The Magus Era

The midday sun hung suspended in the cloudless sky. Mr Crow stood on the edge of a cliff, leaned his head and cawed from time to time. Ji Hao was standing under Mr Crow’s wing, silently looking down at the vast and boundless Southern Wasteland jungle.

This area used to belong to the Bi Fang Clan, but now, it had become the Gold Crow Clan’s new hunting ground.

Large groups of people from newly formed branch clans of the Gold Crow Clan were happily working in the jungle. They cut down trees to build houses, exploit the mountain, built up fence walls, dug up soils and spread seeds, and raised beastiaries to hold large-scale animals. Everyone had been so busy.

Every newly formed branch clan had only one to two thousand people, and among these people, the percentage of elderly men, young men, and women were fixed.

New hunting grounds and new territories. These small branch clans were like the seeds that was to be spread out by the Gold Crow Clan. They would start the reproduction and build their own lives under the protection of the Gold Crow Clan. In the Southern Wasteland, many powerful large-scale clans had started like this.

The Gold Crow Clan had spread thousands of these kind of seeds of their new force. In ten years, if only a small half of them could develop then the Gold Crow Clan would have grown stronger by atleast two times. New branch clans, new clansmen, and new blood; all these together would build a brand new and stronger Gold Crow Clan!

“Mr Crow, this is how hope looks like!” yelled Ji Hao while stretching his arms, and facing the fierce wind, “This is hope!”

Mr Crow stretched its wings as well, and happily cawed towards the wind; its every single movement was exactly as same as that of Ji Hao.

On both sides of Ji Hao’s shoulders red snakes, two inches long, slightly moved their bodies, opened their tiny jaws and gently bit Ji Hao’s earlobes, hanging themselves up like earrings, then happily began swinging.

As Zhu Rong Tonggong had promised, he sent Ji Hao a pair of Magical Fiery Snakes as a reward for defeating the three-thousand powerful enemies all by himself.

The snake was by nature a magical kind of creature. They were similar to the dragons; they were able to fly, transform and hide. When they flew, winds and clouds would move alongside with them. When they hid themselves, they were able to fit themselves in a bean. Snakes were such magical creature that could also make spiritual connection with humans.

The snake kind was sub-divided into many species. Every single kind of natural power had one species of snake corresponding with it. Even powerful and magical creatures like the dragons and the phoenixes didn’t have this many species. Therefore, the snake kind had always maintained a special and holy place in the hearts of ancient humankind.

Many clans worshiped the snake kind, and saw them as the totems of their clans - such as the Black Water Serpent Clan.

Many legendary powerful gods raised snakes and serpents as their pets. They either had pairs of snakes hung on their ears or coiled around their waists, hands or ankles. All the snakes that were selected by those gods were species, which were magical and powerful, possessing all kinds of abilities, and could be highly helpful to those ancient gods in battles.

This pair of magical fiery snakes came from a natural volcanic vent of the Zhu Rong Country. Their eggs had been hatched in an ancient magical flame, which was called the ‘Earth Core Red Lotus Magical Flame’, for three-thousand years, before they had broken out. These kind of snakes were born with the ability to control fire; the flame that was spewed out by them could melt all kinds of metals and rocks. Generally speaking, this pair of snakes would be incomparably powerful when they would have grown up.

Furthermore, Magical Fiery Snakes were loyal and devoted, and once they had accepted a person as their owner, they would absolutely share life and death with their owner, without ever betraying them.

This pair of Magical Fiery Snakes had broken out of their eggs less than three months ago, and judging from their thousands of years long maturation period, they were only babies at the moment. Both of them were extremely naughty, darting around and fighting against each other on Ji Hao’s body every single day, without ever stopping.

Ji Hao gently petted these two baby snakes and sighed.

“I seem to have too many properties. I now have two more bellies that need to be filled. You are both as small as a baby carrot, but each of you need to eat an entire wild buffalo daily! Fortunately, this Southern Wasteland is a rich hunting ground, otherwise, how am I suppose to raise you?” complained Ji Hao.

The pair of snakes which were named Big Fire and Small Fire by Ji Hao, were now letting out hidden sounds as if they were laughing happily; they then excitedly began chasing each other around Ji Hao’s neck. They lashed each other with their tails; occasionally, their tails would leave a slight red mark on Ji Hao’s neck.

Ji Hao’s current body condition was as great as that of a newly broken through Senior Magi, but a careless whip of these baby snakes could leave a mark on his body, which clearly showed how high the potential of this pair of newborn snakes were, and how terrifyingly powerful they might grow into, in the future.

Even Mr Crow subconsciously took a glance, which was filled with both respect and fright, at these two little things.

At the moment, Mr Crow’s power was far greater than these pair of snakes, however, in the future, Mr Crow had no chance to surpass them. These two naughty little things were direct offsprings of the pair of the ancient magical fiery snakes, which had been raised by the Zhu Rong family, which meant that they shared the bloodline with a pure god-kind beast. In the future, it was highly possible for this pair of baby snakes to break into the Magus-King-level!

This pair of baby snakes would become magical and powerful beings that could be worshiped by an entire clan as totems; therefore, even Mr Crow had shown his respect to this pair of little things.

“Ha! Ho! Ha!”

A great sense of power was being released from the jungle further away. There was an army, with elite soldiers wearing red armors, which had been practicing in a basin within the jungle.

Tens of thousands of slaves were building a battle fort, under the supervision of the Gold Crow Clan’s warriors. Measuring from the scale of the foundation that they had dug, this fort would be able to contain millions of people at the same time. The old Fire Crow Clan could never have afforded to build a large-scale battle fort like this, even with all of their resources. However, with all those slaves and financial support that was given by Zhu Rong Tonggong, the Gold Crow Clan could finally begin building such a fort which would become the core area of the Gold Crow City; and in the future, the Gold Crow City would become the center of the entire Gold Crow Clan.

Ji Hao was staring at the army, which had around a hundred-thousand fully armed elite warriors. This army was formed after Ji Xia had been nominated as the Gold Crow General. With those top-quality armors and weapons that were sent by Zhu Rong Tonggong, this army was called the Gold Crow Army. It was under the direct command and administration of Zhu Rong Tonggong, and belonged officially to the Zhu Rong Country.

The Gold Crow Army was not a temporary clan army, which was formed by ordinary clansmen, and would only be gathered into an army during times of war. Instead, this army was a professional army, which would practice every day and prepare for the war. Although this newly formed Gold Crow Army wasn’t yet as powerful as other Zhu Rong Country’s armies, at least, only with its official status, all of the tens of large-scales clans that surrounded the Gold Crow Clan, including the Bi Fang Clan, would never dare to challenge the Gold Crow Clan.

The Gold Crow Army was an army that officially belonged to the Zhu Rong Country, and a ‘personal army’, that was only under the command of Zhu Rong Tonggong. This status was high enough to shock all of clans of the Southern Wasteland.

All of the expenses of this army, including the living costs, armors and weapons, even the living costs of the families of these warriors and all the other supportive costs, were covered by Zhu Rong Tonggong himself. Moreover, all of their weapons and armors were the best in the Zhu Rong Country.

Personal armies like this, even Zhu Rong Tonggong had only five of them and counting the Gold Crow Army in, the number was only six.

“I guess I probably know why Ji Shu had to gang up with the Blood Fang and trade slaves,” murmured Ji Hao while smilingly looking at the army, “Otherwise, where would the money, which had been secretly supporting Ji Shu and Jiang Bo, and was used to support his personal armies, come from?”

But, Ji Shu was already gone.

Now, the Gold Crow Clan was becoming more and more powerful.

From a long distance, a cloud of flames darted towards Ji Hao along with a swooshing sound. This cloud of flames was a gigantic Fiery Dragon and on the back of the dragon Man Man was waving a pair of magnificently gigantic mountain-crushing hammers, leaping like a monkey, and yelling towards Ji Hao.

From far away of Ji Hao, Man Man excitedly threw a hammer towards Ji Hao while yelling.

“Ji Hao! These are Man Man’s new weapons! Give it a try, see if you can carry them up!”

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TL note: Here she comes my favorite little girl! o.0

SR note: At last, she is back in the story (*_*)