The Magus Era

Muddy river water was flowing, silvery fishes were chasing each other in the water, and large groups of white water birds left streams of dim shadows on the surface of the water.

A roaring river was flowing rapidly between the mountains. Not a single human could be seen in the surrounding area. There was only a group of white apes, which were fooling around while letting high-pitched growls from time to time.

A vertical water column rose abruptly from the river and swooshed into the air hundreds of zhang high from the ground. Ji Hao shattered the water column with a punch, then leapt up from the exit of the underground river, with his body steaming. He landed on the ground, shook his body slightly then kneeled on one knee, gasping quickly for air.

A few of the fiercest white apes screamed instantly at Ji Hao, carried their heavy and huge wooden sticks and rushed towards Ji Hao.

Ji Hao sneered and raised his head abruptly. He stared ferociously at these fat white apes with a pair of brightly glowing Gold Crow pupils. Those few white apes howled out, dropped their sticks and turned around, fleeing hurriedly away, while screaming loudly. Followed by their voices, all ten thousand different-aged white apes quickly dropped the fruits, flowers, leaves, and all kinds of objects they were holding in their hands in panic and fled away within the blink of an eye, without leaving even a trace.

Ji Hao stood slowly back up while continuing to gasp for air. He sensed a stabbing pain on his face. He carelessly wiped his face and grabbed a few fist-sized crabs that had steel-hard shells off from his face and threw them back into the river.

The underground river had continued to surge turbulently over a distance of ten thousand miles before it finally surfaced and merged with this great river. Fortunately, Ji Hao and his teammates hadn’t encountered any great danger when drifting along the underground river. The only things they bumped into were a few water snakes, a school of carnivorous fishes and a few unknown strange-looking water animals. No one had been hurt during the journey.

The trouble had been that they had to hold their breath while drifting along the rapidly flowing underground river that stretched for over ten thousand miles, a journey that had taken them an entire four days and five nights. Ji Hao was so short on oxygen that his eyeballs had turned green. If it hadn’t been for the rule of the Magi Palace that prohibited strictly acts of changing or breaking the geographical features of the Midland, Ji Hao would have used his punch and broken through the thick layer of rock above the underground river and leapt directly out of the underground, long ago.

“Ah…atishoo!” Flooded by a muffled swooshing sound, Man Man threw both her hammers straight out of the hundreds of meters deep river, then floated up while sneezing continuously. With eyeballs that showed the whites, Man Man vomited a few mouthfuls of water. Then she dog-paddled with some difficulty to the river shore and struggled up onto the ground. Once there, she thudded heavily against the ground, unable to even any longer, not even for a little bit.

“Eh? Man Man? I didn’t know that you could actually swim!” said Ji Hao surprised, while squatting beside Man Man. He held her in his arms and fed her a few round pills that could quickly replenish consumed power.

“Eh? Swim? Sure!” When speaking about swimming Man Man instantly got excited. She sat up from Ji Hao’s arm, laughed out loud and continued loudly, “My big brother had lots of dragon fishes in his lake. I would often jump down into the lake and caught those fishes, then grilled and ate them, since I was three years old! That’s when I learned how to swim!”

For some unknown reason, Ji Hao silently felt sorry for Zhu Rong Tonggong’s dragon fishes, for quite a while. While Ji Hao and Man Man were talking, four heads popped up from out the river, one after another.

Feng Xing and Yu Mu leapt onto the ground, while Shaosi held Taisi’s hair in her hand, dragged him up to the ground as if she was dragging a dead body, then carelessly threw him aside. She conveniently added a heavy kick onto his stomach.

“B…blood sister…” Looking at Shaosi’s brutal action, Yu Mu couldn’t help but quiver.

“If I was her, I would directly kick this guy to death…this guy is just a humiliation to our entire male population!” Unlike Yu Mu, Feng Xing seemed to be anxious to see the world in disorder, “He was even worse than Man Man! Got choked by the river water and fainted only half an hour after we had jumped into the river. If Ji Hao hadn’t been sharing air with him all the way…”

Yu Mu and Feng Xing quivered simultaneously. They turned towards Ji Hao, let out a few embarrassed waves of laughter and asked, “Ji Hao, how did it felt like, to press your lips against…another man’s lips?”

The face of Ji Hao’s darkened instantly. Damn you Taisi, he thought. Taisi had been a complete burden under the water. Every half an hour, Ji Hao, as the one who possessed the greatest lungs capacity, had to share some of his air with him to keep him alive. Fortunately, Ji Hao had been cultivating on the [Mantra Dan with Nine Secret Words] that allowed him to gain enough air from underwater. Otherwise, Taisi would have already died from suffocation in the underground river.

“Some of the Magi Palace’s rules are so unreasonable.” Ji Hao changed the topic as soon as he could and said, “We could have broken the rock-layer and jumped out from the underground river three days ago. We had already left the magic crystal mine. Back then, the layer of rock had not been as solid.”

“That is not a rule of the Magi Palace. The prohibition is made by the King of the humankind himself,” sighed Yu Mu and said, “Actually this prohibition is quite reasonable. Imagine, if everyone is allowed to freely change the geographical features of the Midland, the Midland might have been destroyed already.”

Ji Hao let out a sneer, then took out a few bottles of pills and handed them to his teammates. After that, he hurriedly took out a jade talisman and flicked it with his finger. Along his movement, the jade talisman was immediately set ablaze and a straight wisp of cyan smoke quickly rose into the air. The jade talisman burned rapidly, becoming smaller and smaller.

Ji Hao turned hurriedly towards the smoke and stated what had happened to his team during the past few days. After having finished speaking, he flicked his fingers again. Followed with Ji Hao’s movements, the jade talisman turned completely into a wisp of smoke and rose into the air. Not long after that, the wisp of smoke transformed into an arrow, along with a horribly loud cracking sound, then flew swiftly away, going towards the Magi Palace.

This talisman was a message to Si Wen Ming. Right after that, Ji Hao took out a few more talismans and delivered messages to Wulong Yao and other few master Magi tutors, who were quite close to him.

Staring at the wisps of cyan smoke that rose straight into the air, Yu Mu sighed abruptly and murmured, “Hmm, just wondering whether they will consider us successful or having failed with regards to this task. And how much compensation will we get from the Rong Mountain Clan.”

After having sent out the messages, Ji Hao held Taisi up, pressed his palm on the back of Taisi. He was gathering natural powers and life force from the surrounding jungle area with a secret magic and tried to replenish Taisi’s lost life force. Hearing Yu Mu’s murmurs, Ji Hao raised his head and asked with a slight shock, “What do you mean? How could they possibly have a doubt? We are the right side in this unexpected event, aren’t we?”

Standing far away from the others, Feng Xing let out a long sigh and said, “Ji Hao, is this the first time that you have taken a task from the Magi Palace? Hm, fatso and I had encountered this kind of situation a few times before, actually quite a few times, where we were nearly slaughtered. However, every time we ended with very little compensation.”

Ji Hao narrowed his eyes, thought of that Elder Iron Yan activating his inherited magic treasure and locking them up without any hesitation, and those Rong Mountain Clan people rushing out of the underground cave as soon as possible, after firmly sealing the entire cave with magic talismans.

Without a doubt, if hadn’t been the case that Ji Hao’s team was way more powerful than the immigrating troop led by Elder Iron Yan, the Rong Mountain Clan people would have killed them, back that day.

“This will not end that easily,” said Ji Hao with a bad, dark face, “Trying to kill us? Have the entire crystal mine? I don’t care about having the crystal mine all to themselves, but they intended to kill us, they have to pay for this.”

“The solution of this will depend on the one who will come to pick us up from the Magi Palace,” said Yu Mu, also with a dark face, “If it’s Minister Si Wen Ming, we will have nothing to worry about, and only take what they owe us. However, if it’s someone other…hehe, mind the overall situation of the humankind!”

“Overall situation of the humankind?” Ji Hao suddenly felt sick about these few words.

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Edited by SecondRate

Translated by XianXiaWorld