Chapter 2588

Strange was invited to the county government.

At that time, he was celebrating the festival with the residents of Shambhala. The village chief of one of the villages quietly pulled him aside and mysteriously said he wanted Strange to meet someone.

Strange's route was different from his teacher, the Ancient One. He had never pretended to be mysterious and didn't have that kind of innate majestic temperament. The advantage was that he could easily get along with the villagers.

Strange actually didn't want to go because this village chief always wanted to introduce him to a girlfriend. He thought the village chief was tricking him into a blind date again. This happened every year. He knew that Easterners valued family and clans, and people were kind, so Strange always brushed it off.

Today was no exception. Knowing that the village chief was happy during festivals, perhaps he wanted to pull him to meet some little girl again. Strange didn't want to argue with him, so he followed him out.

Who knew that this road was getting further and further away? As they walked, they found they had already reached the foot of the Mount Ximalaya.

Then came the expected "three-hall trial."

The matter of the Shambhala villagers wasn't that simple. They weren't just uncounted for one generation; they hadn't had records for five or six hundred years.

These hundreds of people seemed to have popped out of thin air. There were no records of this branch in any historical materials that could be checked.

It was understandable that some villages deep in the mountains might have been left behind when roads and satellite technology weren't developed in the early days of the founding of the country.

But what time is it now? It's already the 21st century. The Beidou satellite is shining clearly in the sky. There are no such three villages on the Mount Ximalaya at all. What is going on?

The county magistrate didn't understand, so he reported it to the mayor, and the mayor didn't understand, so he reported it to the district head of the autonomous region. After reporting layer by layer, he finally found someone who understood and knew that this matter must be related to Kamar-Taj.

Strange thought they misunderstood that Kamar-Taj had locked these people up, so he hurriedly explained. After talking for a long time, he found that the other party didn't care who these people were or what kind of history they had. They cared about what these people were doing now.

Strange's confidence was still very sufficient. Kamar-Taj had never treated the three villages below badly. The farmland there was enchanted, and crops could grow batch after batch without anyone taking care of them. The scenery was beautiful, natural resources were rich, and there were no diseases or disasters. This was a paradise that many people pursued.

Then he was rendered speechless by a question from the county magistrate—It's the 21st century, don't you go online?

Strange wanted to say that he also wanted to go online, but there was no signal. What could he do? He couldn't beg Stark to throw a satellite into the sky just because he wanted to go online, could he?

With the village chief's translation, Strange finally understood that the other party meant that the villages outside had already been modernized, while inside they were still engaged in small-scale peasant economy. You said you were engaged in it, but you didn't do it well. You were short of everything every day. What kind of life is this?

Strange could only look at the village chief. The village chief was also a bit embarrassed. After all, hiding from the Sorcerer Supreme to find outsiders was indeed not glorious, but life was really impossible to go on.

The biggest problem with Shambhala is that it is closed, but not completely closed. In order to intermarry with outsiders, it accepts outsiders, and even many girls run to the outside to pick men, get pregnant, and then return to the village to give birth, sometimes even bringing the men back together.

This group of people has seen the scenery outside, knows what the outside society has developed into now, and knows what kind of life even the lowest-level ordinary people outside live.

"Hoeing at noon, sweat dripping into the soil." Although many people in modern society complain that work is tiring and want to return to their hometowns to farm, those who have really farmed know how bitter it is. Traditional agriculture is the industry with the lowest return rate. Working hard for a whole year can't catch up with the money earned by working in a big city for half a year.

Shambhala is the same. Their farming is indeed not tiring. After all, the farmland has been optimized by magic, there is no need to worry about crop yields, there are no various natural disasters, and the weather is always very good. If they can't finish processing the grain, there are mages to help.

But farming will definitely have the most basic labor. It's not like they don't plow the land at all, and they can grow food without watering it. They have to take care of it here all year round, and besides that, there is nothing else to do.

If it had always been like this, it would be fine, but having enjoyed the blessings of modern society, who wants to go back to eat the bitterness of backward agricultural economy?

The only entertainment industry in the village is singing and dancing. The daily routine is eating, sleeping, and having children. Because there is no survival pressure, education is not taken seriously. It's enough for children to grow up and know how to farm.

The father of this village chief was an explorer from the United States in the last century, so he can speak Chinese, Tibetan, and English at the same time. He had long yearned for the developed American society in his father's mouth and had always wanted to go out and see it.

The new Sorcerer Supreme is an American, and it is said that he is quite famous in the society of ordinary people. The village chief is not reconciled to spending his life and his children's lives like this, but he doesn't dare to directly quit to Strange.

After all, no Sorcerer Supreme has treated them badly, and he can't just enjoy the benefits without assuming responsibility.

Thinking about it, the village chief decided to find a third party. It just so happened that his daughter married into the town at the foot of the mountain, so he wanted to ask the mayor to come forward and ask Strange if they could go out and look around occasionally like students.

The village chief's appeal is actually just to go out for tourism, but the mayor and the county magistrate obviously won't think so simply.

Shambhala is the only way to Kamar-Taj. To enter Kamar-Taj, one must pass through these three villages.

Kamar-Taj actually doesn't belong to any country. This is an enclave that belongs exclusively to the magic world, and it is also a treaty set when the sanctuary was established. It cannot and does not need to be reneged on.

But it didn't say that Shambhala also belongs to Kamar-Taj. Except for the area marked by Kamar-Taj, all land is state-owned, so Shambhala is naturally a village of the country. Now even the town at the foot of the mountain has connected to the air rail, so it should achieve actual control over Shambhala.

The county magistrate stated his appeal, and Strange was also a bit hesitant. When the Ancient One included these three villages in the scope of the magic protective shield, it was actually to protect her hometown.

That was in ancient times. Maybe some people would think that even in ancient times, it wasn't necessarily that someone could fight to the Mount Ximalaya, but don't forget, magic also has a heavy stroke in the history of Marvel.

Ancient Chinese history was almost completely magically modified. In several troubled times, besides humans, there were all kinds of monsters and ghosts fighting for hegemony on the land of China. Although the village where the Ancient One lived was remote, monsters were rampant in the mountains, and the villagers lived extremely difficult lives.

If it weren't for her and her fellow villagers discovering the mystery of magic, the villagers would only be struggling to survive. So after founding the Kamar-Taj sanctuary, which shares the same name as the Ancient One's village, the Ancient One used a protective shield to cover her hometown for the first time.

But her purpose was protection, not imprisonment. It was just that their generation knew how dangerous the outside was, so they took the initiative not to go out.

Most of the later generations don't understand what changes are outside, just feeling that it's good to stay here, so they stayed.

To be honest, Strange felt that he had never stopped others from going out. Although the villagers don't know magic, it's not that they can't leave if they want to.

Later, after the explanation of the village chief and the county magistrate, Strange finally understood. Still the same sentence, Easterners value family and clans, and collective consciousness is stronger. If a village advocates a certain rule, then no one can violate it. It's not that you can leave just because you are curious about the outside world.

That is to say, some villagers want to leave now, but they don't dare to leave, because leaving means they can never come back again. If the outside world is not as good as said, then there is no way back at all.

So they hope that an external force can intervene, preferably breaking this closure from the outside, and changing a custom that has always been regarded as a golden rule, so that more people don't have to succumb to internal pressure.

The village chief also expressed his helplessness. The village is too small to compare with the vast world outside. Too many young people have heard their parents talk about things outside and are clamoring to go out and see. The village chief doesn't know whether to agree or disagree, and has been in a stalemate.

But this matter must have a result. Either the factions in the village completely split, those willing to stay stay, those willing to leave leave, or an invisible big hand must physically break the state of Shambhala being isolated from the world.

The split of the village is something Strange absolutely doesn't want to see. Not to mention where the mages will buy things after the village is gone, just his teacher, the Ancient One, could come back and hammer him into the wall so he couldn't be picked out.

As a true modern person, Strange understands that the trend of modernization is almost unstoppable, and the killer of modernization is not brighter lights or cleaner water sources, but the most important thing is the extremely fast flow of information.

Once people accept this speed of information flow, they can never return to the days of receiving information slowly. Even he himself is like this, otherwise he wouldn't have found apprentices to turn all magic classics into e-books, and then read them at double speed.

Although fast-paced life is always criticized, slow life rhythm is not necessarily a good thing. Strange often feels sleepy in Kamar-Taj because the days are long and there is nothing to do.

Being in this state for a long time, suddenly returning to the fast-paced New York, Strange even felt that his brain couldn't turn.

But Strange had a cautious attitude toward building roads for Shambhala. He decided to visit the town at the foot of the mountain first, and then decide whether to develop Shambhala.

Kamar-Taj students often go to the town, volunteering to lead the way for Strange. Strange set off with several great mages and played in the town at the foot of the mountain for two days and two nights.

Before setting off, Strange really didn't think a town was fun. He was from a small town himself, so how could he not know what a town was like?

But this town at the foot of the mountain where Sherpas lived was indeed not quite the same as he imagined. They lived a modern, original life.

It sounds contradictory, but it is indeed the case. Every household has water, electricity, and internet, but they still live in houses built of stone. Obviously, they have modern agricultural machinery, but they still hand-beat highland barley. Obviously, they have modern hotels, but more of them are homestays transformed from residential houses.

Until after being led by students to play around with a tour guide, Strange understood why this was. Simply put, the whole town was a huge Truman Show. Almost all of these were performed for tourists to see.