Chapter 255 - Refugees
Three shrill swishing sounds tore apart the silence of the woods and sounded like long and sharp sounds of eagles.
Feng Xing hid in the woods on this side of the river and shot three roaring arrows, accurately into the soft and moist soil, right in front of the foot tips of an elderly man. A few spell symbols of these specially crafted arrows lit up one after another. Along with wisps of black smoke that rose from arrows, a few horrible skulls were formed in the air, letting out scary laughs.
A great yet creepy power spread out from the three arrows, instantly shrouding the entire wood within a radius of a few miles.
The arrows that were shot out by Feng Xing were embossed with the spell symbols of the terror inducing magic, which were especially created by the Magi Palace. Once those spell symbols were activated, they would release a sense of power that could make the surrounding creatures feel extremely terrified. Being struck by the terror inducing magic, ordinary Junior Magi would usually scream out in fear and their whole body would become soft and powerless. They wouldn’t even be able to stand steadily.
The group of people coming out from the woods across the river suddenly fell into chaos. Many women and kids began rushing pointlessly towards random directions while screaming and yelling.
However, the terror inducing magic was way too powerful, their legs were even softened by the magic. Even though they had been screaming and crying, trying to run for quite a while, none of them managed to make ten zhang far.
“Who are you, what are you doing here?” Ji Hao pulled out his long black stone dagger, while slowly rubbing the edge of the dagger with his finger. A black beam of light, which had a slightly trace of weird red light mixed in it, abruptly flashed across the edge of the dagger. After that, raging streams of flame darted out from the dagger to zhangs far, even cutting a huge fissure on the surface of the river.
From within the rising clouds of steam, a tall and muscular man, whose body was entirely covered in half-dried blood and who was carrying a steel axe, walked over, directly stamping the three arrows, shot out by Feng Xing, into ashes.
“We’re warriors from the Gold Wolf Clan and these are Cyan Wolf Clan clansmen.” This muscular man shouted from the other side of the river with a harsh voice. His skin was all stained by blood, making it so that Ji Hao couldn’t even clearly see his face. “Our villages were all destroyed and we’re the only survivors. Why did you scare our women and kids?”
Ji Hao swung his arm and let out a three feet long, black bone stick, stuck in the soil beside him. A gust of black smoke suddenly rose seven to eight zhang high from the stick, then quickly condensed into a zhang square banner, which had a totem on it, fluttering along with the wind. On the banner condensed from black smoke, one could clearly see a muscular human silhouette, baring his upper body and standing straight up.
All human clans had their own totem, which were mostly all kinds of powerful creatures that had been protecting them. Only the banners of the human clan alliance, which could be used by all the alliance members, was a straight up standing human silhouette.
“We have come from Pu Ban City and are warriors led by our human emperor. As we were told, we are patrolling around this piece of mountain area, killing every single non-human race monster we see.” Ji Hao showed their identification with the banner, then asked, “You said you are the residents of the Chi Ban Mountain, how can you prove that?”
Those elderly men, women and kids now began desperately screaming and crying. The mand with the axe man yelled out in anger, “How can we proof that? We were hunted by those monsters all the way here, how does that work?”
While speaking, the man abruptly tore his own clothes apart, showing his muscular upper body, which was thickly dotted with all kinds of wounds, dagger marks, sword cuts, and claw scratches. All of his wounds were festered. Some of them were even wrapped by a faint layer of black or green smoke, obviously, those were the highly poisonous ones.
What was even more shocking was that half of a baby-arm-thick black centipede resided in the man’s right side of chest. The centipede’s half body, which was already cut, was still squirming and shaking. Tens of sharp centipede’s claws had even tore his chest muscle into pieces. It was hard to imagine how his internal organs now looked like.
“Such a fierce Gu poison,” murmured Yu Mu, standing behind Ji Hao, “Not pure centipede blood, but a hybrid, mixed by a few different kinds of poisonous snakes and the blood of large Golden Head Centipedes. Good, those non-human race poison users really got something.”
Ji Hao glanced at those wounds and remained silent for a while, then slowly stepped back and said, “See the valley behind us? Move forward along this valley for around eight hundred miles, there is a post set by our human clan alliance. You will find medicine and food in there. There are people guarding in that post who will make good arrangement for you as well.”
Taking a deep breath, Ji Hao seriously continued, “You can only walk along this valley as I have said. If you wander around randomly and bump into other teams like us, you might be killed for being spies. Don’t create any trouble for yourselves, especially when you have these many women and kids under your protection.”
The man with the axe gasped for a while, then his bloody face showed a faint smile, then said, “Eight hundred miles is not too far, I have to find a good medicine man to take this goddamn centipede out of me.”
Hundreds of elderly men, women and kids were holding each other, being looked after by tens of warriors, and slowly moved across this, not so wide neither too rapidly flowing, river. When they were crossing the river, quite a few women and elderly men slipped and fell down. Fortunately, the man with the axe and few other warriors reacted quite fast and grabbed them up immediately.
Finally, hundreds of people had all moved over the river. A group of kids smelled the scent of Yu Mu’s grilled chicken and began crying in hunger one after another.
Ji Hao narrowed his eyes and carefully observed these refugees coming from the north side of the Chi Ban Mountain. The man with the axe and a few elderly men were discussing something in deep voice. The eyes of the few elderly men were filled with expectations, while the axe man looked quite embarrassed.
Ji Hao discovered that every one of these refugees was more or less wounded, especially those kids. Quite a few of them had a deep cut on their backs, nearly cutting their tiny bodies into two. Although they had all got emergency treatment and had been brought back from death by their medicines, they had lost too much blood, and were now feeling extra famished.
Smelling Yu Mu’s grilled chicken, these young kids, who were not yet fully aware of their real situation, began crying even louder.
“Br-brother,” the man with the axe walked over embarrassed, while being stared by those few elderly man with eager eyes, bowed to Ji Hao and said while stammering, “It is just that we have been chased all the way and hadn’t got any time to hunt for food, can we…”
Gritting his teeth, the elderly man took out a fist-sized magic crystal from the bag tied around his waist, handed it over to Ji Hao and said, “Can I trade some food from you with this crystal?”
This was a medium quality crystal with water power. A layer of cotton-shaped thing could be seen clearly in the light blue crystal, it was obviously not a pure piece of crystal. Roughly estimated, this piece of medium quality crystal was worth about fifteen jade coins in Pu Ban City, which was enough for an ordinary family to live a warm and nice life for quite a few years.
Without any hesitation, Ji Hao took over the crystal, measured it in his hand, while looking at the man with complicated expressions. Then he said blandly, “Easy, I see what those monsters have done to you, we’re all humans, we should help each other. Yu Mu, get them some food. You are from the Gold Wolf Clan and Cyan Wolf Clan?”
The man with the axe couldn’t help but gulp, subconsciously looked at the bone fire and said, “Yeah, we’re Gold Wolf Clan warriors. I am Lang Li. Our villages were destroyed, only we made it out here. They’re the people of the Cyan Wolf Clan, one of our brother clans. We met them when we were running away. They were also being chased by those monsters, so we merged into one group and arrived here.”
Ji Hao kept his eyes narrowed, glanced through those Cyan Wolf Clan people, then pointed at a few warriors amongst them.
“They are Cyan Wolf Clan warriors too?”
Those few warriors stood instantly up and saluted Ji Hao from a distance.
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Edited by SecondRate
Translated by XianXiaWorld