The Magus Era

“Haha! haha! hahaha!”

In the jungle, Di Luo, who was being carried by Toao, was laughing insanely, while blood was flowing from his mouth, spasmodically.

“Toba! Toao! I can’t believe that a bunch of barbarians hurt me so badly! We, the ‘Blood Tooth’, have caught and sold over a million slaves in this South Wastelands jungle. No one was ever able to hurt me, not even a little bit! But this time I’ve been wounded severely!”

“Captain, we’ll definitely return and we will bring Captain Di Sha and his team with us!”

Toba snapped the thick vines in their path, while comforting Di Luo with a solemn voice.

Di Luo continued to laugh insanely for a while, after which he gnashed his teeth and started to curse Ji Hao viciously.

“Stop!” commanded Di Luo suddenly.

Toba, Toao and the tens of warriors, who were walking behind them, stopped immediately. Toao put Di Luo carefully down.

Di Luo frowned and focussed his gaze on a five-finger-wide, exquisite, cyan bracelet around his left wrist. A faint, cyan light flashed through the bracelet and a beautiful, silk cloak appeared in Di Luo’s hands.

Tens of miles away, Ji Hao’s spying-crow was hiding behind branches and watching them. When the spying-crow saw the bracelet, its pupils instantly shrunk.

In the Cold Stream Valley, Ji Hao was controlling the spying-crow with his magic power. When he received the vision from the spying-crow, he grinded his teeth and his heart started to beat faster.

“Spatial Bracelet? The legendary Spatial Bracelet? In my previous life, the Spatial bracelet was a precious treasure, existing only in legends. Even in this life, which is filled with magic, it’s seems rare, because no one, not even the most knowledgeable elder Magusreist in the Fire Crow Clan, has mentioned it, not even once! Does this Di Luo guy really posses the spatial bracelet from the legends?” exclaimed Ji Hao in his head.

His heart was pounding in his chest, the veins on his forehead formed dark, visible lines and his blood boiled from the excitement. He had a strong desire to mount Mr. Crow and go immediately after Di Luo. He wanted to kill him and snatch his spatial bracelet!

But he immediately abandoned that thought.

The Cold Stream Valley was a big mess at the moment. Qing Fu was busy healing the injured warriors, sweat dripping from her face.

Ji Xia was leading Ji Bao, Qing Ying and the other warriors, in a chase after the Savage Warriors, who were fleeing in every direction. It looked similar to chasing a group of chickens.

Ji Xia had sworn on the souls of his ancestors that he would let Di Luo and his underlings leave unharmed, so there was no way he would break his promise.

But even if Ji Hao would chase after Di Luo, there was simply no way for him to snatch that spatial bracelet. No matter how attractive the bracelet seemed, he lacked enough strength to deal with Di Luo and his underlings. Even if Mr. Crow helped him, it still wouldn’t be enough.

The spying-crow slightly shook its head; its pupils were glowing faintly.

Di Luo was cursing unceasingly in a low voice. He pulled a two feet long, black, metal centipede out from his bracelet, dropped it on the ground and mumbled an incantation. One by one, a series of spell symbols started to glow on the centipede. Under influence of the spell, the centipede’s body started to expand rapidly.

Within the span of a few breaths, an over three hundred feet long, gigantic, metal centipede appeared in front of Di Luo and his people. Di Luo waved his hands silently and hopped on the centipede’s back, followed by Toba, Toao and the other tens of warriors. Under Di Luo’s control, the centipede strode swiftly through the jungle, while carrying Di Luo and his underlings, quickly leaving the Cold Stream Valley.

About seven minutes later, the metal centipede had already covered twenty miles. It crawled, through a cliff, into a river valley, where it quietly lied on the riverside beach.

The spying-crow flew across the river valley and landed gracefully on the branch of a small tree, in front of the river. Its blood-red eyes were fixed on the centipede.

*Sigh*

Back in the Cold Stream Valley, Ji Hao was sitting in front of a cave, wiping the sweat on this forehead and sighed, feeling relieved. Fortunately, Di Luo and his people didn’t go too far.

With his current power, the maximum range he could control the spying-crow, was twenty miles. If Di Luo would have moved a bit farther, then Ji Hao wouldn’t have the ability to observe their activities, through the spying-crow.

After receiving the new view through the spying-crow, his body quivered unconsciously.

“Damn bastards!”

“Ji Mu! Ji Xiao! You ganged up with outsiders and tried to kill your own clansmen!”

In the river valley, tens of sturdy Fire Crow Clan warriors were quietly standing on the beach, looking coldly at Di Luo and his people, who were all injured and disheveled looking.

Standing in front of the Fire Crow Clan warriors was Ji Xiao, the father of Ji Hu, the kid killed by Ji Hao two months ago. He was quite an influential Senior Magus among the Holy Land warriors of the Fire Crow Clan.

Standing beside Ji Xiao was Ji Shu’s brother, Ji Mu, who had thrown the first stone at Ji Xia for the position of the leader, before the Ancestors Worship ceremony. He too was a powerful Senior Magus.

Ji Xiao stared at Di Luo and his people, gnashing his teeth, and said: “Ji Mu, are these the old friends you talked about? Didn’t you say that they’ll revenge my son? Is this a joke? Look at them! They’re like a group of drowned rats!”

Ji Xiao stamped his foot hard and yelled: “I gave them huge amounts of gold and jade, and they came back like this?!”

Ji Mu’s pupils were shining with a deviant light, he patted Ji Xiao on the shoulder and opened his arms, walking toward Di Luo.

“Di Luo, my brother, my old friend, it seems the attack didn’t went well? I thought you had given your word that you were going to invade the Cold Stream Valley!”

Di Luo didn’t reciprocate the hug Ji Mu was giving. Instead, he stepped back with a face filled with disgust, and yelled harshly: “This is all your fault! You gave us the wrong information! Toba and Toao were more than able to beat the three persons, who recently became Senior Magus! The only obstacles would be Ji Xia and Qing Fu, who according to you were badly injured and had lost their powers!”

“Not only is that not true, you never even mentioned that the little bastard already made an agreement with a gigantic Fire Crow!” Di Luo puffed and continued.

Di Luo glared at Ji Mu with his two remaining eyes and said with his teeth gnashing: “I could’ve invaded the Cold Stream Valley, killed your enemies, and make a fortune for myself at the same time! But because of your wrong information, we underestimated their power and ... and I lost three fingers and an eye! You… you have to compensate me accordingly!”

“Ji Mu, I want ten times of the advance payment, or I’ll let you know how horrible our “Blood Tooth” can be!” Di Luo pointed at Ji Mu and yelled.

Ji Mu’s eyes stared at him, his rugged face seemed to have frozen.

“You… You surely made a mistake, didn’t you?”

“Only the Magi who made great contributions to the clan are qualified to make an agreement with the Fire Crows of our clan. Even Ji Xia didn’t acquire the required qualification, how could the kid…?” murmured Ji Mu, with a sullen face.

After murmuring for a while, he turned around, pointed his finger at Ji Xiao, and said: “Xiao, my brother, if you want to revenge your poor son, Hu, I’m afraid that you have to do the thing you’re not willing to do. This time, however, you will have to do it!”

“Mu, I… I’ll never attack our brother Ji Xia, I…” Ji Xiao said, with a trembling voice. His face was twitching intensely, his body was shivering uncontrollably, sweat pouring down from his forehead.

“I just want to revenge Hu, my dear son, but I’ll…I’ll never do anything to brother Xia!”

“But you already did.” Ji Mu looked at Ji Xiao in the eye and slowly said, “Xiao, you standing right here means that you’ve already done something to Ji Xia…”

Ji Mu stared at the distorted face of Ji Xiao and continued with a soothing voice: “Well, you don’t need to deal with Ji Xia, you only need to handle the others. As for Ji Xia…there is someone else willing to finish him.”

“Who?” Ji Xiao blurted out.

“Me, of course.”

A hoarse voice came from the rapidly flowing river.

A water-tank thick horned, black serpent slowly raised from the river.