The Magus Era

Inside the secret valley, there was a volcanic-vent-like, earth-flames vent, ceaselessly spurting out cyan smokes and purple flames all year round, along with sticky lava gushing out from time to time. After the lava, that gushed out of the vent, had cooled down, there would always be some extremely precious natural treasures, which only existed in the core of the earth, to be found within it.

Apart from those, small natural and mixed earth-flames[1] would occasionally spurt out of the vent; any kind of these two flames could be made into precious treasures by those extremely powerful Southern Wasteland Magus Priests and treasure-making craftsmen.

Therefore, this small secret valley had been occupied by the Zhu Rong Country, along with the area with a radius of thousands of miles around it. The secret valley and the entire surrounding area were at present directly under the jurisdiction of the Zhu Rong Country. The Zhu Rong Country had secretly built a fort inside the valley and send hundreds of guards to guard this place all year round.

Ji Hao was flying towards the secret valley at his highest speed. While flying, he had been fiddling with those treasures that he had seized from the three dead young men, all the way.

The three flying daggers had been marked by Ji Hao’s spiritual power, additionally, each of it had absorbed one drop of Ji Hao’s spirit blood. By now, all of the three daggers had already transformed into especially sharp gold-powers and merged with Ji Hao’s three fingers.

Normally, Ji Hao would nourish these daggers with the power that was contained in his blood, and was flowing through the blood vessels in his fingers, gradually improving the powers of these daggers, while consolidating the connections between himself and these daggers. This way, Ji Hao would eventually be able to manipulate these daggers as easy and smooth as manipulating his own arms.

The white pearl, which had badly injured Ji Hao earlier, had now transformed into a wisp of white mist and merged with Ji Hao’s right hand. Just like the three daggers, this white pearl would also absorb a certain amount of power from Ji Hao’s blood daily to improve its own power, at the same time, the pearl would continuously release its own special power, as a feedback to Ji Hao’s body.

Not mentioning other effects, after only a single day of merging these treasures with his hands, Ji Hao discovered that the power of his punch, launched by his right fist, had become much greater compared to the punch launched by his left fist’s punch. His right hand’s bones had apparently become stronger and sturdier than the bones in his left hand. Ji Hao felt as if he could now smash the heads of the enemies, using his right hand, similar to how those heavy weapons functioned in battles.

From the young man who showed up at last, and had been killed by Ji Hao, using Man Man’s tablet, Ji Hao had found two five-inches-short flying swords. After the simple marking-process, Ji Hao merged them with the last two fingers of his left hand. By now, Ji Hao could make a loud, high-pitched, scary metal-clashing sound by simply clashing his five fingers of his left hand against each other.

The special magic Ji Hao used to merge these treasures was one of the treasure-making-related magic, which had been taught to him by those Fire Crow Clan’s elder Magus Priests.

After the Southern Wasteland Senior Magi would gain powerful inherited magic treasures, they would always merge those treasures with their own bodies. By merging with magic treasures, human bodies could possess all kinds of special abilities. Ji Xia did so, as well as Ji Zhuo, even Ji Wu, the kid who had provoked Ji Hao when he was a level three Novice Magus, had merged his weapons with his arms.

Fiddling with these treasures all the way, by the time Ji Hao finally saw the secret valley, which had been shrouded by a strong sense of fire-power, although his power hadn’t improved, his fighting capacity had risen by a few times.

The secret valley was small. Because of the earth-flame vent, the jungle surrounding the valley had withered long ago. The entire area was now covered with red rocks. Even in this rainy season, within the area miles around the valley, not a single drop of rain could fall on the ground - all the raindrops evaporated due to the incredibly hot air that spurted out from the vent, before they even could get near the valley.

The entire secret valley was currently showered in bright sunshine. Ji Hao had been suffering under the endless heavy rain for months, but had now abruptly rushed into an area where the sun was shining; he couldn’t help but stop running, and raised his head, while narrowing his eyes and opening his arms, feeling the sunshine that he had been missing for so long.

However, at the very next moment, two horned fiery horses rushed over along with long and resonant roars. Two Guardians of the Gods were riding on top of the two fiery horses’ backs; these guards were wearing heavy, metal armours that even covered their entire faces, and were holding odd-shaped spears in their hands. Their, half a zhang long, spearheads spurted zhangs of long flame flakes out while pointing at Ji Hao’s chest from a distance.

“Kid,” shouted one of the guards in a muffled voice, “this is not your playground. This piece of land belongs to the country of the Gods, none of the Southern Wasteland people are allowed to come here without permission, or we will have to execute you.”

“You’re still a little boy,” said another guard; the voice of this guard sounded slightly nicer, but Ji Hao could still easily tell the haughtiness from his tone, “we will not execute you, but you should leave as quickly as possible! Go find your parents, let them beat you hard, to make you remember that you don’t do anything that might cause trouble to your clan.”

Ji Hao didn’t respond, just silently took out Man Man’s tablet.

The two guards paused for a second in shock when they saw the tablet, then instantly leapt down from the backs of the fiery horses, dropped their long spears and took off their helmets, politely kneeled down in front of Ji Hao, saluted him, and said, “Our honoured guest, please forgive us. What can we do for you?”

Ji Hao stared at these two guards admiringly. He discovered that both of their faces were covered in dragon-scale-like scales, with a pair of small horns located on each of their foreheads - obviously, they were not purely from the human race. These two guards were especially tall and sturdy, they were even slightly taller than Ji Hao while kneeling down on the ground; their heights would reach at least six-meters if they stood straight up.

“I need to go the Zhu Rong Country, and find Man Man, please let me use your transporting-magic-formation,” said Ji Hao.

The guards didn’t asked any question, and directly guided Ji Hao into the fort, while activating the transporting-magic-formation that led to the center area of the Zhu Rong Country, for him. The eyes of all of the guards who had seen Ji Hao, while he walked in, were filled with respect.”

Ji Hao was clearly aware of the fact that he hadn’t earned the respect from those guards by himself; all of the nice treatment was because he had Man Man’s tablet.

Obviously, these guards viewed the Zhu Rong Country as the country of a real God, and that’s why no own dared to challenge a honoured guest of the Zhu Rong Country, in status.

An eye-piercing red light abruptly spurted out of the transporting-magic-formation that was built with the great power of the earth. Ji Hao’s body suddenly shook; he felt a terrifyingly great power was coming towards him from all directions, even making his bone creack. Ji Hao felt like his entire body was about to be crushed by this power.

Fortunately, his tight armour released the bright light on time, and blocked ninety-nine percent of the power for Ji hao, helping him survive that great pressure.

A while later, the red light had slowly dimmed and the great pressure seemed to have disappeared as well. Ji Hao opened his eyes and found out that he was standing on a broad square. Hot air was coming from all directions. Ji Hao looked at this gigantic square that was built with red jade, in shock.

A thousand miles long transporting-magic-formation group were located on the square, tens of thousands of transporting-magic-formations were shining with either bright or dim lights, large groups of people walk in or out from those formations from time to time.

In the air, thousands of fiery dragons were hovering - real, live dragons that were five feet and their bodies wrapped in blazing flame. Those dragons were all treading on fiery clouds and hovering around in the sky, each of them were carrying tens of fully armed Guardians of God, who were holding long spears and carrying long bows.

More armed guards were walking around in every corner of the square, their deep yet resonant footstep sounds were seemingly claiming that they were in charge of this place. Without a doubt, if anyone dared to do any forbidden things at the square, or any enemies tried to invade the country through these transporting-magic-formations, would instantly be destroyed by these guards.

Just like Ji Hao. Once Ji Hao showed up from the transporting-magic-formation, at least ten long spears were pointed at him; those sharp spearheads were tightly held against his skin. Ji Hao sensed great fire-power from each of these spearheads, and didn’t dare to even move slightly.

An elderly man, who had a really serious face, and was wearing a long cloak that was made from golden-red-silk, slowly walked up to Ji Hao, while looking at him from head to toe.

“Never saw him, don’t recognize his smell either. He’s not from the country of the God. A barbarian, how did he get here?”

“Capture him! Throw him into the mine, make him work there for the rest of his life!”

“Go check which group of guards didn’t do their job well and let this kid get here through the transporting-magic-formation. Degrade all of the derelict guards into fighting slaves, and send all of their families to the mine to work for a hundred years!”

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[1]Natural and mixed earth-flames: I think natural flames are naturally existing in the core of the earth ever since the beginning of the world, and contains the earth-power, while mixed flames were brought by another kind of power. Both of these two kinds of flames were co - existing underground, in the earth core, so they are called earth-flames.