Chapter 52: First Encounter
“Ha!”
Hot steam rose from Ji Hao’s head, while his blood vessels swelled and bulged under his skin. Ji Hao leapt down from a gigantic tree, which reached towards the sky, and threw a heavy punch towards the carriage-sized head of a blood-eyed bear, which approached the level of a peak Junior Magus.
The blood-eyed bear roared madly to the sky, swinging its tens of feet long arms towards Ji Hao, which started two gusts of fierce winds.
There were countless wild beasts living in the Southern Wasteland jungle. This blood-eyed bear was as powerful as a peak level Junior Magus; to achieve this level, it must have experienced innumerable fights and bloodshed; one could never tell how many times it survived from grave danger. The bear sensed Ji Hao’s power, which was not very strong; the bear felt that this tiny human here was just as weak as the prey that it had slaughtered and eaten thousands of times.
Ji Hao breathed deeply and let out a great growl; at the same time, he tightened his arms, his power flowed through his tendons and muscles even making a tweedle-like noise. Followed by a loud bang, the paws of the blood-eyed bear were shattered by Ji Hao’s punch.
The bear howled in panic; in the next moment, Ji Hao lightly punched the bear’s head, blowing its huge head open; brain matter splashed everywhere. A pungent, blood odor slowly permeated through the jungle.
“Ho!”
Ji Hao shouted towards the sky. Multicoloured lights flashed continuously through his muscles, blood, bones, and internal organs, like a river of light which flushed inside his body. A great heat emitted from the multicolored flame in his lower abdomen and spread to the other parts of his body. Ji Hao’s physical strength was quickly and continuousely improving.
Normally, the physical strength of wild beasts is far greater than magi of the same level. The blood-eyed bear was an extremely powerful inhabitant in this jungle, however, this beast, which was many times stronger than a peak level Fire Crow Clan Junior Magus, was just now killed by Ji Hao with only his physical strength.
Ji Hao opened his mouth, spit out a wisp of white steam as far as hundreds of feet away, grabbed the bear’s body which was nearly eighty feet long, and threw it to Qing Ying, who stood hundreds of feet away and held his long bow. With a swishing sound, the bear’s heavy body was sent flying towards Qing Ying, like a small mountain.
Between Qing Ying’s chest and abdomen, a sphere of looming light was shining, which meant that he was about to awaken his first magus acupoint; however, Qing Ying let out a scream as he saw the bear’s body, which was hurling towards him, dropping his bow and arrows in a flurry, raising his arms, and catching the bear’s body with all of his strength.
“My dear god! Sister! Your son is a freak! He just can’t stop embarrassing me!” Qing Ying complained loudly. His body was quivering intensely; he barely caught the bear’s body, quickly taking tens of steps back, then finally steadied his feet.
“Hao! I, your uncle, am not one of your Fire Crow Clan crazywarriors! I’m an archer from the Qing Yi Clan, an archer! Do you understand?” yelled Qing Ying, while dropping the bear’s body. His face was slightly flushed.
Senior Magi from different clans have very different specialities.
The Fire Crow Clan warriors were extremely strong, their explosive force was even more powerful. The potential of the Fire Crow Clan warriors’ physical strength was ranked in the top ten amongst all clans of the Southern Wasteland.
On the contrary, Senior Magi from the Qing Yi Clan were experts in all types of archery skills; generally, their physical strength was no better than even thirty percent of the physical strength of their fellow Fire Crow Clan warriors; however, they had the highest speed amongst the warriors of the entire Southern Wasteland.
Ji Hao wiped the sweat from his forehead, sensing the multicoloured flame in his lower abdomen, which was growing brighter and bigger, laughed happily out loudand said, “Uncle! Don’t blame me! You should practice your physical strength more! My Amma said you’re too slim and tender. This way, you’re going to make women feel as though you’re not reliable and it’ll be hard for you to find a good wife!”
Qing Ying’s face darkened, he jumped up and started yelling at Ji Hao.
The angrier Qing Ying got, the happier Ji Hao was. Ji Hao laughed even louder; his loud laughter reverbrated through the jungle along with the morning breeze.
It had been more than half a month since the Black Water Serpent Clan and Blood Fang attacked the Cold Stream Valley. Thereafter, the Fire Crow Clan promptly sent troops and, added with the presence of Ji Zhuo, the Cold Stream Valley was quiet and peaceful. During the last half month, not a single suspicious person was found.
Therefore, Ji Hao focused on training his physical strength and went hunting in the jungle with Qing Ying and a group of clansmen every morning.
The portion of Senior Magi blood from Ji Xia and Qing Fu, which was released from Ji Kui’s magic seal when the seal accidentally broke, was fully absorbed by Ji Hao’s body during the past night. By now, Ji Hao’s physical power had surpassed any ordinary Junior Magus.
At the moment, the human-head-sized, golden-red Senior Magus blood, which floated above the multicoloured flame, was from Ji Xiao’s body.
Ji Hao had done the math; once his body fully absorbed Ji Xiao’s Senior Magus blood and if he consumed a certain amount of beasts during this period, he would never be able to keep his Golden Fire Crow bloodline power from upgradinglike he was doing now. He had to trigger his bloodline’s power and start training as a peak level Novice Magus.
Ji Hao was anticipating the special talent his bloodline’s power would grant him.
The Three-legged Golden Fire Crow was one of the few legendary, powerful creatures alive during the ancient times. Every kind of special talent passed on through the Golden Fire Crow bloodline could create one powerful enough to look down on the whole world. If one could inherit more than one of those special talents, he would become even more powerful.
While Ji Hao gazed at the jungle and thought about all those special talents, a gentle and grace voice came from further within the jungle, “My friend over there, please be careful. An evil creature is coming towards you.”
Before the voice faded, a gust of fierce wind suddenly arrived with a pungent scent. The black wind kicked up a countless amount of small stones and blew towards Ji Hao; wisps of strange, green flames were attached to those stones. The chill of the black wind pierced Ji Hao’s bones; Ji Hao’s body froze after being touched slightly by the wind, he soon lost control of half of his body.
Ji Hao let out a shout, nine spell symbols simultaneously appeared around his pupils; his Yuan Dan[1] started rotating quickly, the pure internal power was quickly sent to his whole body; under the stimulation of this power, Ji Hao felt his blood boiling. His body instantly heated up, a looming fiery light appeared and enveloped his body.
The black wind collided into the looming fiery light, making a loud popping noise; countless stones exploded, the explosive force of every single stone was as powerful as the heavy punch of a wild beast that reached the level of a Junior Magus. Ji Hao could handle the explosive power of one or two stones easily; the explosive power of hundreds, or even thousands of stones was completely endurable for Ji Hao with his current physical strength.
However, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of stones were flying towards him along with the fierce wind. Under great pressure, Ji Hao staggered back; the looming light that enveloped his body was now shaking, seemingly about to be crushed the black wind.
With a swishing sound, a nearly hundred-foot-long, gigantic scorpion, with a pair of transparent wings on its back and a pure black shell decorated with dark green patterns, darted out of the jungle. The poisonous scorpion saw Ji Hao from quite a long distance, then opened its mouth and blew another gust of fierce black wind towards Ji Hao along with countless stones and wisps of green flames.
Qing Ying let out a growl, then the shouts of Qing Yi Clan and Fire Crow Clan warriors came from different directions; tens of arrows darted towards the scorpion from every direction, blocking every possible route. However, the scorpion moved extremely fast, even the arrows of Qing Yi Clan warriors couldn’t stop it before it attacked Ji Hao.
“Evil creature! How dare you hurt people again!” The gentle and graceful voice came again. Along with the voice, an over ten-foot-tall young man, wearing a white long robe made of flax and hair hung loosely, flew out of the jungle with a gust of cool wind under his feet. The young man raised his hand, sending a beam of cyan light towards Ji Hao. The cyan light transformed into a round, light shield in front of Ji Hao, blocking the black wind, green fire, and stones from the scorpion.
Following that, the young man swung his arm again; a huge golded cube rose from the ground into the sky, rotated in the air, and then heavily hit the head of the scorpion.
Followed by a thundering crash, the golden cube smashed the scorpion’s head, and even left a large pit tens of feet in radius on the ground.
Ji Hao stared at the young man in shock and surprise. He was so excited that his hands were even trembling. The young man just controlled the power of nature with his own power, manipulating the great natural power which was hundreds of times stronger than his own power. The magic sorcery this young man just used was based on the same theory as the Mantra Dan!
Similar to Ji Hao, this young man was practicing controlling nature’s power, which was vastly different from the Southern Wasteland sorceries.
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[1] Yuan Dan: Existing in Ji Hao’s spiritual space in the form of a sphere, without a true form. It was condensed by his internal power, can be triggered, and release power under his will.