In the capital of the Evergreen Empire...
Maximilian was meditating when he suddenly felt an icy wind at his back and opened his eyes.
As he did so, he frowned and made an ugly face as he stood in a windowless training room.
"This..." He opened his mouth and felt that the cold wind on his back was not an ordinary wind but something spiritual that only very high-level cultivators could feel.
Something terrible is about to happen. Something has just changed! He clenched a fist and stood up from where he was sitting, not caring about the surprise at all.
Eager to find out what was behind this feeling, he left the place and quickly went in search of the seers of the Spiritual Church.
...
Meanwhile, Vico was doing almost the same thing as his enemy, searching for information about the sensation he had felt just moments ago when he was sorting out the affairs of his region's war with the southern region.
"Elders, did you feel that? Did anyone else notice that an inexplicable wind hit them and made them shiver?" This leader of the Eastern Empire asked his people with a sullen expression.
The event in the Ancient Dragon Spatial Kingdom had just ended, and he had discovered that all of his emissaries in that space had perished.
It would still take some time for his family's investigators to understand what had happened, but with the news that Maximilian's envoys had also met their end in that place, Vico and his family weren't too depressed about the results of this endeavor.
But they weren't happy either. Since the confrontation between the sky whales and the dragons had started because of this event, the Travisani family and the Spiritual Church were very worried.
Feeling a bad sensation like the one he had just noticed was not at all pleasant, even in normal situations. But already in the shit, Vico couldn't help but feel terrible, as if everything was against him.
As they listened to their leader, some of the most powerful seers in the Spiritual World looked at each other and realized they weren't the only ones who had felt such a sensation.
"It seems you felt it too..."
"I thought it was just me."
"Me too..."
"But if we all feel it... Bad things are coming."
"Your Majesty, have you sent people to investigate the situation of the sea creatures?" One of the oldest seers in the Spiritual World, a level 98 man, asked his leader.
Vico frowned when he heard that and realized he really had to do that.
"No."
Observing the sea creatures was extremely important for discovering problems in the Spiritual World. Why was that? Simply put, beasts were more sensitive to changes in the world than humans because they had a greater spiritual affinity with the laws of this world.
Sea creatures and elves were even more sensitive but were few and far between in the Spiritual World.
The majority of the living beings in this world were sea creatures.
In particular, most of the experts were sea creatures living on the bottom of the sea.
Due to their greater sensitivity to change, they were usually the first to make significant movements that indicated trouble.
The questioning elder said. "When terrible events are about to happen that will shake the world, the beasts become more agitated and are more likely to start confrontations that would not usually happen.
In these situations, the strongest beasts in the world don't act with purpose and awareness that things are wrong. They simply become more defensive and look for ways to stand out. Observing the behavior of sea creatures is important for this reason because it tells us their level of sensitivity.
We must look into this immediately, Your Majesty. If the sea creatures are agitated, something is bound to happen. That probably is what's behind this sensation we all felt."
"Shit!"
...
"Shit!"
"Did you feel that, Elder Merritt?" Elder Aarav of the Pantheon of Honor faced the strongest level 99 Demigod in his organization and noticed the concern in the tall, strong man's eyes.
"What could be behind this?" Merritt asked with a terrible expression on his face. "Could this be related to the unexpected awakening of one of the elders of the elf tribe years ago?"
"Anything is possible... Maybe it's another Scorching Age." Aarav sighed, sensing that times were changing and something was about to hit the entire world hard.
The world had its cycles; in a way, it was alive. And as a living being, it would sometimes fall on hard times.
A few million years ago, the world went through an era of extreme heat when the glaciers of the highest mountains and all the icebergs had melted. Volcanoes erupted worldwide, and the temperature of the whole world rose by about 50 degrees Celsius.
Crops became unproductive during this period, while many lower-level beings died due to the overheating of the world, which lasted for more than 50,000 years.
More than 100 races became extinct during this period, one of the worst in history.
But other eras of intense chaos have occurred throughout known history. There had been the Age of Lightning, the Age of Ice, and the Age of Decline.
The latter occurred during the Great Migration on the Central Continent and was related to the spiritual decline that had affected many areas of the world.
Some areas had recovered after a few tens of thousands of years, while others had never recovered.
"According to our ancestors, the volcanic area in the middle region of the Central Continent was formed during that scorching time, while the South Pole was formed after the Ice Age," Aarav commented. "Perhaps we are on the verge of a new chaotic era."
Merritt heard this and clenched his fists, not liking it at all.
Such chaotic eras were of no use to the living beings when they arrived. They might even create special new inhabitants that were useful for certain types of organisms, but that would come after stabilization, thousands of years after the chaos began.
Amid the chaos, billions of living animals and plants would perish!
Even though it wouldn't directly affect cultivators or high-level organizations like theirs, the entire Spiritual World would be impoverished in the face of such an era, which would be terrible for cultivators like them!
"Contact the elves. Let's see what they know about what just happened." Merritt said before disappearing from Aarav's sight.
