The Magus Era

“Medicine, medicine, life-saving medicine!”

In the heavy rain, Ji Hao carried Man Man, whose body was boiling hot, and carefully climbed into a tree, searching for medicine in the dense branches and leaves.

One ‘Life-Connecting Grass’, one ‘Hundred-Knot Golden Vine’, three ‘Tiger Tusk Swirling Blue Bloom’...The rainy season was a huge problem, not only to animals, but also to the herbal medicines, which could be easily found in other seasons but had now strangely disappeared.

Only under the trees, where there were extremely dense branches and leaves piled up, and wasn’t soaked in the rainwater, could some useful and sufficient powerful herbal medicine be found.

After a quarter of an hour, Ji Hao put the few herbs he had found into his palm, crushed them into liquid, and slowly dripped it into Man Man’s mouth. Man Man subconsciously swallowed the herbal liquid. Her scorching hot body cooled down a little bit, and the wounds on her back stopped bleeding. A very fast, transparent, thin film appeared, barely sealing the wound.

“Man Man, from now on, you have to learn some life-saving abilities,” said Ji Hao in a low voice, while he carried her on his back and tied her and himself together tightly with a long vine, “This is the Southern Wasteland, no matter how powerful your Amma and Abba are, how many brothers and sisters you have, and how many people are following your orders and working for you, in the Southern Wasteland, you can only survive if you are strong enough!”

Carefully climbing along a branch, Ji Hao surprisingly found a ‘Star Mushroom’, which was shining with a faint, silvery light, located beside a large bird nest. This kind of mushroom had absorbed the power of the stars for years, and contained an incomparably vast energy, which could be used as an effective medicine.

This was the best quality material for making advanced magical medicines, of course, it could also be directly eaten, after which its power would be released inside the human body.

Inside the large bird nest, two gigantic ‘Golden Head Turtledoves’ had been huddled up together, occasionally, raindrops splashed on their bodies, causing the two huge birds to quiver slightly, but their closed eyes had never opened.

Ji Hao slowly put his hands towards the mushroom, while whispering to Man Man, “Like those life-saving treasures, given by your Abba and Amma, no matter if they’re magic treasures or medicines, you should always carry them with you. You have already seen, even uncle Ying Yan couldn’t always protect you.”

Man Man nodded while tightly grabbing Ji Hao’s shoulder with both of her hands, looking at Ji Hao’s movements nervously.

She didn’t know what a ‘Star Mushroom’ was, with her family background, she didn’t need to learn this kind of stuff at all. Ever since she was a little girl, all kinds of magical medicines that she needed, even those legendary, secretively inherited medicines, would be eagerly offered to her by lots of Maguspriests.

She only knew that what Ji Hao was now trying to pick would be good to her body; at least, the herbal liquid that Ji Hao had fed her during the journey, had made her wounds start healing, and her body felt a lot better now.

Man Man had already made up her mind that she would keep Ji Hao’s words in her mind, and would never throw away those magical medicines and treasures, which were given by Abba, randomly.

This time, she got injured, but she couldn’t even find a single life-saving pill on her; among those magical medicine that were given by Abba, there were countless kinds of medicines that could easily bring the dead back to life. As for magical treasures, if she didn’t feel inconvenient and brought a couple of those powerful magical treasures with her, she could have easily broken even the horrible Blood Moon formation launched by Di Luo, with those magical treasures.

“Man Man was wrong, Man Man is useless!” murmured Man Man in a very low voice, while gnashing her teeth.

“You’re not wrong, your Abba was wrong.” Ji Hao gently patted Man Man’s head and said, in the meanwhile, the other hand of his had grabbed the ‘Star Mushroom’.

Man Man suddenly popped up her eyes and stared at Ji Hao in shock, as if she heard some incredible thing - Did Ji Hao say that her Abba was wrong? In the entire Southern Wasteland, no one ever dared to say such a thing about her Abba; Ji Hao had said it so easily and naturally, and more weirdly, she didn’t feel any inappropriateness about Ji Hao’s words.

Her Abba really seemed wrong.

If she had a little bit more fighting experiences in the jungle, and a slightly little bit more sense of danger...and if she hadn’t been spoiled since she was a little girl, instead, practicing hard like Ji Hao, with the noble bloodline of her, she could have activated her bloodline power long ago; and if so, why would she be afraid of the Blood Fang, who had been hunting them in the jungle?

“Abba was wrong, so was Man Man!” Man Man gnashed her teeth tightly. The wound on her back suddenly twitched, and a stream of horrible, evil power attacked her entire body along with the blood vessels. Man Man was afraid that Ji Hao would worry about her and get distracted, so she gnashed her teeth, and spent all of her power to hold back the pain, which made her feel like all of her internal organs were being stirred by sharp blades.

Ji Hao grabbed the ‘Star Mushroom’, pulling it backwards very slowly while vigilantly staring at the two gigantic birds in the nest.

‘Golden Head Turtledoves’ were not one of those brutal birds, however, their voices were especially sharp and resonant, able to transmit it in the jungle over a very long distance. If he ever disturbed these two birds and made them call out, they might not be able to hide from those Blood Fang warriors, who had been madly searching for Man Man and him in the jungle.

Nevertheless, the thing Ji Hao was worried most about happened at this exact moment. One of the two ‘Golden Head Turtledoves’ suddenly opened its eyes. Ji Hao reacted really fast; he thrust out his right arm at lightning speed, which was still covered in blood, and grabbed the neck of this huge bird and twisted it until it broke with a cracking sound.

However, the other ‘Golden Head Turtledove’ shrilly called out in fright, while popping its eyes open, and madly flapping its wings.

The resonant chirps of the bird had transmitted nearly a thousand feet far within one moment. Right after the bird had called out, sounds of people quickly running on water simultaneously came from two directions; two thousand and five-hundred feet away, from the tree that Ji Hao had climbed on, on the left side and one thousand and seventy feet away, on the right side of the tree. After only the span of one breath, two groups of dark-skinned Blood Fang’s slave warriors rushed out of both sides of the jungle; one group had eight warriors while the other group had twelve warriors.

“They’re here!” Fourteen Blood Fang slave warriors raised their heavy swords high and rushed towards the tree; among the rest of the six warriors, five of them pulled out long bows with metal strings opened, and shot over thirty long arrows towards Ji Hao in a row; the last warriors flicked his hand and threw a fingertip-sized round ball into the air.

The round ball broke large amounts of branches and leaves and flew into the air, thousands of feet high from the ground, then exploded along with a thunderous boom.

A phantom of a blood fang appeared in the air. In the meanwhile, sharp whistles came from the surrounding jungles, as one fell, another rose. Large groups of Blood Fang’s warriors had been rushing over.

Ji Hao let out a loud roar, pulling the long sword out while jumping down from the branch, with his face towards the ground and feet towards the sky. Thirty arrows swished across the air and shot into the tree trunk, followed by rub-a-dub sounds; a few of the arrows were about to scratch his body.

These arrows were all shot out with great strength. All of those three-feet short arrows had easily punctured the gigantic three trunk that would take seven to eight people to hold their arms around it, and left human-head-sized holes in the tree trunk.

Ji Hao fell down with his head towards the ground. In the air, his body weirdly-spun around while fleetingly waving his right arm; he hacked towards the fourteen warriors with the sharp, long sword that he had seized from a Black Water Serpent Clan’s Senior Magus’ hands. The swords sent out countless cold light spots, and silently swung towards those Blood Fang’s warriors, along with a weird, magical arc.

While waving his arm, Ji Hao had added a subtle and slight trace of power that he had learned from the [sky-opening], launched by the mysterious man earlier.

The light thrown out by the sword seemed occult and mysterious, and straightly split the attacks launched by the fourteen Blood Fang warriors apart through the weakest point of their attacks puncturing their throats. The power released from the sword swept the entire area and sent fourteen bloody human heads flying into the air. A sphere of golden, fiery light appeared behind Ji Hao’s body, within which, a pair of fiery wings flashed across the air, and brought Ji Hao and Man Man into the dense jungle.

Hundreds of Blood Fang’s warriors gushed out of the surrounding jungles, however, not even a trace of Ji Hao could be found.