Harry Potter and the Great Old Ones

Chapter 482 Residents of the Cold Plains
“It’s time.” Tyella, who had already returned from the Dreamlands with the Golden Book Conference, stood up and said to the other members sitting in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, “Tonight is the time for Hathaway Romanoff to become a god.”

Two weeks ago, right when the OWLs exams had just begun, Tiera returned from the Dreamland with the rest of the Golden Book Council.

With Tiera, a seasoned veteran, leading the way, and the Golden Book Conference filled with cunning old foxes, this trip to the Dreamland wasn't even as thrilling as it seemed; it was more like a senior citizens' tour.

This time, they followed the route of a scientific expedition, meaning they were essentially flying to Afghanistan on their own. Along the way, the centenarians stopped frequently, chatting and laughing, and even spent a considerable amount of Muggle currency on Muggle souvenirs at and near the Afghan airport.

Of course, Tiera and Chief Thunderbird paid for everything.

After all, apart from Tiera and Chief Thunderbird, everyone else was a pure wizarding society creature.

Tierra had accidentally exchanged too much British pounds when he was leading the scientific expedition, and he rarely bothered to return the money.

Chief Thunderbird once attempted to cripple the US economy by using magic to counterfeit dollars.

He discovered that he had only ruined the economies of the entire world except for the United States, so he simply gave up and now has a little bit of counterfeit US dollars left with nowhere to spend them.

Along the way, they sampled local Afghan cuisine and toured the area with a local guide to learn about the local customs and culture. The Golden Book Conference then entered the Cold Plateau through the same cave the expedition team had previously visited.

Of course, like the research team, they encountered the inhabitants of the Cold Plains and the Cold Spiders, who were also enslaved by the Moon Beasts, almost as soon as they entered the Cold Plateau.

These two creatures, not to mention Tierra, Dumbledore, and the other members of the Golden Book Council, could handle a whole bunch of Hagrid and his disabled brother Cropp.

However, Tiera did not attack them. She even stopped Ms. Maka-Fal-Monkasa, who wanted to capture one to keep as a pet, and led everyone from the Golden Book Conference around all the residents and cold spiders wandering the Cold Plateau.

Meanwhile, to prevent any unforeseen circumstances, Tiera sent the Golden Book Conference to Benna Bay in the northern sea area of ​​the Cold Plateau. During her last visit to the Dreamland, Tiera learned from chatting with High Priest Atal and other cats while petting the cats that every two weeks to a few days, several merchant ships from Holy Spring Castle, Seranian, Mital, Zas, or other human settlements would set sail for the Cold Plateau and stop at Benna Bay. The sailors and merchants on board would trade slaves, grain, precious furs, and their own cultivated rare spices for those eye-catching rubies from the inhabitants of the Cold Plateau.

Of course, this was an extremely dangerous job, because if they weren't careful, these crew members and helmsmen could be turned into the same kind of thing by the moon beast masters behind the inhabitants of the Cold Plains—

Slaves, grain, furs, and spices.

But greed and audacious human beings are never lacking anywhere.

Despite the occasional reports of entire merchant ships disappearing, every merchant ship that managed to set sail from Benna Bay eventually returned fully loaded, with the worst-off managing to buy a small farm in the outskirts of Selif.

Despite the immense and elusive profits, and the looming threat of disaster, many merchants continued to navigate this perilous route. Tierra was relatively lucky; the people accompanying the Golden Book Conference waited for only four days on the icebergs near Benna Bay before spotting a bright red merchant ship approaching from the other side of the icy sea.

When the merchant ship anchored at the port of Benna Bay, a harbor entirely constructed of rock and ice, Tiera and the rest of the Golden Book Council were already waiting there. They stood at a distance that was neither too close to the ship and feel threatened, nor too far to go unnoticed, silently watching as the merchants on the red ship used special hand gestures to silently direct the sailors and laborers to unload tightly sealed wooden crates of furs, grains, and spices, as well as iron cages wrapped in thick fur, each containing eight or nine slaves huddled together for warmth.

Only a portion of these slaves were human, or rather, creatures with near-human forms; the majority were all sorts of strange and grotesque beings.

They had special gags strapped to their mouths, which made it easier for sailors to feed them high-energy liquid food, but at the same time prevented them from making any obvious noises.

After all the cargo had been unloaded, they left behind only a tall, dark-skinned, muscular sailor, wearing a strange metal hat, standing on the cold harbor.

“Shh…shh…shh…”

Before long, ten enormous purple spiders emerged from beneath the endless white snow, followed by the familiar inhabitants of the cold plains, whom Tiera knew well.

Despite standing far away, Tierra could still tell from the sailor's trembling, thick legs that he was very nervous, not to mention the emotion called fear that Tierra "saw" permeating his mental world.

There were five inhabitants of the Cold Plains, some tall, some short, some fat, some thin. They didn't need to hide anything here, so they removed their comical turbans and ill-fitting leather boots, revealing their true forms as if they were deformed and bizarre demons.

After the inhabitants of Lengyuan crawled out of the snow, they brushed the snow off their bodies and looked at the goods not far from them. A hint of satisfaction finally appeared in their empty eyes.

Immediately afterwards, as if sensing the presence of other life forms in this space, the inhabitants of the Cold Plains all turned and stared like puppets in the direction of Tiera, and then—

For the first time, Tiera saw a look of astonishment on their mask-like faces.

The inhabitants of the Cold Plains stood frozen in place, their expressions frozen, all their movements halted. Then, Tiera noticed five noisy mental threads appearing in the area, as if five players in a game had suddenly pressed the pause button and were communicating with each other via voice chat.

Before Tiera could even understand what the five spiritual forces were exchanging, they had already disappeared and gradually stabilized.

The five inhabitants of the Cold Plains also sprang into action. They bent over, lay prone on the ground like five toads, put their hands together on the ground, and then rested their noses on the backs of their hands.

After holding this position for a minute, the Cold Plains resident stood up again, brushed the snow off his body, and then continued to follow Cold Spider toward the merchant ship as if nothing had happened.

The Golden Book Conference's travelogue in the Dreamland was originally planned to be included in a side story after the end of Volume 5, but some readers said they wanted to see Tiera's story, so it's been incorporated into the main text.
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(End of this chapter)