Chapter 114: Devastation

"Fire! Kill him for me!"

Standing atop a high arrow tower, Qing Ying pointed at a peak-level Minor Magus clad in thick turtle-shell armor and roared.

Thirty warriors of the Qingyi Tribe followed Qing Ying's direction, their arrows flying like rain. A massive volley of poisoned shafts whistled through the air, pinning themselves densely into the enemy. The warrior in the turtle-shell armor curled his limbs, evading ninety-nine percent of the barrage, but eventually, one arrow shot out silently, piercing the left palm he had been unable to retract in time.

With a miserable howl, the heavily armored warrior clutched his hand, which was spurting black blood, and leaped off the defensive wall to flee.

However, he had not even escaped five zhang when Ji Hao let out a long whistle. The flowing light fire wings on his back vibrated violently, carrying him in a trail of scorching afterimages as he chased the man down like a phantom. A spear radiating intense firelight pierced the air with a sharp shriek, punching through the half-foot-thick turtle-shell armor on the warrior's back and impaling his chest.

Fire surged, and the impaled warrior became a human torch, engulfed in flames in the blink of an eye.

A dozen elite peak-level Minor Magus warriors from the Black Water Mysterious Snake Tribe swarmed toward him. Their strangely shaped longswords moved with sinister, eerie trajectories, stabbing silently at every vital point on Ji Hao’s body.

Clear light rippled across the armor clinging to Ji Hao, and several lotus flowers, palm-sized, flickered in and out of existence. When the enemies’ swords struck this clear light, they were all violently deflected. The massive counter-shock force caused them to lose their footing, their bodies staggering wildly.

"Die!" Ji Hao let out a long shout, sweeping his spear horizontally. It carried an arc of firelight, inadvertently unleashing a fraction of the essence of the "Heaven-Opening Strike."

*Find the gap, strike the void; it can shatter all laws.*

The mysteries of the Heaven-Opening Strike were infinite. Ji Hao’s spear lightly penetrated the hasty defenses organized by the Black Water Mysterious Snake elites, the spearhead precisely sweeping across their throats and decapitating them in one motion.

Great gouts of burning blood erupted. The dozen elite warriors twitched as they fell to the ground, and soon, flames spread over their entire bodies, burning them to ash.

"Kill that brat! No, better yet, capture him alive!" Hei Shuiqiu stood on a giant, single-horned mysterious snake far away, locked in a standoff with Ji Hu. His eyes flickered as he closely monitored the battlefield, and seeing Ji Hao jump off the defensive wall, he hurriedly let out a roar of surprise and delight.

More than twenty warriors from the Water Turtle Tribe, clad in astonishingly defensive turtle-shell armor, charged forward. Wielding strange, oversized axes, they hacked silently down at Ji Hao. These Water Turtle warriors were also elites at the high or peak Minor Magus stage. While their axes were still dozens of zhang away, they had already stirred up waves of water and cold air, manifesting into giant turtles the size of millstones that smashed toward Ji Hao.

The bloodline power of the Water Turtle Tribe originated from the ancient water-element spirit beast, the "Gui Water Mysterious Turtle." They possessed incredible natural defense, immense strength, and innate water-control abilities. Although they lacked variety, their innate talents were direct and their attack power was terrifyingly high.

Facing the twenty-plus water-turtle energy constructs slamming into his chest, Ji Hao laughed wildly, thrusting his chest forward to meet them head-on.

The armor refined by A-Bao possessed astonishing defensive power. Even the elite Jia Clan warriors of the Blood Tooth Regiment could not pierce it, let alone these Minor Magus-level warriors. The twenty-plus water-turtle constructs smashed heavily into Ji Hao’s chest, splashing water everywhere, yet they failed to push him back even an inch.

"Die!" Ji Hao roared. A ball of firelight suddenly flared on his chest, and he spat out a stream of viscous, golden-red flame with a piercing whistle.

It was the Golden Crow Breath, a mouthful of True Solar Fire refined from the bloodline of the Three-Legged Golden Crow. Although the Fire Crow Tribe’s bloodline power was now extremely thin, Ji Hao had sacrificed to his ancestors using the "Nine Suns in the Sky" and blood-sacrifice secret arts, greatly enhancing his internal bloodline. This mouthful of Golden Crow Breath now carried a glimmer of the terrifying might of the ancient Golden Crow.

A wall of fire spanning dozens of zhang rolled forward. Where it passed, the standing water on the ground evaporated instantly, and the soil was fused into molten glass. The twenty-plus Minor Magus warriors of the Water Turtle Tribe shrieked as their flesh and bone were reduced to ash, and over a hundred ordinary Magus-level soldiers were burned into wisps of blue smoke.

"Who else?" Ji Hao held the ancestral magus treasure, the Green Mulberry Spear, borrowed from Ji Hu. With a flick of his wrist, dozens of streaks of fire shot out. Within a hundred zhang of him, the enemies swarming like ants began to howl and struggle in the flames, quickly reduced to piles of ash.

"Daring to attack Cold Creek Valley? You shall all die!"

Relying on the terrifying defense of A-Bao’s magical armor, Ji Hao moved fearlessly among the tens of thousands of enemies beneath the wall. His spear danced like rain; wherever he passed, hundreds of enemies were ignited, eventually burning into flying ash.

This was the third day of the three-tribe coalition’s assault on Cold Creek Valley, but the defensive walls remained unshaken. The attacking enemies, however, had suffered heavy casualties under the wild counterattacks of Ji Hao and his tribesmen. Ji Hao alone had killed over three hundred Minor Magi, and the loss of ordinary soldiers was countless.

Three hundred Minor Magi—in any tribe of the Southern Wilderness, this would be a number that caused the leadership great agony. Yet in Cold Creek Valley, in just three days, Ji Hao had killed three hundred of them single-handedly!

Hei Shuiqiu and the other tribal leaders glared at Ji Hao, their eyes turning bloodshot.

A Magus Priest of the Black Water Mysterious Snake Tribe roared, and a pitch-black snake bone in his hand transformed into a streak of black light, shooting toward Ji Hao. However, a stone monster within Cold Creek Valley roared back, backhanding a massive boulder at it.

The black light was still hundreds of zhang away when it collided with the boulder, both being destroyed in the impact.

Behind the defensive walls, several stone monsters, tree demons, and three enormous ape-like Great Demons watched Ji Hao intently, serving as his personal escorts. Even if the coalition had a numerical advantage in Great Magi, how could it be so easy to intercept and kill Ji Hao?

Not to mention that Ji Hao’s own defense was astonishing, and holding Ji Hu’s Green Mulberry Spear gave him the terrifying attack power to slay Great Magi. Ji Hao alone had become an anomaly disrupting the entire battlefield.

"Kill that brat!" Hei Shuiqiu roared. The single-horned mysterious snake beneath him lunged forward, and his sharp sword transformed into dozens of black, icy wind-streams, slashing toward Ji Hu.

Once Hei Shuiqiu moved, the Great Magi of the three tribes behind him moved in unison. They each targeted an opponent, relying on their numerical superiority to pin down every Great Magus-level expert in Cold Creek Valley, creating an opening for their own Great Magi to kill Ji Hao.

Such attempts had been made several times over the past three days. This time, Hei Shuiqiu and his cohorts successfully pinned down all the Great Magi of Cold Creek Valley as before, while their remaining Great Magus-level experts launched a simultaneous attack on Ji Hao.

But Ji Hao turned sideways, letting a Great Magus’s sword stab viciously into his chest, while he backhanded his spear to savagely pierce the Great Magus’s chest.

The clear light on Ji Hao’s armor rippled, and as it had every time before, he remained completely unharmed. However, the Great Magus who had struck him was heavily wounded by the Green Mulberry Spear, vomiting blood as he retreated.

Before he had backed away more than a few steps, Qing Ying, standing on the arrow tower, shot an arrow without a sound. Caught off guard, the Great Magus let out a miserable howl as Qing Ying’s poisoned arrow pierced his right eye, burying itself deep into his brain and killing him on the spot.

For the first time in three days, a Great Magus had fallen.