Chapter 493: Pay Tribute
Translator: Editor:
It had been over a year since Ji Hao arrived in Yao Mountain. Although he had been busy all the time, he always scheduled some time to cultivate himself every day.
As the heavy punch was launched, tens of thousands of red, dazzling light spots emerged from Ji Hao’s skin. The bright light emitted by those spots penetrated the Gold Crow cloak and allowed people to see them clearly. By now, the number of his awakened Magus Acupoints had exceeded a hundred thousand. Bright light spots thickly covered his body, sparkling like stars in the sky and made his entire body wrapped in a splendid glow, seeming more and more extraordinary.
The move of Earth-Splitting was launched with all of his power. The air vibrated while Ji Hao wielded his fist. He felt that his fist was wrapped by an extremely sticky glue, and as his fist moved forward inch by inch, he could clearly sense the counterforce given by the air. But this feeling disappeared within a moment. Following a thunderous boom, explosive air streams burst from Ji Hao’s fist as his fist bumped against the bearded man’s. A shrill howl was caused immediately. Large streams of blood ejected out from both the man and Ji Hao’ fists.
The counterforce caused by the move of Earth-Splitting was especially fierce. The bones in Ji Hao’s right arm were all shattered, and tens of long and deep slashes appeared on his skin and muscles. Blood gushed out ceaselessly, but as Ji Hao breathed deeply, the blood that flew out from his body instantly turned around and flew right back to the wounds. Next, all wounds healed themselves in no time, as if he had never been injured at all.
As for the sturdy man, he howled loudly in pain as his body was sent flying backward for tens of miles like a shooting cannonball.
His body swiftly flew across the blowing gale and falling snow, bumping countless snowflakes into pieces and bringing up a long, transparent trace in the air. Everyone who had been fighting down below heard the sound of his bones cracking.
This sturdy man was a newly promoted Magus King, had a tough body and great physical strength. Yet Ji Hao’s move of Earth-Splitting was incomparably powerful, which broke every piece of bone of this Magus King due to the vibrations.
More dreadfully, Ji Hao’s move of Earth-splitting was way more than a simple punch, with waves of power lingering in the man’s body. The tough body of this Magus Kings healed itself while that hidden power inside his body broke his bones over and over again. Therefore, the bone cracking noise coming from this man’s body could be heard endlessly, making him scream in pain. This was actually more painful and horrible than being sliced into tens of thousands of pieces.
A wave of raging roars rose from the mountain area afar, along with which, over a hundred raggedly dressed Senior Magi leaped high into the air and moved swiftly over as if they were flying in the air.
Behind them, those Senior Magi warriors under Ji Hao’s command and stationed in this village caught up as well. Ji Hao cast a glance at them and found that from the two-hundred Senior Magi warriors, over twenty were actually held in the arms of the other. These over twenty warriors were severely injured and about to die, their bodies had lost the ability of self-healing.
From the enemy launching the attack to Ji Hao arriving and defeating that Magus King, all this happened in no more than the span of three breaths.
But in such a short span of time, warriors under Ji Hao’s command were injured so badly. If Ji Hao didn’t arrive timely, those Senior Magi would have been slaughtered by that bearded Magus King already.
Snorting coldly, Ji Hao took out three life-saving pills given by Po. With his right hand, he crushed the three pills into powder and spread the powder out. A strong wind rolled up the puff of powder, which transformed into streams of refreshing air, speedily flowing tens of miles away and drilling into the nostrils of those badly injured Senior Magi.
The bodies of those injured Senior Magi instantly quivered, and big streams of dark-colored blood gushed out of their mouth, ears, and nostrils. After the span of a few breaths, they leaped up simultaneously and shouted out towards the sky while dashing towards Ji Hao.
Everyone saw what Ji Hao did. Ji Hao’s people cheered out by shouting his title of Earl Yao, while the enemies instantly lost their morale. The enemies who had rushed into the village drew back quickly out towards that bearded Magus King.
That bearded Magus King lied on the ground, struggling and howling. After whole ten minutes, the hidden power Ji Hao put into his body was finally consumed up and he stood back up while gasping heavily. By then, his darkened face had already turned deathly pale.
Although the punch by Ji Hao didn’t kill him, seventy to eighty percent of his life-force had been consumed already. Without high-quality magic medicine to replenish his body and purely depending on the life-force contained in the beast meat that he was going to eat, he might need more than a year of good rest to let his body fully recover.
“Kid!” The bearded Magus King leaped up, stood in midair and flew towards Ji Hao for tens of miles, stopping when he was around five hundred meters away from Ji Hao. He fearfully glanced at Mr. Crow who had been floating in the air, then glanced at the two furious magic fire snakes. After that, he gnashed his teeth and yelled at Ji Hao, “Kid, are you that Earl Yao?”
Ji Hao gave a cold smile, looking at the bearded man and responded, “I am Earl Yao, named Ji Hao. Why did you attack my village and my people?”
The bearded man patted on his own stomach and continued yelling loudly, “We don’t have anything to eat or to drink. So many clansmen of ours are starving and freezing to death. What could we do if we don’t rob you? Do you want me to hunt and feed so many people? I’m not a God, and I cannot do that!”
Ji Hao looked at the bearded man, frowned and asked, “Have you been living in here all the time?”
The bearded man raised his head and responded loudly, “We chased a group of buffalos here, but we had too many old people and children in our clan so we couldn’t move as fast as those animals, and we lost that group of buffalos. It was then that we found your village. What else could we do but launch the attack and rob you?”
Looking at this bearded man who had been talking rumblingly as if he had done nothing wrong, Ji Hao couldn’t help but shake his head.
This Clan wasn’t weak at all. They had hundreds of thousands of clansmen, tens of thousands of warriors, over a hundred Senior Magi, and even a Magus King. But in a place like Yao Mountain which was extremely fertile, how could they end up in such a poor shape? A little bit of work and thinking could have saved them from the cold and hunger that they had been suffering now.
The only explanation was that this clan had completely no idea about developing and self-sufficiency. Instead, they had been feeding on whatever nature gave them. Therefore, once any natural or man-made disasters attacked, they could only become bandits.
Judging by this bearded man’s behavior and language, this wasn’t the first robbery that he and his people committed. Could more clans like this actually be existing in Yao Mountain territory?
Muffled thunder-like noises came from a long distance away, along with the special and resonant roar of dark cloud beasts coming from that direction. Zhamu and the nearly ten-thousand heavily armored warriors under his command finally arrived by mounting on dark cloud beasts. Dark-kind warriors under his command were all at the level of Senior Magi. The power vibrations released from their bodies were quite strong. When the army of dark-kind warriors scattered and formed an arc-shaped formation while swiftly approaching, that strong power vibration made the looks of this bearded man and those Senior Magi standing behind him change intensely.
These nearly ten thousand warriors brought by Zhamu were powerful enough to slaughter all the bearded man’s clansmen out.
Facing ten-thousand elite Senior Magi, even if the bearded man could kill a big half of them, he would eventually die of exhaustion, not to mention that those dark cloud beasts mounted by those dark-kind warriors were extra powerful battling beasts.
“Oi, don’t kill us all!” The bearded man’s look changed instantly as he yelled loudly at Ji Hao.
“I’ll give you food to eat, give you clothes to wear, houses to live, farmlands to plow and sow. Kneel and swear to be my clansmen!” Ji Hao looked at the bearded man and said a bit angrily, “Be my clansmen, or I’ll kill you all. You have to understand that I cannot let hundreds of thousands of you freely mess around in my territory. Every beast, every grass in this piece of land is my personal property!”
The bearded man’s eyeballs rolled in his eye sockets. Meanwhile, over ten elderly men with white hair walked over slowly with a group of people.
These elderly men walked to Ji Hao with some difficulty, then thudded their knees loudly on the ground.
“Respectful lord, we are willing to be your clansmen, to be under your protection. In order to present our sincerity, please allow us to offer you the most beautiful flower of ours!”
A few elderly men wielded their hands and following that, a stunningly beautiful young girl tremblingly walked out.