Chapter 57: Encounter
“Yoho~~”
A dimly lit flame was glimmering silently; a pair of wings, which had condensed from the flames and had a length of few tens of feet, were slightly shaking on Ji Hao’s back. Ji Hao swooshed across the dense branches, towards Qing Ying, who was standing miles away. He moved like a fierce gust of wind, while leaving afterimages behind him.
Qing Ying held his longbow, and pulled the bowstring with a serious expression on his face. The bow’s string shook suddenly, creating a continuous buzzing noise; a rain of arrows were flying towards Ji Hao from every direction, leaving uncountable arcs and straight airstreams in the air.
Ji Hao laughed out loud. The gale, created by the arrows, vanished once it blew across the dimly lit flame wrapped around Ji Hao’s body. Ji Hao felt as if he had transformed into a fish who was swimming in the sea without any resistance; no matter how fast he moved, he could no longer feel any air resistance.
Arrows, without arrowheads, darted one after another through the air, an inch away from Ji Hao’s body; the arrow-feathers brushed past his body and face, making a slight swis.h.i.+ng sound. Ji Hao chuckled, and agilely dodged over two-hundred arrows with a few rise-and-fall movements, drawing a mile closer to Qing Ying.
Speed!
Ji Hao had completely activated his Gold Fire Crow Bloodline’s power; the tens of Gold Fire Crow meridians were now blazing inside his body; at the same time, he had gained three special abilities.
The first one was |Surging Light Fire-Wings| that he was using right now. Ji Hao’s speed had been extremely fast even before he had activated his bloodline’s power, but after activating the |Surging Light Fire-Wings| his speed had increased by ten times, even faster than a ghost. The arrows, which were shot by Qing Ying using all his might, were only slightly faster than Ji Hao.
The second special ability that Ji Hao had gained, was the |Golden Crow’s Magic-Pupils|. The ancient Gold Fire Crows were magical creatures, which were created and nourished by the vitality and energy of the sun. They had been floating above the sky, looking down at the earth similar to the sun. Every place where sunrays shone, were within the sight of the Gold Fire Crow; not even dirt or ash particles could hide from the Gold Crow’s eyes.
The |Golden Crow’s Magic-Pupils| could see everything, from the heaven to the underworld, penetrating through evil and badness; additionally, there were unmeasurable and unpredictable variations of this powerful ability. In the recent one-thousand years, a couple of genius warriors of the Fire Crow Clan inherited the |Surging Light Fire-Wings|, however, no one had inherited the |Golden Crow’s Magic-Pupils| within tens of centuries. Ji Hao had become the first one who inherited the |Golden Crow’s Magic-Pupils| within a thousand years.
Flames flashed across his golden pupils; Ji Hao clearly saw the route of every slight gust of wind within the area with a radius of twenty miles. He also observed the path and speed of every arrow that had been shot by Qing Ying.
|Surging Light Fire-Wings| shook suddenly. Ji Hao had memorized the route of every single arrow and easily dodged all of them, moving miles closer towards Qing Ying.
Qing Ying shouted out annoyed, “Hao! Don’t blame me if I hit you too hard! I’m the most handsome archer of the Qing Yi Clan and the youngest Senior Magus! I just can’t lose to you, a kid!”
While shooting, a sharp gust of wind wrapped around Qing Ying’s body. He pulled three arrows out, fitted them to his bow’s string, and took a glance at Ji Hao; in the following moment, the three arrows disappeared simultaneously, followed by a swis.h.i.+ng sound.
Qing Ying had just casted his special shooting skill he inherited from his ancestors. The three arrows had completely vanished in the air, without leaving even a trace; only the shrilly, swis.h.i.+ng sound was reverberating through the jungle, as if there was a wind-dragon hovering and roaring in the sky.
None of the ordinary warriors could see the trajectories of the arrows, shot by Qing Ying with his special skill, however, a golden fiery light was s.h.i.+ning in Ji Hao’s pupils. He clearly saw the three arrows, which were wrapped by three fist-thick, cyan gusts of wind, wriggling towards him like three wind-serpents.
Ji Hao flapped his fiery wings with all his power, instantly disappearing; only a trace of shadow was left on the tip of a branch. In the next moment, Ji Hao reappeared two miles away, while evading the three arrows. By now, he was only hundreds of feet away from Qing Ying.
“Dear uncle, take this!” Ji Hao opened his mouth towards Qing Ying. A sphere of golden fire, which was hidden in his chest for quite a long while, had transformed into a fiery dragon and suddenly spurted out from his mouth. Once the fist-thick fiery dragon was spewed out by Ji Hao, it bursted into a huge flame, nearly a thousand feet in radius, roaring towards Qing Ying.
Qing Ying screamed out, grabbed his bow and leapt high into the air like an ape, finally landing lightly seven miles away.
While rotating, the flame spewed out by Ji Hao, crashed against the hill Qing Ying was standing on; the thousands of feet tall hill suddenly turned into a large piece of cyan smoke and dissipated in the air. The great heat melted the rocks and metals, contained within the soil, into lava, that flowed everywhere.
This was the third special ability Ji Hao had gained from the Gold Fire Crow bloodline, the sphere of natal fire, condensed by the power and energy of his body, which could transform into a fiery dragon and burst out within a very short time period. The lethality of Ji Hao’s natal fire was as powerful as the flame cast by a Senior Magus with his or her Bloodline’s power fully activated.
With Ji Hao’s current power, he could only cast the natal fire once, after which he would be exhausted. The name of this special talent was |Breath of the Gold Crow|. Though it couldn’t be used often in daily fights, it could be his most power hidden card for the purpose of saving his life or launching a sneak attack. Who could ever imagine that a kid who has just become a Junior Magus, could manage such a powerful and sudden attack?
Qing Ying stood on a tree far away, gazing stunned at the mountain that had burned into ashes.
“Mon...Monster! Ji Xia is a big monster, and Hao, you’re even a bigger monster than your Abba!”
After that Qing Ying shouted out in frustration towards the sky, “I, Qing Ying, am the most handsome archer of the Qing Yi Clan and the most handsome Senior Magus in the history! No! Hao, I won’t be able to go hunting with you from tomorrow on. If I don’t awake my first Magus Acupoint and become a real Senior Magus within half a month, I’ll chop my own head off and swallow it!”
Jumping and cursing for a while, Qing Ying carried his longbow and darted towards the Cold Stream Valley.
Obviously, Qing Ying was badly frustrated by Ji Hao’s huge improvement; he probably won’t come out again until he became a real Senior Magus. Anyway, there was only a slight push needed for Qing Ying to awaken his first Magus Acupoint; if he would concentrate on practicing for a few days, he could certainly upgrade to the genuine Senior level.
Ji Hao laughed loudly, with his arms crossed around his own chest. It felt quite good to kick the a.s.s of this proud uncle of mine, thought Ji Hao.
His resonating laughter resounded throughout the jungle. Ji Hao then waved towards Mr. Crow, which was hovering around in the sky and dimmed his |Surging Light Fire-Wings|, trod on those interleaving branches, and dashed towards the northern jungle.
The most important thing about practicing on [Bu Tian Bu Lou Magic Spell] was to eat a large amount of food and supply the energy to the multicoloured flame. Ji Hao had just made a breakthrough and became a Junior Magus. At the moment he needed to eat as much as possible to replenish the power and energy of his body.
There were too much work for Ji Xia to do in the Cold Stream valley. Every day, Ji Xia was scurrying around the entire valley; therefore, Ji Hao couldn’t bear to ask Ji Xia to go hunting for him, neither did he want to bother other clansmen. He could only hunt by himself for the food that he needed.
In the blink of an eye, Ji Hao had already traveled nearly a hundred miles far away from the Cold Brook Valley. He flew across the branches similar to a gust of wind. He moved so fast that even his silhouette couldn’t be seen clearly.
Ji Hao’s nose twitched, fingers locked together. He was carefully sensing the scents left by the powerful beasts. He had already lost interests in beasts at the Novice level; now he needed beasts that were at least similar to the Junior Magus level to quickly improve his power.
Accompanied by a metal clas.h.i.+ng sound, three Sword Edge Spiders crawled out of the dense jungle.
Tens of short, hideous, and ugly men, who were less than five-foot-tall and with odd speckles on their skins, were sitting on the backs of the three Sword Edge Spiders. As soon as they saw Ji Hao standing on a branch, they raised their bow-like weapons and aimed at Ji Hao.
Followed by a few popping sounds, tens of fist-sized, round metal bullets, covered in thorns, were shot towards every vital part on Ji Hao’s body.
Ji Hao glanced at these odd-looking men in astonishment, then jumped down from the branch and landed on the ground. He pulled his long sword out and rushed towards these men at full-speed.
The six-feet, long sword, seized from the Senior Magus of the Black Water Serpent Clan, created a beam of cold light, and flashed across the air. The light could be seen going through, and the next moment the long legs of the three Sword Edge Spiders were all cut off.
Five odd-looking men coughed blood up and were sent flying whirling.
“Run! Run! Run! Fast!”
The rest of the ugly men shouted out, with their arms around their own heads and fled into the jungle.
Behind Ji Hao, tens of metal round bullets. .h.i.t on a three, penetrated the thick tree trunk, which took tens of people to hold their arm around it.
Bang!
The metal bullets exploded, countless metal thorns blasted the three into pieces, slowly falling on the ground.