The Magus Era

Ji Hao spent a whole day, finally settling all forty city-destroying demon crossbows.

Looking at the city-destroying demon crossbow, which now quietly lay in the arrow-releasing room, looking just like an ordinary big box and seemed completely harmless, but actually was a highly destructible weapon, Ji Hao couldn’t help but murmur, “That Wuli, I assume he has more of these city-destroying demon crossbows stored in his warehouse.”

Lichen Kang, who had also spent a whole day on carrying these city-destroying demon crossbows with Ji Hao, gulped an entire bottle of water and gasped deeply for air; wagging his head, causing sweat to splash everywhere. He looked at that city-destroying demon crossbow, showed a slightly painful look, and said to Ji Hao, “Even if he has more city-destroying demon crossbows, we have no money to purchase more.”

Five natural spirit mines. These were all personal properties that belonged to Si Wen Ming, Huaxu Lie and Lieshan Kang. Even with the current status possessed by them, giving out this many natural spirit mines was still quite a big deal.

Si Wen Ming, Lieshan Kang and Huaxu Lie wouldn’t be willing to pay such a big price, if they didn’t want to win this great war, or if they didn’t want to ensure that the Di Family wouldn’t try to trap the human army after the Qian Family was successfully taken out as planned. At most, they would purchase more high-grade armors and weapons, which could be more than enough for dealing with a big fight.

Sky-shaking roars came in from the breach, from where arrows normally went out of the arrows-releasing room. Ever since this morning when the Di Family launched the first wave of attack, this was already the tenth wave of attack launched by them.

In every wave of attack, the Di Family sent thirty to fifty thousand slave warriors, and the number of warriors sent out by the human army was about the same. These warriors fought on the battlefield, which was nearly a hundred miles in radius. Within only a quarter of an hour, one side suffered a severe loss and lost the power of fighting completely. Afterwards, the side which suffered the worse battle damage took the initiative of retreating, and in a while later, till the Di Family gathered another batch of warriors, the next round of fight would begin.

Within six to eight hours, that battlefield in front of the Blood Cloud Mountain was dyed pure blood-red; the soil soaked in blood. A full foot of wet soil was turned blood-red in color, and if one accidentally stomped a foot into this blood soil, one probably wouldn’t even be able to pull the foot out, if one was not strong enough.

Warriors who were knocked down, fell on the ground while howling. Their bodies thudded against the thick layer of wet, bloody soil, splashing large streams of mud up over a zhang high. As warriors fell down one after another, blood-red mud splashrf everywhere, like blood-red blooms, looked incomparably cruel and miserable.

Ji Hao glanced at the battlefield, which was in a great mess, then shook his head and left the arrow-releasing room along the path he came from. Walking on that wriggling path for about a quarter of an hour, Ji Hao moved across the main body of the Blood Cloud Mountain, and came out of the mountain body from a tunnel in the backside of the mountain.

Behind the Blood Cloud Mountain was a valley, twenty to thirty miles wide. On both sides of the valley were soaring cliffs; countless caverns were dug into those cliffs. Large groups of warriors had set up bonfires in this valley, and upon those bonfires were giant pots, and in those giant pots, large pieces of fleshy meat and bones were rolling in hot soup; a thick layer of oil floated on the surface of the soup.

Some warriors put large flagstones on bonfires, and on those flagstones, extra large pancakes and rice cakes had been sizzling. A dense scent of grilling rice and flour filled up the air; even Ji Hao couldn’t help but swallow his saliva.

Inside those caverns on cliffs, countless men with disheveled hair, dirty faces and vicious looks, had been leaning their heads out and greedily looking at the meat soup in those pots, and cakes on those flagstones. They were gulping their own saliva loudly while letting out hoarse growls that sounded like ‘hoho’, from their throats. These men looked just like a group of crazy beasts.

A few military judges who were under the command of Hao Tao, stood on a large rock, each followed by a fierce battling beast like lion or tiger, their hands holding long whips. Loudly, they roared towards those beast-like men.

“The human emperor has shown his grace and kindness to you, for you to wash off your sins! Listen to me clearly, each one of you!”

“After stuffing your stomachs, you go to the battlefield, to kill! Kill with all your strength! Kill with that strength you used when you hurt your own kind! Kill one enemy, you can save yourselves from execution, and become ordinary slaves; kill three enemies, you’re no longer slaves, but citizens! Kill ten enemies, you can join the army under the command of our emperor, build your contributions and earn jade coins as a reward!”

Bong! Bong! Following this speech, a few warriors kicked the iron boxes placed in front of them, broke, and from those boxes, a great number of jade coins flew out, all over the ground.

“Jade coins! You dame condemned criminals should recognize these! With these jade coins, you can buy yourselves a piece of land, build a house, marry a few women, and have a bunch of kids! With jade coins, you can have anything you want! Meat, booze, even beautiful women!”

“As long as you go to the battlefield to kill, you can have all!”

“However,” The judge changed his tone and continued harshly, “If anyone of you dares not to move forward and to fight the war, you will be killed! To who deserted in face of the battle and missed the perfect chance of launching the attack, kill! To who cried and yelled in the battlefield, affecting the others, Kill!”

Dong, dong, dong, dong! A rapid series drums emitted by dragon-skin small battle drums started. Along with the drum, tens of thousands of beast-like men surged out of those caverns like tidewater, snatching those grilled cakes and thrusted the cakes into their own mouths, then grabbed coarse clay bowls, scooped the meat soup up and poured into the mouths, as if unable to feel the hotness of the food and soup at all.

After these men wolfed the food down, human warriors who were in charge of distributing weapons and armors gave each of these men a thick and heavy piece of leather, made them tie these leather prices around their bodies with veins as protections, after which, they armed these beast-like men with weapons forged from high-quality steel though not improved with any spell symbols.

These beast-like men, who were armed with extremely simple and rough gears, growled out in badly hoarse voices, glanced at that big pile of jade coins on the ground with purely red eyes, then rushed towards the battlefield in front of the Blood Cloud Mountain, with big steps.

They were slaves, also condemned criminals; their status was even lower than ordinary slaves.

Slaves equaled to domesticated animals, but these condemned criminals were even at a lower place than animals. Usually, they could never, ever free themselves from this low social status. Generation after generation, they were all slaves with unforgiven sins; their sons, grandsons, even the grandsons of their grandsons, would all be slaves of slaves.

Some of them fell in the current situation because their ancestors had committed grave crimes which were harmful to the entire humankind. Therefore, their entire families had become condemned criminal slaves; some of them were offsprings of the non-humankind slaves, these people were in even worse situations, the hopelessness was almost eternal to them; the third kind of them had even more lowly bloodlines, those were half-blooded creatures produced by human condemned criminal slaves and non-humankind condemned criminal slaves. They were at the lowest place even among condemned criminal slaves, just as nasty as the mud in cesspools.

In the territories of the humankind, these condemned criminal slaves had been doing the hardest, most dangerous works. All they had were their cheap lives!

Therefore, if one gave them the slightest of chances to free themselves from this damned situation, they would risk their lives for it. Even if what they had to face was the ocean of flame and mountain of blades, they would grit their teeth and rush in, fighting with their lives without any hesitation.

For this big plan of luring the Qian Family into a deadly trap, Si Wen Ming had given his order, transferred millions of condemned criminal slaves, spent days and nights transporting these condemned criminal slaves to the Blood Cloud Mountain area, from the Pu Ban City. Hundreds of thousands of warriors had already fallen in the battlefields, however, none of them was an elite human warrior. Instead, each one of them was a condemned criminal slave.

Another wave of roars rose into the air, and in the meanwhile, the wet blood soil in the battlefield, in front of the Blood Cloud Mountain, grew thicker. A strong and fierce power stream surged straight into the sky, even drilling a big hole in the clouds of the sky.

Suddenly, a tsunami-like wave of roars came from a great distance away, containing panicked voices of human warriors.

“The magic formation is broken! The magic formation in the Red Pine Mountain is broken!”

A powerful army force of the Di Family surprisingly drove a large troop of chariots violently into the Red Pine Mountain, which was an important supporting spot in the Blood Cloud Mountain area, and broke the entire Red Pine Mountain. Thousands of warriors on the side of human army fled hurriedly in desperate shapes, leaving over ten thousand dead bodies of condemned criminal slaves behind.