Chapter 58: Avoiding the bait
Tens of ugly men, with speckled light-green skin, were running madly in the jungle while cursing with high-pitched voices. From time to time, they turned their heads around and used crossbow-like weapons to shoot at Ji Hao.
Fist-size metal bullets swished towards Ji Hao. Blasting out from those metal bullets, were poison thorns, lightning, ice-cold air or hurricanes. Each of those bullets’ explosion shattered tens of towering ancient trees into pieces.
However, all those bullets failed to harm even a hair on Ji Hao. A pair of red, fiery wings were slightly shaking on Ji Hao’s back. He trod through the air and easily dodged all those bullets, leaving fragments of illusionary silhouettes behind. The jungle behind him became badly damaged because of the thunderous bangs of the metal bullets.
“Run! Run!”
Those ugly men screamed. While running, they sometimes lowered their bodies and ran with both their arms and legs, just like hyenas;this caused their speed to suddenly double.
Nevertheless, Ji Hao followed them closely behind. It seemed that no matter how hard they were running, they could never escape Ji Hao.
About an hour later, they saw a ray of sunlight in front them. The jungle ended there, and the bright daylight poured down without any hindrances.
Great rumbling of a waterfall that would even make one’s heart shake could be heard. The dense watery-mist rose high into the sunlight. The sunlight spread on the rolling watery mist, and brought up tens of small rainbows, which were shaking and transforming shapes along with the wind.
An over twenty miles wide, rapidly flowing river split the jungle into two. In front of Ji Hao, the riverbed abruptly broke into a thousands of feet high cliff. The river was running down the cliff, forming a spectacular waterfall.
How mysterious and unpredictable nature could be! Right above this magnificent waterfall, a lean, ancient banyan tree, the age of which couldn’t be determined, had rooted on one side of the river, while its aerial roots had grown across the river and inserted firmly into the ground at the other side of the river.
This strong, ancient banyan had grown into an arch bridge above this great river.
Furthermore, naturally or artificially, tens of floating hills were tightly coiled around by the aerial roots of this huge banyan, which were so gigantic that took hundreds of people to wrap their arms around it; those hills could no longer float around, instead, drifting above the waterfall. Amongst these hills, the smallest was only hundreds of feet in radius, while the largest one was nearly seven miles in radius.
Blown by the roaring wind, these hills were slightly swinging in the air. Countless aerial roots of the ancient banyan were dragged and straightened by those hills; every time when the wind blew through those straight aerial roots, a beautiful, silvery, harp-like sound would be created.
The tens of ugly men fled onto the bridge formed by the roots of the banyan, cursing and running towards the other side of the river. The last man turned around and threw six fist-sized, red, metal bullets in a row towards Ji Hao.
The metal bullets bursted instantly up and turned the jungle into a sea of flame for miles around, swallowed innumerable towering trees, and cast a formidable blast wave transversely towards the waterfall, which caused a a great wave to surge high into the air and brought tens of round rainbows up under the rays of the sun.
Ji Hao walked fearlessly into the flame, with his body wrapped by an invisible power, twisting and dissipating all the nearest flame. A faint, fiery light circled around Ji Hao’s body, which reverberated till three feet away from his body. Ji Hao walked effortlessly through the flames, stood on the edge of the jungle, and waved smilingly at the ugly men.
“I’ll see you later,” said Ji Hao.
Ji Hao Paused for a second, laughed out loud, and continued, “go tell to whoever sent you, if they want to draw me out, to better find a couple of young and pretty girls. Sending a bunch of stupid ugly things like you only made me sick.”
Those ugly men had already ran thousands of feet away on the ancient banyan tree trunks, were suddenly stunned when they heard Ji Hao. They turned around, looking at Ji Hao confused, and seemed clueless as what to do.
This was not according to the plan. Why had Ji Hao stopped chasing them and returned to the edge of the forest?
On the other side of the river, tens of Jia Clan warriors, wearing heavy armours, rushed suddenly out of the jungle, while shouting towards Ji Hao discomfitingly. All of them were holding ropes, nets, and other heavy weapons. Some of the warriors with bad tempers even raised their weapons high and swung towards the jungle aside. Suddenly, hundreds of trees were uprooted into the air and destroyed by the violence of those Jia Clan warriors.
Above the waterfall, on a thousands of feet round floating hill, a well dressed three-eyed man, Di Sha, sneered, turned around, and seemed to leave.
“Respectfully Maguspriesstess, you never mentioned that this little guy is so smart! He isn’t even like one of your Souther Wasteland boys; he may be as shrewd and crafty as some as his peers within our Yu Clan!” said Di Sha.
“You have to raise the payment, or you can figure out how to draw the kid out of that damn valley by yourself.”
Jiang Yao was standing beside Di Sha, with her teeth gnashing and growled, “Di Sha! You have this many people! I gave you that much of compensation! You...”
“My dear respectful Maguspriestess, since we’re old friends, you should understand my principle. The warriors of the Blood Fang do not belong to me, they belong to the great lord, who’s supporting me, therefore, I would never risk their lives!” Di Sha interrupted Jiang Yao’s speech.
“Di Luo was fooled by your good words, so he risked it once. We all saw what he got in return from that; lost an eyeball and an arm; I, his elder brother, five-hundred-year older than him, would never do such a stupid thing,” continued Di Sha.
“Do you want me to forcefully attack a fortress within the Fire Crow Clan’s territory, which is guarded by ten-thousand elite warriors and an old guy with a three-legged Fire Crow? Am I that stupid? I’ll never let my warriors die for that little personal enmity of yours.”
Di Sha smiled, then continued in a low voice, “Or, why don’t you do it yourself? Only if you can kill that Fire Crow, flying overhead that kid, I can capture the kid alive.”
Jiang Yao frowned, thought for a while, then shook her head. Kill Mr. Crow? That was too hard. Fire Crow Clan’s Fire Crows had the highest speed among all kinds of fighting beasts; not even the Bi Fang birds of the Bi Fang clan could compete with them. It was way too difficult to get them killed.
Di Luo darted out of the woods, while pointing his finger at Ji Hao, jumping and shouting in rage. Bothe, the eyeball and the arm, he had lost had already grown back.
More Jia Clan warriors rushed out of the jungle along with thousands of black skinned warriors. They leapt onto the ancient banyan, quickly approaching Ji Hao.
However, they stopped quickly, because Mr.Crow had descended from the sky, grabbed Ji Hao’s shoulder and brought him into the air. None of those Jia Clan warriors had the power to fly; they could only glare at Ji Hao, their enemy who was floating in the air.
Ji Hao laughed at Di Luo, who was cursing and shouting on the other side of the river, and said, “Di Luo, right? Are you trying to deal with me with using such a poor little trick? Don’t you feel that you’re a little naive?”
While Ji Hao was laughing, Mr. Crow carried him and rose into the air, transformed into a beam of fiery light, and flew towards the Cold Stream Valley.
Ji Hao jumped onto Mr.Crow’s back, while his laughing face suddenly darkened.
Di Luo and his underlings were still patrolling around the Cold Stream Valley. They, and the people supporting them hadn’t given up on attacking us yet, thought Ji Hao.
This time, Ji Hao easily saw through their decoy, however, other clansmen of the Fire Crow Clan and Qing Yi Clan were not as vigilant as Ji Hao was; they could be tricked and captured alive, which would be a huge problem.