear it was a top-grade magic crystal soul!!!
Xia Ya Leiming was quickly blocked in his path.
He was so hungry his head was swimming, but once he made out the look of the fellow blocking his way, he gave a violent start!
"Hello there, young man. Care to make a deal?"
Duoduo Luo did his best to make his smile amicable, but clearly his efforts were in vain. Because Xia Ya Leiming's first reaction on seeing him was to go on full alert, one hand grabbing the fire fork at his waist while the other flew to clamp tightly over his own pocket.