Meteor Fall Master in the 'Starry Abyss'
Chapter 737 - 346. Magic, Giant Dragon, and Mithril (Part 2)

Chapter 737: 346. Magic, Giant Dragon, and Mithril (Part 2)

Unlike other species, the Dragon Race mastered fire early on, directly bypassing the barter stage. They leaped straight into the era of precious metal currency economics, thus gaining a significant lead over other species.

The obsession Dragons had with gold and silver was largely because the initial temperature of dragon flame was very low, far from the melting point of iron (1,538 degrees Celsius), but the melting point of natural gold (1,063 degrees Celsius) and silver (961.93 degrees Celsius) was sufficient.

As wealth began to circulate, merchants and craftsmen started to appear sporadically among the clans. For a long time, the Dragon Race did not generate a unit such as the farmer. They practically advanced into the stage of nomads, stepping onto the path of a classical commercial kingdom.

The rest of the story wasn’t much to tell. The innate advantages and environmental factors of the Dragon Race led them, after resolving issues of basic sustenance, to become eager for constant warfare and the accumulation of wealth, thereby promoting commercial circulation.

However, with an excess of wealth, the disparity between the rich and the poor began to emerge. Although initially, most of the Dragon Race enjoyed equal division of labor, as wars continued, there were inevitably dragons that became disabled, foolish, or demented.

Some Dragons, to sustain their existence, willingly sold their rights as Dragons and became slaves. Continuous wars also reduced other heterogeneous species to even lower-grade slaves, becoming vassals to the Dragon Race, including some species adept at farming and managing.

The advent of slavery led to the collapse of primitive order.

Furthermore, wars resulted in the downfall of many male giant dragons, forcing the surviving wealthy male dragons to urgently wish to pass on their wealth and status to their descendants. Therefore, they began to seek fixed mates instead of maintaining the uncle-nephew inheritance system.

The matriarchal society thus collapsed, the Dragon Mother retreated, and the male Dragon King emerged on the historical stage. To maintain their dominion and ensure the safety of their bloodline’s transmission, the Dragon King needed to hold onto wealth and martial force. They started ennobling dragons, granting them certain privileges—such as serving as soldiers, obtaining fiefs, and inheriting titles.

So, what was deemed most precious in the value system of the Dragon Race?

Gold and silver.

This was why, in the Dragon Race’s system, the Golden Dragon and Silver Dragon were absolute nobility. Their ancestors, since their ennoblement, had always maintained the status of armed nobility until today.

As wealth grew, the Dragon Race became increasingly dependent on precious metals. Their powerful bodies and excellent metallurgical craftsmanship allowed them to conquer vast lands, with resources continuously flowing in. Slaves toiled diligently, directly liberating the Dragon Race.

At this point, their society was not merely built on the pursuit of survival, money, and value. They began to pursue higher-level entertainments—such as music, flame arts, dance, and hallucinogenic herbs.

Anyone with a bit of historical perspective would see these things and realize what they had concocted.

Yes, it was religious belief.

Logically speaking, with historical perspectives at this stage, the rest of the story need not be told. Various civilizations are quite similar.

It was nothing more than the formation of primitive worship, promoting the development of astronomical divination technology, then backward utilization by astronomy in navigation (for the Dragon Race it was aeronautics), followed by the rise of the Church system, the transition from polytheism to monotheism, land gathering under divine right, discontent from monarchs, leading to system reforms.

Feudalization, divine right of kings, religious reform, evolution theory, technological explosion, industrial revolution, capitalism, financial oligarchy state, cosmic capitalism, global enterprise—Grand Narrative No. 11 "Union Group"!

This was the history of the rise of the Dragon Race that anyone could verify. In the normal perspective of history, it was believed that this was environment-determined. Only the civilization of the Dragon Race could create such possibilities; no other civilization could replicate it.

Thus, the Grand Narrative No. 11 "Union Group" was a narrative exclusive to Dragon Race civilization and their vassals. Environmental determinism powerfully shattered the existence of racial superiority, allowing the mainstream narrative to stand on a perspective beyond species to elaborate on the superiority of the narrative.

However, "Magic, Giant Dragons, and Mithril" went a step further from environmental determinism and contemplated the grand narrative from another angle.

"Although the Dragons’ narrative naturally formed this way, another problem also emerged during their development."

And that was spouting fire.

The ability to spout fire liberated the brains of the Dragon Race, but it also limited their bodies to developing towards the direction of a super species, forcing the Dragon Race to gradually enlarge their bodies to accommodate more energy. The increasingly large bodies made it impossible for the Dragon Race to manufacture precise instruments personally. They had to employ or enslave other species to serve them.

Because of this, the Dragon Race walked a peculiar path—they did not develop technology but kept modifying their language. By amplifying their language, they channeled the energy of the cosmos and embarked on the path of magic.

But what if some planets lacked a magic current? Then the massive energy consumption of spouting fire would gradually regress. The Dragon Race’s bodies would shrink step by step, with some subgroup Dragons evolving into rodents the size of mice, eventually evolving into tree-dwelling animals with extended limbs until finally descending from the trees, landing to become humans.

This would rather block the space for the Dragon Race’s civilization development, making the narrative an elusive mirage.

Looking through history, such problems repeatedly appeared in the development of the Dragon Race civilization.

What if the Dragons had discovered not gold and silver but tungsten, which could not melt? Then their war model would not undergo a qualitative change, nor would metallurgy emerge, nor would they step into the precious metal currency era.

What if there were only one intelligent species the Dragon Kind on the planet where the Dragons lived? Then the Dragons would forever remain flying nomads because they couldn’t even carry out agriculture, couldn’t sustain a stable territorial map, and couldn’t cope with severe natural disasters.

What if the Dragons had not chosen unity and cooperation but lived in solitude? Then the Dragons would merely be strong, intelligent beasts, akin to monsters in fairy tales.

Or, sadder still, any minor accident, like an asteroid impact, could utterly destroy such high-trophic-level animals as Dragons, and future generations might question whether Dragons ever existed.

This is the difference between "Magic, Giant Dragons, and Mithril" and conventional history books.

"The viewpoint of this book is that the cosmos is chaos. There has never been any determinism. The essence of the grand narrative is a series of statistical miracles built upon sheer serendipity."

Li Aozi muttered,

"Should any one of these factors be removed, the entire Dragon Race civilization would instantly collapse. Their existence was quite fragile, unable to withstand the turmoil of any single erroneous point. Over millions of years of evolution, failures far outnumbered successes. It wasn’t the Dragon Race’s success that ensured their survival, but their experience shouldn’t be taken as a replicable model. We must be cautious about where they haven’t encountered setbacks."

Any so-called precise system was nonsense.

In the truly starry abyss, those top dominions weren’t winning everything; they just hadn’t lost yet.

If they existed for billions of years, it meant they merely hadn’t encountered that crisis.

In the final analysis, it came down to this: the essence of all civilizations was merely a makeshift troupe.