Strange was invited to the county government.
At the time, he was celebrating the festival with the residents of Shambhala, when a village chief quietly pulled him aside and covertly asked Strange to meet someone.
Strange didn't share the same approach as his teacher, The Ancient One; he never played mysterious and lacked that innate dignified aura, but the upside was that he could easily blend in with the villagers.
Strange didn't really want to go, because the village chief always tried to set him up with a girlfriend, and he thought the chief was tricking him into another matchmaking situation—a recurring annual event. Knowing that the people of the East place great importance on family and clan, and that they meant well, Strange always went through the motions to get it over with.
Today was no exception. Knowing the chief was likely happy about the festival and probably wanted to introduce him to some young woman, Strange didn't wish to argue and followed behind him as he walked outside.
Little did he know that the path led further and further away, and before he realized it, he had reached the foot of the Himalayan Mountains.
Then came the expected tribunal.
The issue with the residents of Shambhala wasn't so simple; they weren't just a generation unaccounted for—they had been off the records for five to six hundred years.
These few hundred people seemed to have just popped out of thin air; there was no mention of this branch in any historical records.
It might have been plausible during the early days of the nation, when roads and satellite technology were underdeveloped, for some remote mountain villages to be overlooked.
But what time was it now? It was already the 21st century, with Beidou satellites shining clearly above; there were simply no such three villages on the Himalayas. What was going on?
The county magistrate couldn't figure it out, so he reported it to the city mayor, who, in turn, couldn't figure it out and reported it to the governor of the autonomous region. After being reported up the chain of command, they finally found someone who knew that it had to be something to do with Kamar-Taj.
Strange thought they were under the impression that Kamar-Taj was holding these people captive, so he quickly began to explain, but after a long, convoluted conversation, he found out that they didn't care who these people were or their history, but rather what they were doing now.
Strange was still very confident; Kamar-Taj had never mistreated the three villages below. Their farmland was enchanted, the crops grew in succession without the need for human care, the scenery was beautiful, resources were abundant, and they were free from disease and disaster; this was a paradise many sought after.
However, he was rendered speechless by a question from the county magistrate—It's the 21st century, don't you use the internet?
Strange wanted to say he also wanted to use the internet, but there was no signal; what could he do? He couldn't just ask Stark to throw a satellite into the sky for his personal use, could he?
With the village chief's translation, Strange finally understood that they were referring to the outside villages that had modernized, while inside they were still practicing a small-scale subsistence economy. You say you're managing, but you don't even have a clear picture, always lacking here and short on there; what kind of life is this?
Strange had no choice but to look at the village chief, who also felt a bit embarrassed, since sneaking around to find outsiders behind the back of the Supreme Magician was indeed not very honorable, but they really couldn't continue living like this.
The biggest problem with Shambhala was its isolation; but it wasn't completely isolated. In order to marry outsiders, they accepted foreigners, and even quite a few girls actively went out to choose men, returned to the village pregnant, and sometimes brought their men back with them.
These people had seen the outside world, knew what modern society was like, and how even the lowest tier of common people lived.
Farmers toil under the midday sun, sweat dripping onto the soil; while many in modern society complain about their tiresome work and wish to return home to farm, those who have actually farmed know how grueling it is. Traditional agriculture is the least rewarding industry, with a year of hard work barely amounting to half a year's wage in the city.
Shambhala was the same; their farming was not tiring, since the fields were magically enhanced, crop yield was not a worry, there were no natural disasters, and the weather was always pleasant. If they couldn't handle the excess grain, mages were there to help.
But farming always involved the most basic labor; they couldn't say they'd have food without tilling the land or watering the fields, and they had to tend to these matters all year round, with not much else to do.
If it had always been like this, it might have been fine, but who would want to return to the hardships of an outdated agricultural economy after experiencing the benefits of modern society?
The village's only entertainment was singing and dancing, and daily life was just eating, sleeping, and having children. With no survival pressure, they didn't even care about education; as long as a child could grow up and farm, that was enough.
This generation's village chief's father was an American explorer from the last century, so he spoke Mandarin, Tibetan, and English. He had long yearned for the developed American society he heard about from his father and had always wanted to go see it.
The new Supreme Magician was an American; he was said to be quite prestigious even in ordinary society. The village chief couldn't bear the thought of himself and his children living out their lives like this, but he also dared not outright quit in front of Strange.
After all, no Supreme Magician had ever treated them poorly, and he couldn't just enjoy the benefits without taking responsibility.
After much deliberation, the village chief decided to find a third party to help, and since his daughter had married into a town at the foot of the mountain, he thought of asking the mayor to intervene, to see if Strange would allow the villagers to go out and wander occasionally just like the students do.
The village chief's request was actually just to go out for travel, but the mayor and the county chief obviously would not think it was that simple.
Shambhala is the essential route to Kamar-Taj, and one must pass through these three villages to enter Kamar-Taj.
Kamar-Taj is actually within the boundaries of China, but in reality, it belongs to no country; it is a piece of the magic realm, an enclave that was established as per the treaty made when the Hong Kong Temple was built, with no need or possibility to go back on it.
However, it wasn't said that Shambhala also belongs to Kamar-Taj. Beyond the boundaries marked by Kamar-Taj, all the land is under Chinese sovereignty, so naturally, Shambhala is a Chinese village. Now that even the towns at the mountain base are connected by the Sky Train, it should also mean having actual control over Shambhala.
The county chief expressed his demands, and Strange hesitated a bit. Originally, The Ancient One included these three villages within the range of the magic protective shield to defend her hometown.
Back in ancient times, some might think that even in ancient times, it wasn't likely that anyone could reach the Himalayan Mountains, but don't forget, in Marvel's history, magic also plays a significant role.
Chinese ancient history was almost completely magically altered; during the chaotic times of several dynasties, the Chinese mainland was not only a battleground for the human race but also for all kinds of demons and ghosts. The Ancient One's village was remote, yet the mountains were rife with demons, and the villagers lived a life of extreme hardship.
If it weren't for her and her fellow villagers discovering the secrets of magic, the villagers would have been barely scraping by for survival. Thus, after establishing the Kamar-Taj Sanctum, named after her village, The Ancient One immediately enveloped her hometown within the protective shield.
But her purpose was protection, not imprisonment. The people of her generation knew how dangerous the outside world was, so they chose not to venture out.
The later generations mostly had no idea about the outside changes. They only felt that staying there was quite nice, so they stayed.
To be honest, Strange felt he had never stopped anyone from going out. Although the villagers didn't know magic, it wasn't impossible for them to leave if they wished to.
After the village chief and the county chief explained, Strange finally understood; it's the same old story—Easterners value family and clan, with a stronger sense of collective consciousness. If a village unanimously upholds a certain decree, then no one can defy it, and curiosity about the outside world isn't enough to permit someone to leave.
In other words, some villagers now wanted to leave, but they dared not, because leaving would mean never being able to return. If the outside world wasn't as good as said, they would have no fallback.
So, they were hoping for an external force to intervene, preferably an outsider initiative to break this isolation, to rid the village of a custom that had long been regarded as absolute, to let more people avoid succumbing to the internal pressure.
The village chief also shared his helplessness; the village was too small, incomparable with the vast outside world. Many of the younger generation who had heard about the outside from their parents clamored to go see for themselves. The village chief was at an impasse, torn whether to agree or not, stalled in a deadlock.
But a decision on the matter had to be made eventually—one way was for the various factions within the village to completely divide, those who wanted to stay stayed, and those who wanted to leave did so, or an invisible hand physically had to break the state of Shambhala's isolation from the world.
The division of the village was something Strange absolutely didn't want to see. Not to mention that if there were no village, where would the mages go to shop, but just his teacher, The Ancient One, could come back and punch him so hard he'd be embedded in a wall, impossible to dig out.
As a true modern man, Strange understood that the tide of modernization was nearly unstoppable, and the trump card of modernization wasn't a brighter light or cleaner water, but the speed of information flow.
Once people have tasted this speed of information, they can never go back to the slow pace of receiving it. Even he was the same; otherwise, he wouldn't have had apprentices turn all the magic tomes into e-books and then read through them at double speed.
Though often criticized, the fast pace of life isn't necessarily bad. Regularly residing in Kamar-Taj and feeling drowsy due to the endless daytime and nothing to do, Strange thought a life too slow-paced might not be a good thing either.
Finding himself back in the swift-paced New York after being in that state, Strange even felt his brain was struggling to keep up.
Yet, Strange had some reservations about building a road to Shambhala. He decided to first visit the town at the foot of the mountain and then determine whether or not to develop Shambhala.
Students from Kamar-Taj often went to the town and eagerly volunteered to guide Strange, so he set off with a few Grand Mages, and they had fun in the town at the mountain base for two days and nights.
Before leaving, Strange hadn't thought there was much to enjoy about a town. He himself came from a small town; how could he not know what it was like?
But the town at the foot of the mountain, inhabited by Sherpa people, wasn't quite what he expected. They lived a life that fused modernity with tradition.
It sounds contradictory, but it was indeed so. Each household had water, electricity, and the internet, yet they still lived in stone houses, had modern agriculture machines but still hand-threshed barley, had modern hotels but also many guesthouses converted from residential homes.
It was only after being taken around by students playing tour guides that Strange realized the reason behind it all. Simply put, the whole town was one giant Truman Show; almost everything was performed for the tourists to see.