The Magus Era

　　

Ji Hao left the Silent Forest and got rid of the group of holy spirits that chased after him.

On the grassland outside the forest, a great number of green kind and

water kind people lived in there. Those people were more civilized than the local people living in the forest. While local people living in the forest were still feeding on the forest itself, people living on the grassland had already created many farmlands and created an agricultural civilization.

With abundant and stable harvests and the fertile farmlands which couldn’t be taken away, people living on this grassland built places of residence one after another.

Ji Hao traveled across the grassland while gathering information. He found out that people living in the grassland had already roughly formed a country, with the power structure of the city federation. Every place of residence had its own army, and specialized armies allowed people living on this grassland great advantage in conflicts against clans living in the forest.

The presence of a specialized army made wars between people living in different places of residence even bloodier and raised the death rate as well. Meanwhile, their weapons grew more powerful and with higher qualities, as all kinds of weapon techniques grew more advanced as well.

Ji Hao sneaked into at least a hundred weapon factories on his way, learning many secret local weapon-making techniques, such as the green kind’s ‘natural growing magic’, water kind’s ‘wave－hammering technique’. These special and unique techniques were rather interesting, and weapons made with these techniques all had their own specialties. Ji Hao integrated what he learned from these local people and gained a large improvement on his weapon-making skill.

Among all local techniques, the green kind’s ‘natural growing magic’ was the most magical one, even similar to the power of natural Dao. In cities of the green kind people, all top-grade weapons and armors were grown out naturally from different plants, and during the process of growth, green-kind craftsmen would emboss all kinds of spell symbols and magic formations on the fruits of these ‘weapon-growing’ plants. This allowed those plants to produce higher grade weapons and armors.

Ji Hao sneakily learned the natural growing magic and obtained large amounts of plant seeds. He prepared to plant these seeds in Yao Mountain territory after he returned to the big world Added with the secret tool-crafting techniques he learned from Po, even he couldn’t figure out what would actually grow out.

Ji Hao saw many holy spirits messengers on the grassland as well. Those holy spirits had been rushing around in a great rush, spreading the news about the advent of ‘outer space monsters’ to everyone, forcing leaders of all cities to gather their armies and prepare for war.

However, although the main atmosphere of this world seemed to be agitated and warlike, city leaders on the grassland were clearly not as honest as clan elders in the forest. Once the holy spirit messengers left their cities, they immediately gathered their armies and started intensive fights against their archenemies.

Because of the advent of ‘outer space monsters’, these city leaders had found a perfect excuse to cover up the slaughters they had done and were going to. All blame would fall onto those ‘outer space monsters. All different scale cities on the grassland quickly fell into a messy fight.

As they were fighting against each other, Ji Hao took the opportunity to gain some benefits. He not only stole secret cultivation methods, weapon-making techniques and other valuable knowledge from those cities on the grassland, but also sneaked into the storerooms of many cities and stole many of those precious materials, such as rare spirit Dans.

As for exactly how much these materials were worth, Ji Hao couldn’t tell until the end. But he estimated roughly that if he traded all those spirit Dans he stole into jade coins in Pu Ban City, he might be able to purchase an entire piece of land as his new territory that would be twice as big as Yao Mountain territory.

The earnings might be terrifyingly great if one entered into a whole new world and opened up a wasteland, searching for treasures in it. Traveling unhurriedly for about a month, Ji Hao left the seemingly boundless grassland.

For the first time, Ji Hao saw cities in this world. These cities were cast from giant rock and liquid iron, with all kinds of defensive facilities. Streets in the cities crossed like a chessboard, while broad farmlands with paths crisscrossed, surrounding the cities.

These cities couldn’t be compared with Yao Mountain City. In many aspects, cities in this world seemed to be simple and rough. However, these cities and the broad roads that connected them, and the caravans traveling on these roads, these indicated towards a stable governance system.

Ji Hao walked past a few cities, sneakily captured a few people and tortured out some information. He found out that the concept of a state had already formed in this world as he had thought.

Unlike cities on the grassland, in this vast area, a few big race, such as the green kind, water-kind, fire-kind, earth-kind and gold kind, had already built over a hundred different sized countries.

Populations of these countries varied from ten million to a billion. Pushed by those holy spirits worshiped by each country, the wars between these countries never stopped. Basically, wars would be started every single day, and these over a hundred countries never had a day of peace.

Compared with cities on the grassland, the system of these countries was much more advanced. Stable state systems allowed the power of each race to be gathered more tightly, and the civilization had reached a higher level as well. In other words, the weapons used by warriors of these countries were sharper and stronger, their armors were sturdier and with greater defensive powers.

Ji Hao saw some oddly-shaped, large-scale weapons with his own eyes. The powers possessed by some extra-large weapons even made Ji Hao’s scalp numb.

Unlike local people living in forests and grasslands who only had holy spirits descend occasionally, these countries of different scale had all holy spirits living in the countries all year round. The few top-grade countries with the population of over ten billion had holy spirits as their monarchs.

At first, Ji Hao didn’t realize this fact, not until he sneaked into the national treasury and attempted to steal something but ended up being beaten up by the king and a few senior ministers of that country. Only with some solid efforts did Ji Hao finally manage to escape.

Precious and rare materials were piled up in the natural treasury like mountains, Ji Hao only managed to take three boxes of top-quality spirit Dan before he was discovered, then was beaten up. Ji Hao didn’t want to give up just like this. Instead, he lingered around the capital city of that country these couple of days, thinking about finding a chance to empty the natural treasury.

What surprised Ji Hao was that the king of this country claimed that it was a senior minister of the neighboring country who broke into the national treasury that night instead of Ji Hao. After a series of official letters, both of these two countries deployed millions and millions of warriors to the border and started a great fight.

On that nearly ten-thousand miles long frontline, millions of warriors had been fighting, and conflicts of different scales happened all the time. In the first couple of days, the two countries launched a series of exploratory attacks, after which, the all-out war finally broke out.

Ji Hao hid in a mountain on the border between the two countries and watched warriors from the two countries fighting crazily like mad ants with a tremendous shock. These people were from the earth-kind and gold kind; hence, all kinds of powerful large-scale weapons were sent into the battlefields. Every single day, tens of thousands of warriors would be crushed.

Five days after the outbreak of the war, Ji Hao finally noticed something on the battlefield that seemed to be wrong.