Chapter 79: Rainy Season
The rainy season in the Southern Wasteland was a vexing season that made all kinds of predators feel extra bored.
Uncountable raindrops were continuously falling from the sky, and seasoning rivers were madly flushing around the jungle; large pieces of woods were soaked in warm water, and those thick tree-trunks were thickly dotted with colourful mushrooms - the only interesting thing in the rainy season.
Ji Hao squatted down in front of his family’s house, held a huge, wooden mug in his hands; the mug contained a virid, home-made tea water that was emitting a very refreshing herbal scent. From time to time, Ji Hao would lower his head and take a sip from the mug; the tea temporarily dispersed the moisture that had stagnated inside his body.
“The damn weather!” Qing Ying’s complaining came from afar. He had been holding a gigantic leaf upon his head, while walking lazily in the rain, passed by Ji Hao like a walking corpse, then disappeared again slowly in the heavy rain.
Normally, Qing Ying would always have paid extra attention to his appearance, but now he seemed not to have cleaned himself for days. Right upon the pair of his beast-leather boots, one red and one blue, thumb-sized poisonous mushrooms were blooming. Qing Ying didn’t seem to have noticed these two little, uninvited guests at all.
The moist air made all of the bow strings of the Qing Yi Clan’s warriors become soft and powerless. The rising mist blocked their eyesight, and completely deprived their biggest fun from them - hunting; therefore, all of the Qing Yi Clan’s warriors had become lazy and bored, and had lost their energy like bears in hibernation.
The heavy rain never stopped. Inside the Cold Stream Valley, only the mining work had been carrying on.
The tinkling sounds kept coming down from deep under the ground, along with the heavy gasping of those slaves. Those slaves had been carrying baskets of ores up onto the ground, one after another. Large gold and jade pieces were being picked out, carefully and orderly placed aside.
Occasionally, a few pieces of Fire Essence Crystal would be found, then the supervising Fire Crow Clan’s warrior would rush up and collect them, sending these crystals to Ji Zhuo as quickly as they could. Ji Zhuo had stayed in the Cold Stream Valley, helping with guarding the mine and supervising the mining work.
In the flat area beside Ji Hao’s family house, five muscular warriors were fighting against each other bare-handed. Behind their bodies, different coloured smokes were rolling in the air, within which, silhouettes of ferocious beasts had been flashing loomingly.
These five warriors were the strongest warriors amongst Ji Hao’s personal slaves, who could break into the Senior level anytime. Two of them came from the Cyan Cattle Clan, another two came from the Tusk Tiger Clan, and the last one of them came from the Gale Eagle Clan. Their original names were discarded by Ji Hao, and for convenience, Ji Hao directly called them Big Cattle, Small Cattle, Big Tiger, Small Tiger, and Gale Eagle.
Under the heavy rain, the five warriors, who had only pieces of beast fur wrapped around their waists, were fighting against each other with all of their power. The muffled punching sound echoed like thunder coming from the sky; the soft raindrops that fell in their vicinity had been hit by the powerful airwaves that was being brought up by their punches, and were darting everywhere like arrows shot by a powerful bow.
Their blood vessels had expanded under their skin, and looked like poisonous serpents. All five of them were over three meters tall; every single time when they stamped their feet against the ground or waved their fists in the air, a sharp gust of air steam would be brought up and roll the foot-thick water on the ground up into tens of feet high waves that would splash everywhere.
Right where the hearts of Big Cattle and Small Cattle were, in the middle of Big Tiger and Small Tiger’s chests and in the stomach of Gale Eagle, a Magus Acupoint that shone with eye-piercing lights, could be seen. By fighting with all of their power, they were activating their bloodline powers and stimulating their Magus Acupoints as hard as they could, to become powerful senior Magi.
Ji Hao had promised them that the one who would become a genuine Senior Magus first, could select three most beautiful females from the Fire Crow Clan’s slaves to be his wives; as for the poor one who would break as last into the Senior level, Ji Hao would select the strongest and ugliest women from those female slaves to marry him.
Ji Hao had also promised that the first one who would break into the Senior level and became a genuine Senior Magus, would become the leader of his personal slaves, and their families would get better treatment.
“So troublesome!” Ji Hao dropped the wooden mug and grabbed a few herbs from the basket aside, carefully picking a small leaf and put it in his own mouth, after which he had started to chew slowly on it. The rainy season had just started, even peak-level Senior Magi wouldn’t risk going out into the jungle in this kind of horrible weather Ji Hao could only calm his mind down and stay in the house, learning some Qing Yi Clan’s special, secret Maguspriest magic from Qing Fu.
In only more than half a month, Ji Hao had almost memorized all of the characters and specialties of Qing Yi Clan’s special herbal medicines; for every single kind of herbs, Ji Hao had tasted himself, making him gain a deeper understanding about their functions.
During this period of time, Ji Hao had been poisoned by those herbs hundreds of times; many times, if Qing Fu hadn’t been at his side and fed him antidotes on time, he might had already been killed by those poisonous herbs. This reminded him of the horrible memory from back when he had been a little kid, and learned all kinds of Maguspriest magic and secret sorceries under the supervision of Ji Kui and other elderly Maguspriests.
“Too troublesome!” Ji Hao tried hard to ignore the indescribable and extremely bitter flavour in his mouth, while looking at the five slave warriors and shook his head annoyed.
Ji Hao had not thought that once he would take the one hundred and five personal slaves, all of their families would also belong to him and become his slaves as well. He had to take the responsibilities for the food and the daily lives of these hundreds of people all by himself. This made Ji Hao, who had absolutely no other property under his name, terribly worried during such times.
“Those evil old men must have done this on purpose. At least, they should have assigned me a few pieces of farms or grazing grounds,” complained Ji Hao, “this many people, how can I just feed them like this; I have to send them to work to raise animals, farming, even picking wild fruits, whatever. But I have nothing at the moment, plus, it’s the rainy season, we can’t even go hunting. Those old guys must be pestering me on purpose.”
While he was complaining, a few beams of fiery lights swished over from the South. Lead by three Fire Crows, a sphere of blazing, fiery clouds tore apart the raining sky and hovered above the Cold Stream Valley.
Along with a resonant dragon call, a fiery flood dragon stepped out the dense fiery light, and slowly descended from the fiery cloud. On the seventy to eighty feet long back of the flood dragon, a middle-aged man, who was wearing a luxury cloak made from golden silk, and body wrapped around by rolling fiery clouds, was sitting on the flood dragon’s neck with his head held high and eyes filled with scorn. The man looked down at the Cold Stream Valley, which had fallen in a mess because of the rainy season.
A Fire Crow Clan’s elder, Ji Fang, was standing on the back of the leading Fire Crow, and yelled, “Come, call elder Ji Zhuo out...and Ji Xia, Ji Xia! Where is Ji Xia? Damn, come and greet our guest! Haven’t you people seen this lord here?”
The fiery flood dragon was floating in the air, without landing on the ground.
The middle-aged man, sitting on its back, slowly waved his hand and said, “No need to greet, don’t waste my time. This poor place of yours won’t have anything good anyway, don’t serve anything to me and humiliate yourself. Hurry, ten-thousand pieces of Fire Essence crystals, just hurry.”
Ji Fang leapt down from the Fire Crow’s back as if his butt had been burnt by fire, while shouting the names of Ji Zhuo and Ji Xia.
Soon, Ji Hao learned about the purpose of this middle-aged man arrival. The rainy season had been too moist, some noble had send his messenger to take ten-thousand pieces of Fire Essence crystals and to inlay those crystals in the walls, in order to disperse the moisture in some temporary manor[1].
Another purpose was, the temporary manor was lacking in working slaves, therefore, the Fire Crow Clan got the command to carefully select three-thousand young boys and girls, and send them to work in the temporary manor.
The responsibility of escorting and managing those young slaves, and sending them to that manor, had fallen on Ji Hao’s head.
------------------------------------------
[1]Temporary Manor: Like a vacation manor, for short-term stay and relax.