The Vastness of Magical Destiny

Although smuggling alleviated many of the Mountain people’s difficulties, they gradually discovered that these smuggling groups actually had secret agreements with the states and regional powers that imposed blockades on them. These agreements ensured that the amount of food smuggled would never exceed a certain limit that would allow the Mountain people to store and stockpile food.

The food acquired from each smuggling venture cost a huge sum of money, and it was only enough to meet the bare necessities. Whenever you hoped to smuggle in more food, no matter how high the price you offered, those smuggling groups would find various reasons to refuse.

And once a famine year struck, the Mountain people had no choice but to find ways to unblock various connections, mobilizing all their power and using every channel to obtain food. At such times, Mortals and other ethnic nation-states and forces would turn a blind eye to the smuggling groups bringing in food, allowing them to earn high profits.

But even so, the famines that occurred every few years still brought immense losses to the Mountain people. Not only did they deplete the wealth obtained through various mineral products and specialties, but there were still masses of the elderly, weak, women, and children who starved to death.

This cyclic disaster every few years meant the total population of the Mountain people not only failed to increase but was actually gradually decreasing, which was the biggest problem faced by all the tribes within the Alliance.

It seemed there was only one way to break this vicious cycle: to wage war abroad and capture land capable of producing food.

For hundreds of years, the wars between the Mountain people and other races were almost always about this reason, and each time such circumstances arose, without exception, Mortal countries of the Whole Continent and other neighboring ethnic forces would join together to fight against the Mountain people. These wars of vastly unequal strength always ended in predictable defeat for the Mountain people, bringing them nothing but endless humiliation and pain.

With such experiences, aside from quietly licking their wounds, the Mountain People Alliance seemed to have no other options. They could only watch the reality of their slowly diminishing numbers and feel helpless about it, until a new Lord appeared on the desolate land of the North, bringing some changes.

To the Mountain people, aside from the fatal weakness of food scarcity, their lag in production technology and the blockade of strategic materials were also significant constraints on their survival and development. All ethnic countries and regions prohibited the transfer of important production technologies to the Mountain people, such as mining, smelting, manufacturing, etc. It was the absence of these technologies in the Mountain region that kept the Mountain people in a primitive and backward state, unable to compare with other races in any aspect.