The Magus Era

Chapter 208 - Bug Slave

“So annoying!”

Ji Hao complained, while stretching his arms and standing in front of the other people. His whole body was burning like a human-shaped torch. Countless black bugs opened their jaws, showing their dense and sharp teeth, spurting dark-green saliva, and rushed madly towards Ji Hao.

However, whenever they came at a hundred zhang distance from Ji Hao, their bodies would begin to turn red. If they moved tens of more zhang closer, all their internal organs would be burned, causing their bodies to become solid and empty, black carapaces.

A visible, muddy sphere of wind appeared behind Feng Xing’s body. Within that sphere, a blurred silhouette could be seen twisting madly and intensely. After the appearance of the silhouette, countless tiny streams of whirlwinds blew up from the ground, rolled the empty carapaces up and out of the mine.

Large groups of Rong Mountain Clan people, holding all kinds of tools, happily carried those carapaces away, and piled them orderly up on the ground. Each of them had faces filled with a smile.

The bug queen, which was curled up on the ground, raised its upper body slightly, and stared at Ji Hao viciously, with all eighteen compound eyes on its small head, while spurting out thick, dark-green liquid from its mouth. The queen then began to scream shrilly. Followed by its voice, even more bugs rushed out from the tens of paths, buzzing and screaming, darting towards Ji Hao, showing no fear of death.

Those large bugs, which had over a zhang wide carapaces, shook their heavy body and moved slowly towards Ji Hao. When they were still hundreds of zhang away from Ji Hao, these large bugs would shake their wings intensely and emit wisps of black and silver helix-formed thorns, along with which, their bodies swelled quickly.

These thorns were only a foot long and a-thumb-thick, glowing and especially sharp. Along with high-pitched swishing sounds, these thorns madly darted towards Ji Hao. However, Man Man laughed out loud and leapt up towards Ji Hao. She lifted her pair of hammers up and shielded him behind them. All of those thorns clanged against her hammers then fell on the ground.

Man Man’s hammers were forged by a master craftsman of the Zhu Rong Country with all kinds of natural treasures. Therefore, the naturally-grown thorns of these bugs were unable to do any harm to it.

Elder Iron Yan hurriedly walked up while carefully avoiding the streams of flames spurted out by Ji Hao, then grabbed a black and white thorn. He took out a tiny hammer and hammered hard on that thorn a couple of times, then abruptly yelled out in excitement, “Silver tungsten!! This tungsten steel mine is accompanied by a silver tungsten mine! It is a treasure!! Ten times more valuable than tungsten steel!!”

Iron Yan excitedly raised both of his arms and shouted, “We are blessed by our great ancestors, this silver tungsten mine belongs to our Rong Mountain Clan! With this mine, our Rong Mountain Clan will certainly thrive! Thank our good ancestors, this silver tungsten mine is ours, ours!”

Ji Hao threw a glance at Iron Yan. A mine of silver tungsten was quite rare and hard to find, which was why it was known as a kind of precious mine. Silver tungsten on itself was nothing too special, but after melting it and using it with other metals to form alloys, it would hugely improve the rigidity and the sharpness of such an alloy. For example, if we compare two sharp swords that was crafted by one master blacksmith, using the same materials, except that one contained a bit of silver tungsten and the other didn’t, the one with silver tungsten would be able to cut the other one into two.

In the Southern Wasteland, high-quality weapons that contained silver tungsten was unreasonably expensive. Ji Hao remembered clearly the time when he was three-year-old, a trade caravan passed by their clan, buying all the stored leathers and beast bones that had been saved up by all the people of the Gold Black Mountain for a whole year and a half, with only a hundred silver tungsten weapons. Nearly ten million Gold Black Mountain people had worked very hard for an entire year and a half, saving those leathers and bones bit by bit as their properties, but they traded all that property for only a hundred weapons that contained little bit silver tungsten.

Facing such a valuable mine, Elder Iron Yan’s reaction made Ji Hao feel very unpleasant. When the Rong Mountain Clan begged the Magi Palace to help them for this task of immigration and mine exploitation, they never mentioned a word about the possibility that the tungsten steel mine might be accompanied by a silver tungsten mine. Only one small silver tungsten mine was many times more valuable than all three tungsten mines that they had detected so far.

“Silver tungsten mine, hm, really good stuff.” Ji Hao turned his head around and looked at Iron Yan, whose face was now filled with happiness, and said blandly, “Elder Iron Yan, in the agreement made by your Rong Mountain Clan and the Magi Palace, I don’t think any silver tungsten mine was mentioned, am I right? You have only indicated that this area had three tungsten mines, but never said that this area might also have one or even more silver tungsten mines.”

The tiny little eyes on Yu Mu’s chubby face, which were squeezed badly by his face, making them look tiny, popped suddenly into the size of a baby's fist. He rolled his sleeves and yelled out loudly in excitement, “Ji Hao is right! Elder Iron Yan, now you have to raise our wage, raise it, you must raise it!”

“Hold on for a second, hold on!” Iron Yan was struck with confusion by this unexpected situation. He looked at Ji Hao, and seemed not to know how to react, only yelled back at Ji Hao, “But, but we have already…”

Man Man turned around as well, lifting one of her hammers up and heavily stamped it against the ground. The entire mine instantly shook intensely. The ground even began swaying and a few gigantic rocks nearly fell down from above.

“My Abba is the Fire Gold, Zhu Rong. If Ji Hao wants you to raise the wage, you have to raise the wage! Or I will let my Abba come to talk some sense into you!” said Man Man while proudly holding her head high, “My big brother has said that no one should owe us money!”

Iron Yan paused briefly, and looked at Man Man’s tiny body and her huge pair of hammers, which were much bigger than herself. The grin on his face suddenly changed into canniness, and he then said, “Not a problem, not a problem at all! Hm, we all should be reasonable, right? We truly didn’t know about this silver tungsten mine before, therefore, at first, we should just figure out more information about the mineral resources of this mine.”

Ji Hao nodded, let out even greater streams of flames from his entire body, then walked towards the bug queen, step by step.

The bug queen seemed to be screaming with all of its power. Along with its voice, countless black bugs darted towards Ji Hao. However, none of those bugs managed to even approach Ji Hao. Ji Hao walked slowly up to the bug queen, which was way too fat to move, pulled out his black stone dagger, while his own palm tore open, then quickly drew tens of strange spell symbols on the head of the bug queen with his blood.

The glowing blood slowly seeped into the head of the bug queen, after which, the bug queen began to struggle intensely. About ten minutes later, the spell symbols drawn by Ji Hao activated the power contained in Ji Hao’s blood and left a slave mark on this bug queen’s weak soul, turning it into Ji Hao’s slave.

The bug queen weakly screamed one last time. Followed by this scream, all those black bugs, which were madly attacking Ji Hao earlier, abruptly stopped, and laid quietly down on the ground.

Ji Hao patted this huge bug queen, turned around and said to Iron Yan, “This big thing and her children can help you with the mine exploitation work, you can have them. And we are not going to be too greedy, we only want a set of powerful defensive magic formations, and a moveable and portable small-scale battlefort.”

A canny light sparked for a short while in Iron Yan’s eyes. He was about to open his mouth and say something, when a black bug abruptly darted from a small path with a fist-sized crystal held in its jaws.

The crystal fell out from its jaws and loudly clanged against the ground, dragging everyone’s attention onto it.

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Edited by SecondRate

Translated by XianXiaWorld