The Magus Era

Ji Hao spread his hands, looked at Di Luolang with an innocent face, and said, “Was I wrong? Di Suo and Di Mo together, worth ten thousand in each fields, and Di Sha worth half of that price, isn’t that five thousand? Well, I apologize if the number is wrong, after all, we’re just a bunch of ignorant barbarians. If my math was done wrong, you, my dear lord, should just suck it up!”

Huaxu Lie’s face went awfully twisted as he was trying very hard to maintain a serious face instead of laughing out loud; big drops of perspiration even started dripping down from his forehead due to the effort.

‘Ignorant barbarians’, this was a term that those Yu Clan’s people often used when they talked about the humankind. They had always despised the humankind; in their eyes, human beings were just like those wild beasts living in the jungle.

With this insulting term created by the Yu Clan, Ji Hao had just punched Di Luolang right on the face. Five thousand in each field as a ‘half price’, this nearly made Di Luolang vomit blood.

He looked at Ji Hao with a badly embarrassed, darkened and enraged face, gave a series of weird laughter, then said, “You little bastard… one day, our Di Family will destroy you, no matter what it takes. Good, I admit, occasionally, evil freaks with special gifts might emerge among you stupid barbarians.”

He pointed his finger hard at Ji Hao, laughed viciously and continued, “Whatever your price is, our Di Family will take it… but a human being like you… we can never allow you to survive! We will… for sure, kill you!”

Di Hao stared back at Di Luolang, and responded in a cold voice, “I think, Di Suo might prefer to do it with a male gorilla! I will select a healthy and muscular male gorilla and let it give some love to Di Suo… what do you think? Just imagine that beautiful scene, so marvelous, like a heavenly portrait!”

Di Luolang instantly paused, his finger remained pointing at Ji Hao while his wrinkled face had thoroughly turned into blue.

“You upset me.” Ji Hao looked at Di Luolang, grinned and said, “You threat to kill me, so I’m going to reject your offer about redeeming my captives. However, compared to keeping them alive for nothing but wasting food, why don’t I just…”

Hearing Ji Hao, Di Luolang immediately lowered his voice and softened his tone, squeezing a big smile out of his face and said as gently as he could, “Dear lord Ji Hao, I apologize for my rudeness… What I just said was completely inappropriate. Could you please tell me what should I do to make up for my mistake?”

Ji Hao looked Di Luolang right in the eyes, and responded blandly and slowly, “Don’t want me upset? Very easy. Recently, in order to prepare for the coming great war against you, our Pu Ban City was suffering a shortage of food and supplies. Ordinary people living in the Pu Ban City are about to run out of grains, countless babies are crying in hunger, people don’t even have cloth to cover their bodies and you can see corpses of people who die from starvation everywhere in the streets. Nevertheless, people still save every grain they can find and send all they have to the battlefront.”

Di Luolang’s face twitched intensely, maintaining that fake smile and looking at Ji Hao, asked, “So…?”

Ji Hao turned to Huaxu Lie, asking seriously, “Minister Huaxu, how many warriors are sent over here from the Pu Ban City this time?”

Huaxu Lie raised his arm and straightened three fingers, and before he had said anything, Ji Hao nodded, grinned and said, “Ah, I get it. One, two, three, four, five, five fingers, that means we have sent the army of five hundred million warriors, right? Good lord, every single one of our human Senior Magi is a splendid eater; five hundred million Senior Magi each with a bottomless stomach… no wonder they have already eat up all food stored in the Pu Ban city!”

Di Luolang and Huaxu Lie were badly confused by what Ji Hao was saying. Huaxu Lie showed three fingers, how did that turn into ‘five’ in Ji Hao’s eyes?

‘Dose counting fingers have anything to do with ‘ignorant barbarians’? No matter how ignorant you are, you can at least tell the difference between three fingers and five fingers! How can you not?!’

‘Besides, five hundred million warriors?! Are you fu*king kidding me? Five hundred million Senior Magi? If the Pu Can City had truly sent this many Senior Magi, this wouldn’t be merely about the Blood Moon… the whole Yu Dynasty would have to prepare for the war. All slave warriors, even normal slaves, would have to be sent to the battlefield; even that couldn’t guarantee to hold off the attacks launched by five hundred million Senior Magi!’ thought Di Luolang.

“Five hundred million…sounds a bit exaggerated…” Di Luolang said quite carefully.

“It’s not like I’m a master of math. Roughly, let’s just make it five hundred million.” Pretty obviously, Ji Hao had decided to be a totally shameless person this time. He said to Di Luolang very seriously, “Now it’s only five hundred million, if you disagree, I can do the math again… but if I go wrong further…”

“Five hundred million is just fine!” Di Luolang yelled out right away while giving Ji Hao a bigger and even more fake smile, then said it again with a much nicer tone, “Five hundred million is just fine.”

“Alright, we want enough amount of food that can support these five hundred million Senior Magi warriors for half an year. I don’t think it’s too much, is it? Senior Magi are all great eaters, so you should make the portion a hundred times bigger than the amount civilians need. Just send the food here as soon as possible.” said Ji Hao with the same monotonous tone, “Don’t try to fool us with grains or flours, we only want meat! Senior-level beast meat, pure meat, no vegetarian food, not even a little bit!”

Di Luolang’s body quivered so much that he nearly fell down from his seat.

With the power of the Yu Dynasty, enough amount of food that could support five hundred million people, and that too five hundred million Senior Magi, for half a year, was nothing at all. However, to the Di Family, although they were also capable of providing this amount of food, but time was too limited!

“Three days,” said Ji Hao coldly, “If I don’t see that meat in three days, you will have to… ‘give flesh for flesh’. I mean, if you can’t deliver that meat in three days, I will let Di Suo and Di Mo have a joyful time with ten male gorillas.”

Di Luolang gnashed his teeth, let out a heavy and long breath, and responded, “Yes, dear Lord Ji Hao, we will certainly do as you said.”

By now, Di Luolang couldn’t help but want to slap his own face. No matter how much he wanted Ji Hao to die, he shouldn’t have threatened him right to his face. As a consequence, Ji Hao got mad and blackmailed for all this meat in addition to those formulae!

But of course, this meat was nothing to the Di Family. However, with all this meat, the human army in the Chi Ban Mountain area could save a hell lot of efforts, as they wouldn’t need to transport food all the way from the Pu Ban City anymore. Thus, the human army would have so much extra time and energy to deal with their enemies, while their enemies, the Blood Moon armies, would have so much more to worry about.

“Now we have settled the food problem.” Ji Hao grinned, looked at Di Luolang, and continued saying, “but you can’t let our warriors fight naked, can you? Elder Di Luolang, ninety-nine percent of our warriors can’t even afford the cheapest kind of cloth. We are ignorant barbarians, and of course we’re desperately poor… Why don’t you just mercifully give us some armament, like armors, weapons such as bows and arrows, and crystals?”

Ji Hao’s greediness was about to drive Di Luolang crazy. He abruptly barfed out, “Didn’t you just say that you don’t care about worldly possessions?!”

Ji Hao spread his hands once again, looked at Di Luolang with his ’honest face’, and said, “Worldly possessions are indeed not significant, so, why should you hesitate about these little insignificant things? What I asked for are just some worthless, valueless things, how could these bother you? To someone like you, these are not even worth mentioning. Am I right?”

Ji Hao slightly patted Di Luolang’s shoulder, whisked some non-existing dust away from his shoulder, then continued, “The Di Family is one of the wealthiest and most influential families of the Blood Moon; you have immeasurably broad territories and uncountable wealth. I am not greedy… I dare not be greedy at all. All I want is nothing but three hundred thousand top-quality armors, and weapons to match them, and five thousand large-scale weaponries, and one thousand cubic meters of magic crystals… what do you think?”

Huaxu Lie was so excited that he had even forgotten to breath. Three hundred thousand top-quality armors, and weapons to match them, all crafted by the Xiu Clan’s master craftsmen… If Ji Hao could really get those, Si Wen Ming could immediately build an awfully powerful cavalry with those gears. Literally, those armors and weapons could even turn the whole situation of this war.

Outside of the camp, Si Wen Ming clenched his fists.

Di Luolang stared at Ji Hao in a complicated way, and slowly said, “Armors and weapons, we need time for those. No matter what, we cannot give you our own stored armors and weapons. We need to transfer a batch of armors and weapons from other families, without letting too many people know.”

Ji Hao rubbed his own hands satisfyingly, and said, “Good, now the only unsettled problem is… the woman’s name is Ju Xiu, right?”