On the mountainside of Yao Mountain, under a few old pines, Ji Hao and Shaosi sat around a tea table made from a thousand-year-old stump while facing each other. A pretty maid kneeled beside the tea-table, carefully making tea for them with a whole set of tea ware.
Ji Hao selected some top-grade, smooth clay by himself, then made a colorful glaze with a few types of ore powder that had fresh and lovely l.u.s.ter. He then fired a set of porcelains as tea wares with the technique he learned in his previous life. The ceramic tea wares he made were as smooth as mirrors, as thin as papers, and had vivid colors and beautiful l.u.s.ter. Even in his previous life, tea wares like these should be precious and rare pieces while in the current era, these could even be counted as original, exclusive artworks.
At present, the upper cla.s.s of the humankind mostly used vessels made of gold, jade, and bronze, while civilians mostly use roughly crafted wares made from clay, wood or stone. Porcelains made by Ji Hao were truly unique in this world.
The maid carefully poured a cup of tea each for Shaosi and Ji Hao, then dripped two drops of silver dew collected from the purple lake into each cup of tea. A sweet and faint aroma instantly spread out, making both of them feel relaxed and fresh, even making their minds feel clearer.
"So nice!" Shaosi looked at the teacup placed on the table, smilingly nodded and said, "Really nice! It"s so beautiful and looks more exquisite than jade wares. If we can deliver ma.s.s production, a set of tea ware like this could even be sold in Pu Ban with a price of ten-thousand jade coins."
"We can start the ma.s.s production after we come back." Ji Hao smiled, pointed his finger at a mountain in the south and said, "I found the best clay in that mountain. Only with a certain amount of manual work, more tea wares like these could be produced."
Shaosi held the tea cup with both of her hands, took a slow sip of the tea, then narrowed her pair of eyes in comfort like a lazy cat. A strong wind blew across from the other side of the mountain, fluttering Shaosi"s long hair. It raised her fringe and exposed her smooth forehead and those soft short hair on her hairline.
"This tea is nice too. The tea made by those lords in Pu Ban is always too strong like soup, not as tasty as ours." Shaosi curved her lips downwards, then smilingly looked at Ji Hao. A stream of warmth flashed across her eyes. She had tasted Si Xi"s tea back in his house, and just as she said, Si Xi"s tea was truly as thick as soup, completely without a refres.h.i.+ng flavor, unlike the tea she had been drinking now.
"In the future, we will have these porcelains as a special local product of our Earl Yao territory. Porcelains, they can always sell well." Ji Hao smiled, looked at Shaosi and said gently, "As long as we can come back alive from that life-and-death game."
Shaosi"s eyes narrowed into a pair of lines as she looked down the mountain. Outside Yao Mountain City, a large number of people and numerous cities and villages were faintly visible. Those people were chopping firewood and carrying it back to their villages or towns. The weather was freezing, and a lot of firewood would be consumed daily.
"In this winter, we have over one-thousand and one-hundred newborns in our territory." Shaosi"s tone became softer and softer, warmer and warmer, "Year after year, we will have more and more people in our territory, and our Yao Mountain territory will grow stronger and stronger. We will come back alive."
Ji Hao knocked the tea table with his finger, changed to a serious tone and said to Shaosi, "Therefore, you have to improve your power as quickly as possible. Taisi is already a Magus King. You, Feng Xing and Yu Mu, you all have to improve your power."
Shaosi closed her eyes as her body glowed with a faint white light.
The Netherworld kind, also known as the Underworld kind, their people were similar to human beings, yet not exactly human beings. They were also similar to G.o.ds, yet they were not G.o.ds either. They were born with a special power that allowed them to communicate with G.o.ds, ghosts and all kinds of mysterious creatures in the world. Even as newborns, some of them could even sense the strong power that belonged to some ancient powerful creatures which had already fallen back in the prehistorical era, and somehow summon those creatures" souls and borrow their terrifying power.
Unlike the current mainstream cultivating system used by the humankind, people of the Netherworld kind didn"t need to cultivate themselves at all, neither did they need to depend on any outside powers. Instead, as they continuously maintained and tightened the connections between themselves and those powerful, mysterious beings, borrowing powers from them and killing their enemies, they could naturally become more powerful as they killed and offered more to those mysterious beings.
Taking Taisi as an example, when River Earl Jade Dragon led the Huai Water army and attacked the city, Taisi summoned a terrifying devil G.o.d and slaughtered countless Huai Water warriors, and devoured their spirit blood and souls. The devil G.o.d was satisfied by Taisi"s "offering", therefore, it instantly improved Taisi"s body condition to a whole new level, and directly promoted him to peak-senior-level. Afterward, Taisi somehow broke into the level of Magus King, and even among Magus Kings, he now could be counted as a powerful one.
However, if one asked Taisi, the muddleheaded guy, how exactly did he make the breakthrough, he definitely wouldn"t be able to explain. It just happened without knowing why or how.
"If I want to grow power within a short span of time…that might be too…" Shaosi looked at Ji Hao, seeming to be a bit hesitating.
"Blood offering?" Ji Hao asked right away. He didn"t want to miss any ideas that popped up in Shaosi"s head. Only a very few records regarding the Netherworld kind were kept in the Magi Palace, just a few pieces. But Ji Hao gained quite a lot of information from Candle Dragon Gui regarding the Netherworld kind, their magical powers and the origin of their powers.
Hearing Ji Hao say her own worry out, Shaosi seriously nodded and said, "To our kind, if we can offer enough amount of blood offering to satisfy those fallen, powerful beings, we would be able to possess great powers in a very short span of time. But, things like blood offering…"
Ji Hao held the tea cup up, drank up the tea, smiled and said, "As long as we don"t use human beings as the blood offering, you don"t need to feel too guilty, do you? For those non-humankind monsters, no matter how many we killed, you can"t call that a sin. Alright, leave this to me. You only need to perform the blood offering ceremony then."
It was nothing too complicated but simply offering blood and souls. If they had to slaughter a great number of human beings to attain the power, Ji Hao wouldn"t accept it either. But if he killed those non-humankind monsters and used them as blood offerings, Ji Hao wouldn"t feel any mental stress.
Didn"t they see that nature even rewarded Ji Hao because he killed so many non-humankind beings back in Evil Dragon Bay?
In the next morning, Zhu Rong Long and the other seven Divine Magi took over a hundred thousand elite warriors and headed to Pu Ban City in a rush. Ninety percent of magic crystals, pure gold and jade, and other valuable things stored in Earl Yao mansion were taken away by them.
The winter was a slack season for markets in Pu Ban city. In warehouses of the slave market in Pu Ban city, countless slaves were kept like animals, quietly waiting for the spring to begin, waiting for their customers. During this season, the price of slaves was marked down to around seventy percent of the usual price.
Zhu Rong Long and his people knocked open the doors of the few biggest slave dealers in Pu Ban city, then threw large piles of jade coins, magic crystals, pure gold and jade pieces to them. Soon, groups of non-humankind slaves were escorted out of warehouses, being wrapped up by Zhu Rong Long and the other Divine Magi with fiery clouds, heading back to Yao Mountain territory.
Powerful Jia Clan warriors, strong dark-kind slave warriors, noisy hideous-looking non-humankind slaves that sounded like a giant group of hens… countless non-humankind beings were escorted to outside Yao Mountain City standing straight in the field.
A small altar was standing in the field. Ji Hao had already killed a Magus-King-level beast himself and placed it on the altar.