Chapter 39 - Stalemated

“Ba…B*stard!”

The three-eyed young man cursed with a trembling voice; he was vomiting blood, and soon, his nose and ears also started bleeding.

The Danyuan[1] Ji Hao gained from the years of practice on the ‘Mantra Dan with Nine Secret Words’ was changeful, which means that Ji Hao could choose what kind of power to use when he cast an attack. The power he used to hit the three-eyed young man just now was wild and strong; like the heaven was falling and the earth was cracking; like the eruption of a volcano. The power burst suddenly, caused great damage to the three-eyed young man’s internal organs directly.

Toba and Toao finally got out of that slurry pool. They wiped the slurry on their faces clean embarrassedly, then saw their leader was sent flying by Ji Hao’s punch and seemed seriously injured.

“Die!” Toba raised his sword. A fierce cyan wind started around the sword; a cyan phantom of the sword appeared a few feet away from the sword edge and chopped toward Ji Hao.

Toao picked up his bola and darted toward the three-eyed young man as well, left a piece of shadow behind him. He stretched his arms and threw out his chest, seemed that he was going to shield the young man with his own body.

Sharp cawing came from the sky. Mr.Crow, who was sent away by the wind from the young man’s erect eye now was diving down from the air. His wings were shaking and ejecting innumerable ablaze black feathers toward Toba and Toao. Those feathers were falling from the air like raindrops; every single feather was with a tens of feet long tail of black smoke.

Toba and Toao let out roars half angrily and half sorrowfully. Faced Mr.Crow’s attack, they took a deep breath, standing firmly.

Several smooth lines lit up on the surface of their armours; tens of fist-sized spell symbols then emerged from the-the surface of the armours and started to flash with a piercing light. They kept their heads down and let those ablaze feathers hit on their bodies.

Followed by thundering noises, the feathers overwhelmed their bodies. Mr.Crow was cawing sharply; a tens feet long fire stream spurted out from his blood-red eyes. Toba and Toao’s bodies were trembling intensely; the spell symbols on the surface of their armours were rapidly flashing. From time to time, feathers broke through the the spell symbols’ light and hit on the armours, left deep cuts on them.

Every second, Mr.Crow threw over ten thousand of feathers toward Toba and Toao. These feathers had an unknown source, seemed like the incessant river flow, flushing through the armours of Toba and Toao. The armours of Toba and Toao were lashing by the feathers; large fire sparkles often broke out from near their bodies and armour fragments kept falling on the ground.

Suddenly, Toba let out a howl. His shoulder pauldrons were completely damaged by the feathers; three six-feet-long ablaze feathers pierced his shoulders and stuck by his scapulas.

The three feathers were wrapped by gold-red flame, which was burning Toba’s shoulder. A stinky smell of burned meat spread around. Toba’s face was badly twisted in pain.

Toao has now forgotten to cover the three-eyed young man, instead, he opened his arms and tried to catch the feathers which were flying toward Toba.

Ji Hao darted up behind the three-eyed young man, who was coughing up blood and trying to flee; Ji Hao’s fists moved in a lighting speed and brought out tens of phantoms, punching toward the young man. The young man’s body trembled violently, blood was continuously spurting out from his mouth.

“Die!” The young man, who was nearly smashed by Ji Hao’s punches abruptly turned around his head; the erect eye between his eyebrows suddenly lit up; a tens of feet long sharp wind-knife darted out of that eye along with an ear-piercing sound.

However, once the young man turned his head, Ji Hao quickly threw a smack on his face; before the wind-knife darted out, the young man was whirled by Ji Hao’s smack. The sharp wind-knife from his erect eye then sliced the air through an inch away from Ji Hao’face, darted to ten thousand feet away in the blink of an eye.

The wind knife was incomparably sharp; it split all of the rocks and plants in its path. Tens of unlucky Savage warriors who were standing in its path didn’t even made any noticeable sounds before they were sliced into two pieces by the wind-knife.

Along with a cloud of crimson mist, the wind-knife exploded into a cyan whirlwind in ten thousand feet away, roll up hundreds of palm-sized wind-knives and shattered everything in hundreds of feet round, then subsided slowly.

Ji Hao was slightly shocked by the power of the wind-knife. “This wind-knife has such a scary power. If cast a wind-knife like this in a battle, it probably can kill at least hundreds of enemies.” Ji Hao said in his head.

Ji Hao didn’t wait until the three-eyed young man realised what was happening; he grabbed the young man’s cyan long hair and threw a kick to the vital part between his legs masterly. Before that, the young man was shaking his head and trying to fight back; now he stooped down instinctively and covered the vital parts between his legs which were badly harmed with his hands.

“Kneel down! You, kneel down!” Ji Hao growled and kicked the young man with his right leg.

Within the span of one breath, Ji Hao has thrown at least a hundred heavy kicks on the young man’s shanks; along with loud thuds, Ji Hao felt that his toe bones were nearly shattered. Finally, with a cracking sound, the young man’s shank bones broke into a few pieces.

“Damn bastard!” The three-eyed young man screamed out; tears and snot gushed out simultaneously.

Ji Hao jerked out a dagger and poked it into the young man’s mouth while he was screaming and cursing, then started cutting the inside of the his mouth. Ji Hao shook his wrist, felt like he was cutting a piece of leather with a blunt knife; he spent a lot of effort and finally sliced the young man’s tongue. The young man’s body twitched intensely in great pain, then suddenly became soft and lost the power of resistance.

Mr.Crow cawed and landed on the ground, opened its beak and spurted out a stream of gold-red flame toward Toba and Toao.

Toba and Toao howled simultaneously when they saw that the three-eyed young man was captured by Ji Hao. They ignored Mr.crow’s flame and darted out like they were running from the death; they went up to Ji Ying and Ji Lang who were badly injured and lied on the ground, then pulled Ji Ying and Ji Lang up and held them in front of their chests.

Mr.Crow suddenly popped up his eyes when he saw that Ji Ying and Ji Lang was going to burn by his fire. He then largely opened his beak and breathed the fire back.

‘Bang!’ The fire was drew back to Mr.Crow’s lung and soon exploded inside his body. Two wisps of smoke puffed out from his nose. Mr.Crow was choked by the smoke and cawing loudly; tears gushed out from his blood-red eye sockets.

Ji Hao held the dagger against the young man’s temple, and twisted his wrist; the dagger tip cut the young man’s soft skin open; only if Ji Hao pushed harder, the dagger would be poke into the young man’s head.

“Release! Release them!” Ji Hao looked at Ji Ying and Ji Lang, who was grabbed in Toba and Toao’s hands and growled. “If you don’t want this three-eyed kid die, you better release them now!”

“You release our captain first! Now!” Said Toba and Toao. Their eyes turned into red and their bronze skin turned slightly black. “Besides the two of them, we have many more of your people!”

The underlings of the three-eyed young man, who walked out of the jungle earlier as a troop have now showed up; each of them was holding a Fire Crow Clan warrior or a Qing Yi Clan warrior on their hands. All of those warriors were badly injured by Toba and Toao and powerless to resist.

“Kill three first!” Ji Hao was about to say something, Toba interrupted him and shouted out.

Three dark skin muscular men gave growls and chopped the heads of the warriors held in their hands off backhandedly.

“kill!” Ji Hao roared in rage, then poked the dagger into the right eye socket of the young man, dug out one of the his eyeballs wholly without any hesitation.

“You think that I won’t dare to kill a man? Let’s die together!” Ji Hao roared and threw the eyeball on the ground, trod it into a paste.

Toba and Toao stared at Ji Hao stunningly, like they were seeing a ghost. The Coldbrook valley suddenly became as quiet as dead.

————————————————————————

[1] Danyuan: A concentrated form of power. While a Magus practice on a certain type of magical spells, the power he gained will gather together and form a Danyuan inside his body. During the fight, the Magus can trigger the Danyuan and release the power from it.