Rainy Season
Rainy Season
Uncountable raindrops were continuously falling from the sky, and seasonal rivers were madly roaring around in the jungle. Large pieces of wood were soaked in warm water, and those thick tree-trunks were thickly dotted with colourful mushrooms - the only interesting part about the rainy season.
Ji Hao squatted down in front of his family's house, holding a huge wooden mug in his hands. The mug contained a virid, home-made tea that was emitting a very refreshing herbal scent. From time to time, Ji Hao would lower his head and take a sip from the mug, the tea temporarily dispersing the moist cold that seemed to have stagnated inside his body.
"The damn weather!" Qing Ying's rants came from afar. He had been holding a gigantic leaf upon his head, while walking lazily in the rain, passing Ji Hao by like a walking corpse, and disappearing again slowly in the heavy rain.
Normally, Qing Ying would always have paid extra attention to his appearance, but now he seemed to have not cleaned himself for days. Right upon the pair of his beast-leather boots, one red and one blue thumb-sized poisonous mushroom was blooming. Qing Ying didn't seem to have noticed these two little uninvited guests at all.
The moist air made all of the bowstrings of the Qing Yi Clan warriors become soft and powerless. The rising mist blocked their eyesight, and completely deprived their biggest fun from them - hunting. Therefore, all of the Qing Yi Clan warriors had become lazy and bored, losing their energy like bears in hibernation.
The heavy rain never stopped. Inside the Cold Stream Valley, only the mining work had been going on without stopping.
The tinkling sounds kept coming from deep under the ground, along with the heavy gasping of those slaves. Those slaves had been carrying baskets full of ores up to the ground, one after another. Large gold and jade pieces were being picked out, carefully and orderly placed aside.
Occasionally, a few pieces of Fire Essence Crystal would be found, which would prompt the supervising Fire Crow Clan warriors to rush up and collect them, sending these crystals to Ji Zhuo as quickly as they could. Ji Zhuo had stayed in the Cold Stream Valley, helping with guarding the mine and supervising the mining work.
In the flat area beside Ji Hao's family house, five muscular warriors were fighting against each other bare-handed. Behind their bodies, different coloured smokes were rolling in the air, within which, silhouettes of ferocious beasts could be seen flashing loomingly.
These five warriors were the strongest warriors amongst Ji Hao's personal slaves, who could break into the Senior level anytime. Two of them came from the Cyan Cattle Clan, another two came from the Tusk Tiger Clan, and the last one was from the Gale Eagle Clan. Their original names were discarded by Ji Hao, and for convenience, Ji Hao directly called them Big Cattle, Small Cattle, Big Tiger, Small Tiger, and Gale Eagle.
Under the heavy rain, the five warriors, who had only pieces of beast fur wrapped around their waists, were fighting against each other with all of their power. The muffled punching sound echoed like thunder coming from the sky, the soft raindrops that fell in their vicinity were hit by the powerful airwaves that were being brought up by their punches, and were darting everywhere like arrows shot by a powerful bow.
Their blood vessels had expanded under their skin, and looked like poisonous serpents. All five of them were over three meters tall, and every single time they stamped their feet against the ground or waved their fists in the air, a sharp gust of air steam would be brought up and roll the foot-thick water on the ground up as tens of feet high waves that would splash everywhere.
For Big Cattle and Small Cattle right in the middle their chests where and in the abdomen of Gale Eagle, a Magus Acupoint that shone with eye-piercing lights could be seen. By fighting with all of their power, they were activating their bloodline powers and stimulating their Magus Acupoints as hard as they could to become powerful senior Magi.
Ji Hao had promised them that the one who would become a genuine Senior Magus first could select the three most beautiful females from the Fire Crow Clan's slaves to be his wives; as for the poor one who would breakthrough the last into the Senior level, Ji Hao would select the strongest and ugliest women from those female slaves to marry him.
Ji Hao had also promised that the first one who would break into the Senior level and became a genuine Senior Magus would become the leader of his personal slaves, and their families would get better treatment.
"So troublesome!" Ji Hao dropped the wooden mug and grabbed a few herbs from the basket, carefully picking a small leaf and putting it in his own mouth, chewing slowly on it. The rainy season had just started, and even peak-level Senior Magi wouldn't risk going out into the jungle in this kind of horrible weather. Ji Hao could only calm his mind down and stay in the house, learning some Qing Yi Clan's special secret Maguspriest magic from Qing Fu.
In just more than half a month, Ji Hao had almost memorized all of the characters and specialties of Qing Yi Clan's special herbal medicines. For every single kind of herbs, Ji Hao had tasted it himself, allowing him to gain a deeper understanding about their functions.
During this period of time, Ji Hao had been poisoned by those herbs hundreds of times; many times, if Qing Fu hadn't been at his side and fed him antidotes on time, he might have already been killed by those poisonous herbs. This reminded him of the horrible memory from back when he had been a little kid and learned all kinds of Maguspriest magic and secret sorceries under the supervision of Ji Kui and the other elderly Maguspriests.
"Too troublesome!" Ji Hao tried hard to ignore the indescribable and extremely bitter flavour in his mouth, while looking at the five slave warriors and shaking his head in annoyance.
Ji Hao had not thought that once he would take the one hundred and five personal slaves, all of their families would also belong to him and become his slaves as well. He had to take the responsibilities for the food and the daily lives of these hundreds of people all by himself. This made Ji Hao, who had absolutely no other property under his name, terribly worried.
"Those evil old men must have done this on purpose. At least, they should have assigned me a few pieces of farms or grazing grounds," complained Ji Hao, "These many people, how can I feed them like this? I have to send them to work to raise animals, farm, and even pick wild fruits and whatever. But I have nothing at the moment, plus, it's the rainy season, hence we can't even go hunting. Those old guys must be pestering me on purpose."
While he was complaining, a few beams of fiery lights swished over from the South. Led by three Fire Crows, a sphere of blazing fiery clouds tore apart the raining sky and hovered above the Cold Stream Valley.
Along with a resonant dragon call, a fiery flood dragon stepped out of the dense fiery light and slowly descended from the fiery cloud. On the seventy to eighty feet long back of the flood dragon, a middle-aged man, who was wearing a luxury cloak made from golden silk, and body wrapped around by rolling fiery clouds, was sitting with his head held high and eyes filled with scorn. The man looked down at the Cold Stream Valley, which had turned to a mess because of the rainy season.
A Fire Crow Clan elder, Ji Fang, was standing on the back of the leading Fire Crow, yelled, "Come, call elder Ji Zhuo out...and Ji Xia, Ji Xia! Where is Ji Xia? Damn, come and greet our guest! Haven't you people seen this lord here?"
The fiery flood dragon was floating in the air without landing on the ground.
The middle-aged man sitting on its back slowly waved his hand and said, "No need to greet, don't waste my time. This poor place of yours won't have anything good anyway. Don't serve anything to me and humiliate yourself. Hurry, ten-thousand pieces of Fire Essence crystals, just hurry."
Ji Fang leapt down from the Fire Crow's back as if his butt was set on fire, while shouting the names of Ji Zhuo and Ji Xia.
Soon, Ji Hao learned about the purpose of this middle-aged man's arrival. The rainy season had been too moist, and some noble had sent his messenger to take ten-thousand pieces of Fire Essence crystals to inlay those crystals in the walls in order to disperse the moisture in some manor.
Another purpose was satisfying the manor's lack of staff, and therefore, the Fire Crow Clan got the command to carefully select three-thousand young boys and girls and send them to work in the temporary manor.
The responsibility of escorting and managing those kids and sending them to that manor fell on Ji Hao's head.