The Magus Era

Ji Hao stared nervously at his father. His head was filled with countless thoughts.

Ji Shu came up to Ji Xia, rose the cane wrapped by a tricoloured flame, and heavily hit on the dragon-scales shield, causing a ripple.

Ji Hao heard a loud bang and the ground vibrated, almost making him fall over. The shock waves rushed across the surface of the lava lake at supersonic speed and crushing layers of lava splashed to heights of miles. Glowing hot lava waves rolled like breakers across the surface of the mountain and torched the trees on the surrounding mountaintops.

Ji Xia held the shield and whispered a magic spell. The nine dragon-scales were orderly lit up, spurted countless beams of fiery lights from the naturally formed marks on their surfaces. The light beams interwove into a light-cocoon, wrapping Ji Xia inside.

Along with sharp warbles[1], tens of phoenixes started ripping the light cocoon with flame flakes, which caused an ear piercing noise mixed with a thumping sound. People who were watching this fight had to crouch down and cover their ears with their hands.

“Kill!” Ji Xia shouted out while Ji Shu was madly attacking him. His spear transformed into a dazzling light beam and lashed out to Ji Shu.

Ji Shu’s body suddenly exploded into countless hair-thin fire lines. The fire lines erupted and jetted upward to thousands of feet higher than the gathered splashing sparks. Ji Shu’s body appeared again.

“My brother!” Ji Shu laughed aloud proudly and said. “This is Suiren Cane, the legendary ancient demigod, Suirenshi’s[2] magic cane. Have you seen this magical flame? It’s different from our fires...This is the Shamisen fire...This can destroy everything! Its power...is inexhaustible!”

Ji Shu waved the Suiren Cane with a sneer and continued: “As you’ve seen...As long as I’m holding this magic cane, no one can harm me! No attack can hurt me! My brother! You can’t even hurt me even for a little bit!”

After that Ji Shu’s body transformed into a tricoloured flame again, while he rushed down towards Ji Xia along with those fiery phoenixes.

Ji Xia took the spear back, sniffed and bit also his own tongue, spat a mouthful of blood on the dragon-scales shield. A sonorous dragon-howling came from the shield. The shield then separated itself from Ji Xia’s arm, floated above Ji Xia and spurted a thick, lava-like flame, shielding Ji Xia behind it.

Meanwhile, the shield started emitting a bright fiery light, a thousand feet long fiery dragon appeared in the sky, hovering above Ji Xia and the shield.

Ji Xia held the spear to his chest and whispered a magic spell. A bright fiery light began spurting out from his body and wrapping around him.

“Useless, my brother. Just useless...Even if you triggered all of your internal power...You’re just a Senior Magus, how could you withstand the blow of the ancient demigod’s inherited magic treasure?”

Ji Shu then laughed out loud and lifted the cane again. While the people still were seeing the shadow of the Suiren Cane flashing in the flame, Ji Shu had already thrown a hundred of heavy hits towards Ji Xia with it.

The blazing flame from Ji Xia’s shield turned into a flame-wall and spread to the surrounding areas.

Ji Hao felt a great pain in his eyes caused by the dazzling fiery light. He couldn’t even keep his eyes open.

Suddenly, an exploding sound came from inside the flame-wall, following which the wall quickly dissipated into the air. Ji Hao forcibly opened his eyelids and looked carefully at the sky. He saw that the dragon-scales shield had been shattered into pieces and the fiery dragon was split up. As for Ji Xia, he didn’t have enough time to trigger his internal power; his body was now wrapped up by the tricoloured flame and his chest had been hollowed.

It seemed that all of Ji Xia’s ribs were broken; a head-size hole had been burnt through his chest; the skin and muscles of the chest were burned into ashes; a large amount of blood was spurting out from his wounds, burning quickly out in wisps of smoke.

Ji Xia was vomiting blood and flying backwards. His eyes had lost focus.

Ji Xia was hit and sent flying across tens of miles, then heavily smashed onto a cliff. The cliff collapsed instantly. Rocks that fell from the cliff were quickly burned into ashes by the tricoloured flame, which was still wrapped around Ji Xia’s body.

Ji Shu gnashed his teeth, transformed into a fiery light again and followed Ji Xia. Tens of phoenixes flew up to Ji Xia ahead of Ji Shu, and spurted flame flakes onto Ji Xia’s face from a distance.

“My brother! Get up and fight! You won’t let me win this easily will you?” Ji Shu rose his arms intended to hit Ji Xia once more. In the meanwhile, he was still shouting at Ji Xia. “Come on! You’re a strong man! You won’t give up, will you?”

Everything had happened quite fast. No one, not even Ji Kui and the other elder Maguspriests had seen this coming. With the horrible power of the Suiren Cane, Ji Shu had defeated Ji Xia only in one second, while Ji Xia had been under the protection of his own inherited magic treasure.

Ji Hao looked around. Everyone was shocked and showed no signs of a reaction. Even if Ji Shu wouldn’t dare to kill Ji Xia in front of all these people, once he would hit Ji Xia again with that cane, Ji Xia would be completely disabled without any possibility of recovering from the injury.

Only Ji Hao had prepared for Ji Xia’s defeat from a long time ago. Before Ji Shu had finished his talk, Ji Hao shouted out with all of his strength: “We lost! My Abba lost! Ji Shu, my uncle! You’re the leader now! All of the Fire Crow Clan’s warriors will follow you now!”

Ji Hao’s voice had even damaged the eardrums of a few people nearby.

Ji Kui seemed awakened by Ji Hao’s voice. He quivered his body, harshly shouted to Ji Shu: “Stop! Ji Shu! You already have won!”

Ji Shu paused for a second. Several phoenixes were already flying towards Ji Xia; Ji Xia’s face was about to be torched by the flame flakes darted out from their mouths. If Ji Shu would retract the power now, he would still be able to save Ji Xia.

But he paused only for a second, then raised the Suiren Can again and pretended that he couldn’t control it anymore. He yelled dramatically: “Oh no...This magic treasure is way too powerful...I lost control of it...”

Those phoenixes didn’t stop their attack on Ji Xia.

A figure appeared abruptly in front of Ji Xia. She was standing on a huge leaf and quickly waved her arms. Countless vines and flowers sprouted from the air then rapidly grew into a thick green wall, while shielding Ji Xia and herself behind it. That figure was Qing Fu, Ji Xia’s wife.

The flame flakes deeply cut into the green wall and soon burned through it. Ji Hao saw Qing Fu’s body shivering; her hair was blazed up and blood oozed out from her mouth, nose and ears.

“Ji Shu...Damn you!” Ji Hao clenched his fists in anger and growled hysterically. His parents were about to be swallowed up by the flame, while he was too weak to do anything to prevent it!

At that moment, Ji Kui and other eight elder Maguspriests appeared in front of Ji Xia and Qing Fu. They raised their arms simultaneously, a large amount of huge golden crow feathers fell from the air and quickly built a feather-wall up, which blocked the flame.

Ji Kui looked Ji Shu straight in the eyes and said calmly: “According to the rule of our ancestors, Ji Shu, you have defeated Ji Xia. Now you’re the leader of our Holy Land warriors.”

Ji Shu’s face was hideously twisted. He held the Suiren Can tightly. Those fiery phoenixes, which were hovering around him dissipated into the air one after another.

He rose the cane, held his head high and laughed wildly.

“Yes, I have defeated Ji Xia! Now I’m the leader! From now on, I will take the responsibility of protecting our Holy Land! As for that weak, waste of a man...He is not qualified to lead our warriors!”

“My Master Maguspriest, you shall leave those war issues to me from now on...I don’t want you to be bothered with those things. All you need to do now are...try maybe to improve your drug-making skills, keep in touch with our ancestors’ souls...More importantly...rest well.” Ji Shu gave a glance at Ji Kui and said arrogantly.

Ji Kui and other elder Maguspriests stared at Ji Shu in surprise, twitched their mouth corners but couldn’t let a word out.

Most of the crowd remained silent. Only Ji Shu’s people had started shouting and cheering.

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[1] Warble: bird song with rapidly changing notes

[2] Suirenshi (燧人氏): The inventor of fire. Suirenshi was supposed to have lived approximately 10,000 years ago. He was neither an emperor nor a god, but a mythological demigod. As the story goes, there was a forest in western China with a tree that “shone” throughout the day and night. Suirenshi visited that forest looking for that tree. He came to this big tree and saw many woodpeckers pecking away at it. Suirenshi noticed that as the woodpeckers’ beaks drilled into the trunk, sparks would fly, lighting up the tree. He decided to break off two branches and jabbed one stick against the other in quick succession. Eventually, he got the sticks to spark. As he added more and more sticks, he built a fire. When he returned to Henan Province, he taught the people how to start a fire to keep warm. Also, at that time, people were eating raw meat and vegetables and getting sick. With fire, they learned to cook their food before eating, greatly reducing illness from eating raw food. In addition, cooked food was more delicious. The people were very appreciative of Suirenshi’s discovery/invention of how to make fire.