The Magus Era

After returning to Pu Ban city, Ji Hao curiously asked about the identity of that so-called ‘Priest Corpse.’

Po’s answer brought Ji Hao waves of numbness on his scalp as a fierce coldness arose spontaneously in his heart.

Priest Corpse was one of the first batches of creatures after this world was created. He was born from a stream of accumulated corpse gas. Back in the prehistorical era, relying on the extreme evil and vicious power of the corpse gas, which was great enough to perish all living beings, Priest Corpse once dominated a certain area and slaughtered countless creatures.

Back then, Po was traveling across the world. He fought against Priest Corpse many times. Therefore, the two of them could be counted as long-time adversaries of each other.

Later, Priest Corpse was brought under control of Priest Hua with some kind of great magic, becoming Priest Hua’s third disciple. With the powerful secret magic taught by Priest Hua, Priest Corpse understood the interdependence of life and death and even generated a magical method of transforming life and death from the accumulated corpse gas contained in his own body. Thus, he turned the fierce and evil accumulated corpse gas of his warm and peaceful. After that, he achieved a soaring improvement in his power and became a mentionable top disciple among all those disciples of Priest Hua.

Apart from the unpredictable and powerful magics of his, he had also created a rather special body-strengthening magic based on his own body condition, which was called ‘nine death gold body.’ In terms of body condition, Priest Corpse was no better than those top-level powerful human Magi. However, he possessed the power of unlimited rebirth; this made him even harder to deal with than those Divine Magi who were able to be reborn from a single drop of blood.

Priest Corpse once claimed that as long as the corpse gas remained existing in this world, he could take rebirth infinitely.

Po hadn’t heard any news about Priest Corpse for many years. He only heard that Priest Corpse had been staying away from worldly affairs and been concentrating on studying some kind of recondite magic. This time, Priest Corpse unexpectedly showed up around Pu Ban city, and apparently, he had already made some achievements. He was now harder to deal with than before.

“For the cultivation pursued by us, we can do it anytime, and we have to stay in a natural and clear state.” Po seriously said to Ji Hao, “But disciples of Priest Hua, especially Priest Corpse... what he has been pursuing were instant improvements, by any means. Since Priest Corpse has already come to Pu Ban city, this city is going to become a dangerous place.”

One could never stay too long in a dangerous place.

Ji Hao understood Po’s words. Abruptly, he thought of that terrifyingly finger move launched by Priest Corpse, which had disabled him completely from resisting and nearly crushed both his body and primordial spirit.

If Po weren’t there, Ji Hao would have perished for good due to Priest Corpse already.

However, Po couldn’t stay with Ji Hao at all times to be his bodyguard; Po also had his own businesses to mind after all.

Next day, Ji Hao met Emperor Shun, stating his will of leaving Pu Ban city as soon as possible to Yao Mountain, his own enfeoffment. Emperor Shun agreed and ordered Si Wen Ming to prepare everything Ji Hao needed by himself.

With Si Wen Ming’s help and Emperor Shun’s orders, Ji Hao’s preparatory work went especially smooth.

At first, Wuzhi Qi obediently sent Ji Hao the money for buying those more than a hundred thousand captured warriors from Ink Ape Clan and other few clans without any discount. He had also redeemed Dark Cloud and the eight apes, who had been hanging under the arch for whole twenty-four hours.

With this sum of money, and added with those trophies he gained in Chi Ban Mountain area and all rewards he accepted after the war because of the contributions he made, Ji Hao turned himself into a big spender in Pu Ban city’s slave market.

Zhamu knew very well about all big Blood Moon families, including the Di Family, Qian Family, and the other large-scale, powerful families. Guided by him, Ji Hao carefully selected over thirty-thousand ‘clean and clear’ dark-kind slave warriors.

Same as the warriors under Zhamu’s command, all these dark-kind warriors hadn’t taken part in wars against the humankind. They were all garrisons stationed in territories of those large families. They were well trained and individually powerful as well. After being armed by a little, these warriors would form an elite army.

Ji Hao didn’t like these non-humankind beings and had even been looking at them with hatred. However, in constructive works of the new territory, the needs of a great number of warriors for guarding every spot of the land would be unavoidable. Then there were also attacks launched by all kinds of wild beasts and poisonous insects, even by mysterious spiritual creatures, and the danger brought by all kinds of natural disasters. Ji Hao would rather let these expendable dark-kind warriors do the work than sending human warriors fending against those potential dangers.

Nearly fifty thousand dark-kind warriors were all led by Zhamu now and added with their families, Ji Hao had bought over than two-hundred thousand people from the slave market.

After that, as Emperor Shun ordered, Si Wen Ming carefully selected a batch of residents for Ji Hao’s new territory.

The backgrounds of those human residents were clean and reliable. Most of them were refugees whose clans were destroyed by natural disasters. These people, who didn’t have enough to eat or to wear, were sold by those large, rich clans as slaves. As long as Ji Hao could provide shelters for them and give them enough to eat and wear, keep them away from beasts, poisonous bugs, and natural disasters, he would be able to easily turn these people into a new clan.

Si Wen Ming particularly selected those healthy men and women who were in the prime of their lives, yet weren’t too powerful, as residents of Ji Hao’s new territory. They were all ordinary Novice Magi, and the most powerful ones were only at the junior level. Because of their low power levels, their prices were actually quite low.

A young man was worth fifty jade coins in the slave market, while a young woman was worth slightly more, but no more than a hundred. Those children and teenagers were even cheaper; with three to five jade coins, one could buy out a sensible child who could also do some simple work.

With the large sum of money sent over by Wuzhi Qi, Ji Hao bought a whole two million young and middle-aged men, women, and children, after hesitating a little.

His territory in Yao Mountain had the radius of a hundred million miles and could feed hundreds of millions of people. These two million young and middle-aged men and women would become the kindling of civilization at Yao Mountain.

Fifty-thousand dark-kind warriors were truly not enough for guarding the entire Yao Mountain territory, especially under the circumstance that Ji Hao had actually pissed quite a lot of people off. Therefore, Si Wen Ming selected another two-hundred thousand elite warriors from those slave warriors for Ji Hao, in addition to those dark-kind warriors.

These warriors were either human warriors who had deserted in the face of battles, or robbers who had been living out of the system, or clansmen who had violated laws and were captured alive. Anyway, none of them was one of the good kind.

One couldn’t actually expect these people to pledge their loyalties, as that would be impossible. However, all of their lives were under the control of a certain kind of magic spell, which meant their life and death were grasped in Ji Hao’s hands. Therefore, Ji Hao didn’t need much of their loyalties. Instead, what he needed was nothing but those warriors to fight and kill for him.

In the future, if they stayed obedient, Ji Hao could let them marry, have children and build their own families. But if they didn’t, Ji Hao also had plenty of methods to deal with them.

Because of Ji Hao’s insistence, Si Wen Ming particularly selected those who had committed serious crimes, hands all stained with blood and who had never stayed out of troubles. Towards these criminals, Ji Hao wouldn’t have even a slight little bit of mercy. Therefore, he wouldn’t go softhearted when he had to punish them.

With enough warriors to guard and protect the territory and enough residents for the first stage of development, Ji Hao started purchasing all kinds of supplies that he would be needing.

Food, seeds, all kinds of working and farming tools, large numbers of vehicles for transportation, and a great number of livestock, including large-scale livestock for farming and working, livestock as meat supplies for starting a textile industry...

Ji Hao had done the purchase in great abundance. In order to construct the territory which belonged to himself, he spent every single jade coin that he had within three days.