Chapter 108: Raise an Army
Large fiery clouds rose high into the air. Si Wen Ming held the badly wounded Pu Lian in his hand, and rode on Pu Lian’s fiery dragon. He took the tens of guards and flew towards the South. Soon, the fiery clouds disappeared in the rolling dark clouds. Ji Hao, who had been standing on a mountaintop and seeing them off, was unable to see any trail of them.
Ji Zhuo and Ji Xia were standing behind Ji Hao. Both of them had intentionally tried to keep a calm face, however, they had failed to hide the excitement that had filled their pupils.
“Hao, did this lord invite you to go to Pu Ban City?” After a long while of silence, Ji Zhuo finally said with a slightly trembling voice.
“Yeah, uncle Wen Ming said that Pu Ban City is a nice place. When he goes back to that city, he wants me to go with him,” said Ji Hao while gently patting Mr. Crow, who had been huddled in his arms. Mr. Crow had taken a few healing-pills given by Si Wen Ming and had been in a deep sleep during these couple of days.
“Indeed, Pu Ban City is a really nice place,” said Ji Zhuo while raising his head, seemingly recalling his own experience, “That city is the main capital of our human-kind, the center of the world that has people gathered from every different clan. Compared to Pu Ban City, our Fire Crow Clan, and even big-scale clans like the Bi Fang Clan, Rosefinch Clan and Fiery Dragon Clan, are all small as ants.”
“Pu Ban City is an amazing place.” Ji Zhuo slapped hard on Ji Hao’s shoulder and continued, “When the baby eagle grows up, it should leave the nest and fly into the higher sky. As long as the strong wind is not breaking its wings, it should try its best and reach a higher altitude. Hao, you have always been different from the other kids in the clan, you have an unimaginable future.”
Ji Hao looked at the South, where the legendary Zhu Rong country, the country of gods, was located.
He thought of Po, that generous, passionate and amiable friend of his; he had promised Po, that when Po came back to the South, he would go with him and become one of his tutor, Taoist priest Yu Yu’s students.
However, Si Wen Ming and the Pu Ban city he had been talking about, had thrown Ji Hao into a dilemma.
The rainy season showed no sign of ending yet. The endless rain made Ji Hao feel as if his whole body was about to go moody. It had been half a month since Si Wen Ming had left the Cold Stream Valley. During this period of time, the only good news was that both Ji Xia and Qing Fu’s injuries had completely been healed.
What had healed them was not only Qing Fu’s powerful medicine, but Si Wen Ming had left a few pills before he had left and those few pills were the real reason that Ji Xia and Qing Fu had recovered so quickly.
The Cold Stream Valley was peaceful and quiet as always. Tens of thousands of mining slaves were working hard every day and night, digging out high-quality gold and jade from under the ground. Another newly opened storage-cave had been filled with gold and jade pieces. Each day, Ji Zhuo and Ji Xia had to count the newly acquired wealth by themselves.
The transportation system of the Southern Wasteland jungle had never been convenient, together with the floods that was caused by the endless rain, the Cold Stream Valley had almost become an isolated place. Even the connections between the nearest few Fire Crow branch clans and the Cold Stream Valley had been broken.
Fortunately, Ji Zhuo was an elder of the Fire Crow Clan, therefore, every three days, a Fire Crow would fly to the Cold Stream Valley from the Gold Black Mountain, and bring Ji Zhuo a beast bone that had messages carved in it. This was how Ji Hao received news from the outside world. From these messages, he had also heard that beneath this peaceful appearance, how dangerous the Fire Crow Clan was at the moment.
Jiang Yao’s death hadn’t cause any effect, both Jiang Bo and Ji Shu seemed to have completely forgotten this woman.
Three days after Si Wen Ming had left the Cold Stream Valley and headed to the South, Jiang Bo claimed that he had received the will of their ancestors’ souls, and gained the support of part of Bi Fang Clan’s elders and Magus Priests, after which they passed the decision of starting a war against the Water Ape Clan.
The Water Ape Clan was also called the Blood-eyes Water Ape clan. The Blood-eyes Water Ape was a powerful ancient creature that was born naturally with the power to control water, and lived at the bottom of the water. Their body was shaped similarly to apes, and their bones were as hard as iron. They also possessed incomparable great strength. They were born with a pair of blood-red eyes, which had the magical power that was able to control others’ souls, added with their powerful bodies, the Blood-eyes Water Ape had become a very scary creature that was extremely hard to deal with.
Similar to the relationship between the Bi Fang Clan and the Fire Crow Clan, the Black Water Serpent Clan was one of the dependent clans of the Water Ape clan.
The Southern Wasteland was the native territory of the Zhu Rong family. The Blood-eyes Water Ape Clan’s territory was not exactly in the Southern Wasteland, instead, their territory was located at the northeast of the Southern Wasteland, on another land ten-thousand miles away from the Southern Wasteland land. The Black Water Serpent Clan was only playing the vanguard role for the Water Ape Clan’s to invade the Southern Wasteland.
The Bi Fang Clan had decided to start a great war against the Water Ape Clan. As one of the powerful dependent clans of the Bi Fang Clan, and a clan that had to interdigitate territories with the Black Water Serpent Clan, and had been seeing the Black Water Serpent Clan as their archenemy for generations, the Fire Crow Clan had started the preparation right after they got the message from the Bi Fang Clan. With Ji Shu’s order, all of the Senior Magi, Junior Magi in and above the seventh-level, and half of the peak-level Novice Magi, from thousands of different scale Fire Crow branch clans, started gathering at the Gold Black Mountain.
The Southern Wasteland instantly became noisy. Birds, which were used for sending messages for the Bi Fang Clan, had been flying all around the jungle, delivering the irresistible orders to tens of different scale Bi Fang Clan’s dependent clans. The Flame Horse Clan and the Fiery Tiger Clan, which were also Bi Fang Clan’s dependent clan, and were located nearest from the Fire Crow Clan, had already gathered all of the elite warriors of their clans, and were sending large amounts of warriors towards the Gold Black Mountain.
Even the Rosefinch Clan, which was as powerful as the Bi Fang Clan, and had a border in the Southern Wasteland, had responded to the Bi Fang Clan’s request by transferring a troop of elite warriors to reinforce the Bi Fang Clan’s army.
A few days after Ji Xia and Qing Fu had completely recovered from injuries, Ji Xia received an order from the Gold Black Mountain and had sent all of the gold and jade there was in storage, as well as all of the fire essence crystals, to the Gold Black Mountain.
According to the news from Ji Zhuo, this wealth was traded for large amounts of high-quality armours and weapons, and distributed to the Fire Crow Clan’s warriors.
Once the new weapons and armours had arrived at the Gold Black Mountain, large groups of Fire Crow Clan’s warriors instantly headed to the Black Water Serpent Clan’s territory, and launched surprise attacks from every direction. In the first day after the war had started, the Fire Crow Clan had taken the advantage of surprise attacks, quickly eliminating over a hundred different scale branch clans of the Black Water Serpent Clan, and seized hundreds of rich hunting grounds and hundreds of large mines.
However, the Black Water Serpent Clan had been fighting against the Fire Crow Clan for centuries, this time, they reacted extremely fast, quickly gathering large amounts of warriors, and started fighting against the Fire Crow Clan with all of their powers; after this, the Fire Crow Clan’s injuries and death toll rate began rising rapidly, even tens of Senior Magi had fallen in the battle during the past couple of days.
“Idiots!” yelled Ji Zhuo in rage when he received the latest battlefield report, and couldn’t help but stamp his feet hard against the ground.
Ji Hao nodded his head and agreed. Starting a war against the Black Water Serpent Clan in the raining season, how stupid was this?!
The most powerful fighting force of the Fire Crow Clan were those gigantic Fire Crows; these Fire Crows flying speed would lower by half during the raining season, additionally, the down pouring rain would largely weaken the Fire Crow Clan warrior’s fire-power related special abilities. On the contrary, both the Black Water Serpent Clan’s warriors and their battle beasts all possessed water-related power, fighting in the raining season was just like being a fish in the water to them, even their power improved by many times in this season.
In this situation, the Fire Crow Clan, which had taken the absolute advantage, soon fell into a difficult situation.
Although the Flame Horse Clan and the Fire Tiger Clan had been continuously sending elite warriors as reinforcement, facing those rivers in flood and mountain torrents that burst out from time to time, these three clans, who mainly possessed the fire-related power, had been terribly defeated by the Black Water Serpent Clan.
Especially when those horned serpents of the Black Water Serpent Clan launched sneak attacks, Fire Crow Clan’s Senior Magi were lucky to have the Fire Crows to help, and could fly into the air and flee away within a few seconds. Compared to them, the Senior Magi from the Flame Horse Clan and the Fire Tiger Clan had completely no flight abilities, therefore, within the past seven to eight days, nearly a hundred Senior Magi from the Flame Horse Clan and the Fire Tiger Clan had been killed in the battle, while the Fire Crow Clan only lost a few Senior Magi.
Ten days after the war had started, in the morning, when Ji Hao just had woken up, a high-pitched clarion sound came from outside of the Cold Stream Valley.
Three banners that had totems painted on them were fluttering outside of the valley, one horned serpent, one vicious water serpent and one armoured turtle. These three banners rose into the air from the jungle surrounding the Cold Stream Valley simultaneously.
The Cold Stream Valley had been encircled by large groups of elite warriors, who had come from unknown paths.