The Magus Era

Note: ‘Magus treasure’ has been replaced by ‘magic treasure’.

Chapter 64: Soul-Calling

“My little bird!” cried Qing Ying, whose body was slightly trembling; he sorrowfully looked at Ji Hao and said, “now we can’t inform your Abba; Hao, what should we do?”

“Sit and wait,” said Ji Hao in a relaxed tone, he grabbed a branch of thorns, and fiddled with it. “I’m the bait, and my Abba is the fish. Let’s just take a seat and wait for a while; let’s see what these people got.”

“My poor little bird!” Qing Ying yelled with a darkened face. Behind his body, a sharp, cyan gust of wind started rotating quickly. He gnashed his teeth and said, “When I was a little kid, and just had learned to talk, Amma had incubated that little sparrow for me, I...I’ve always considered it as my brother!”

Cyan light-streams started gushing into the longbow that Qing Ying held in his hands, and spell symbols lit up on the surface of the longbow one after another; within a blink of an eye, over a hundred spell symbols had lit up on the long bow.

Ji Hao stared stunned at Qing Ying’s longbow. Over a hundred spell symbols! This longbow was the most powerful Magic treasure Ji Hao had ever seen in his life, except the Sui Ren Cane. Compared with this long bow, Qing Fu’s ‘thorns of life and death’ and the ‘mu sheng pearl’ were quite weak.

“So unfair,” murmured Ji Hao.

“My sister married to a man from the Fire Crow Clan; how could those elders let her take the most powerful inherited Magic treasure away?” sniffed Qing Ying and said, “My bow, is the most powerful inherited Magic treasure of the Qing Yi Clan...hmm...the most powerful for now.”

Qing Yi fit three long arrows on the bow string and pulled the bow back, aimed at the tall and sturdy man who had been provoking loudly from across the river.

The man was over twenty feet tall; his head was densely dotted with small and sharp horns; his face was as twisted as a ghost, and his bared body was covered in ghost-face-like totems; at the moment, he was waving the huge, black wooden stake, skipping and provoking towards the clifftop.

“Oy! The cowards of the Fire Crow Clan! Come and fight! I am Red Horn of the Ghost Clan! Come on! Who’s going to fight me!”

Swoosh!

Followed by a slight rustling sound of the wind, which was as gentle as the sigh of a young girl, the three long arrows suddenly disappeared.

In the next moment, the three arrows abruptly showed up right in front of Red Horn’s face. Red Horn was tall and muscular, but his large body moved relatively sluggish; he let out a shout in shock, his two soup-ladle-sized eyeballs were pierced by two arrows, while the third long arrow poked into his mouth. The arrows were rotating fast and arrowheads drilled quickly out from the back of his neck.

Large amounts of black blood were gushing out of his wounds. Red Horn’s eyes had even started spurting blood ceaselessly. He cursed in pain, grabbed the arrows with his hands and pulled them out hard.

A large piece of black air puffed out from Red Horn’s body, slowly, his body turned translucent. After a while, his body slowly turned back to normal, by which time, all wounds had completely gone; even the punctured eyeballs were healed, as if he had never been hurt by those arrows.

“Haha! This kind of attacks are all ineffective to our Ghost Clan’s warriors!” shouted Red Horn. He raised the wooden stake high and yelled towards the clifftop, “Are you Fire Crow Clan’s warriors all cowards? Are you? Come on, give me one fighter, let me smash your head! Haha!”

The cheering and shouting coming from the jungle were growing louder and louder. Large groups of warriors started rushing out of the jungle, leaped high into the air, flew across the river and carefully approached the cliff.

Thousands of warriors had come across the river; amongst these warriors, were tens of over twenty feet tall Ghost Clan’s warriors, all of whom had scary, ghost-like faces; every step they walked, made the earth lightly tremble.

“Hao!” Qing Ying turned back and looked at Ji Hao.

“Hold and wait!” said Ji Hao calmly, “wait, let’s see what they really want.”

Ji Hao rubbed the little ear of the fat bear, then sat on the ground; it seemed that he didn’t take those approaching enemies serious at all.

Inside the dense jungle, about twenty miles away from the Fire Leopard Clan’s village, was a flat area that had artificially been opened up. Jiang Yao was wearing an extremely gorgeous silk cloak, stood on the edge of that area, with her head held high.

Jiang Xue, who was once captured by Black Water Jiao and Black Water Gui, was also wearing a luxury cloak and standing beside Jiang Yao, with her teeth gnashing; showing a deep-rooted hatred on her face. “My good aunt, I want Ji Hao dead, I’ll chop him, slice him into pieces, I’ll feed the dirtiest bugs with his flesh!” cursed Jiang Xue.

Jiang Yao was smiling, and while slowly and gently stroking the delicate and tender face of Jiang Xue she said, “He will certainly die...hmm...what do you think of Ji Mu’s son? I know he’s not as good as Wu, but if you marry him, I, your aunt, will treat you as my own daughter!”

“Only if Ji Hao dies!” said Jiang Xue in a low voice while gnashing her teeth; viciousness flashed through her eyes.

“Then we will make him die!”Jiang Yao’s beautiful face slightly twisted too, “if it wasn’t for him, my Wu, my dear son wouldn’t die...If it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t get caught by that old bastard, Black Water Gui, and I wouldn’t have to pay that much to trade you back!”

From the jungle, a gigantic horned-serpent slowly wriggled out; Black Water Jiao was standing on the head of the horned-serpent, while greedily staring at the sexy body of Jiang Yao up and down, and said, “Jiang Yao, there is no need to speak in this way. At least, now we have a common target, don’t we? We had a deal, the heads of Ji Xia and his son are mine.”

After taking a deep breath, Black Water Jiao continued proudly, “the Holy Land of my clan offered a reward, that only if I can bring the head of Ji Xia back and offer it to our ancestors, I can have a inherited Magic Treasure. If...added with the head of Ji Hao, then the bloodline of the Fire Crow Clan’s Magus King will be thoroughly been eliminated. Imagine, how much extra rewards I can get for that?”

“Sh!”

On the middle of the flat area, a black skinned, short and scrawny old Maguspriest was standing in front of a black altar, which was built with black human bones; he let out a slight ‘sh’ towards Jiang Yao and Black Water Jiao, then turned around and mumbled in a very low voice, “you people better be quiet, the spirit-calling magic of our Demon Clan is unimaginably powerful...But, you have to be quiet! If you accidentally disturb our ancestors, don’t blame me for any unpredictable dangers!”

Jiang Yao and Jiang Xue instantly shut their mouths when they heard the old Maguspriest.

Black Water Jiao stared at the old Maguspriest; a trace of greediness and ferociousness flashed through his eyes, that seemed hard to control.

The old Maguspriest took a black bone stick out, and started a very weird dance around the altar; in the meanwhile, he was whispering a strange spell, Ji Hao’s name appeared in that spell from time to time.

A little doll, made of human skin, had been placed on the altar; a strand of hair was slightly fluttering around the waist of the doll.

Jiang Yao looked at that strand of hair and showed a proud smile around the corner of her mouth. She spent quite an effort on finding this few hairs of Ji Hao from Ji Xia’s home in the Gold Black Mountain, but all those efforts seemed to be worth by now.

If she only could have Ji Xia’s and Ji Hao’s blood...hehe…

The little human-skin doll suddenly jumped up from the altar, followed the movements of the old Maguspriest and moved its arms and legs, and started dancing like a real person.

A wisp of black smoke was being released from the altar, and slowly condensed into a twisted face that had no eyes, mouth, nose and ears.

“Ji~~~Hao~~~”

The scary face suddenly let out a high-pitched scream. Bodies of all the insects and birds in the surrounding jungle exploded simultaneously.

Behind the Fire Leopard Clan’s village, on the clifftop, Ji Hao’s body suddenly shook; a blood-red light blocked his sight, and he leapt up from the ground as if he was hit by electricity.

Qing Ying opened his mouth and gazed at Ji Hao stunned. Ji Hao seemed unable to control his own body. He dashed out along the trail hidden in thorns in big steps. After only the span of a few breaths, he was about to run out of the area covered in thorns.