"Ayaya, Shermie, stop! They’re on our side!" Seeing the broken armors of those blood-vomiting guards and the fist-shaped, deep dents in their chests, Ji Hao hurriedly shouted out.
"Yes, Shifu!" A hazy silhouette dashed in like a bolt of lightning. Shermie clenched his fists. His soul-splitting gloves had been burning with a bright, cold silver fire, glowing with a dazzling, frigid light that pierced people’s eyes like needles, causing sharp pain.
"Cold, cold, cold!" Those guards, who were thrown into the tiny world by Shermie’s heavy punches, lied on the ground while twitching and trembling. Soon, their bodies were covered with a thin layer of silver-blue ice.
"The extremely negative power!" Netherworld Hierarch looked at the ice on those guards in a great surprise, then glanced at Shermie’s gloves. His heart even missed a beat — This pair of gloves was made with a very advanced technique. In Netherworld Hierarch’s eyes, this pair of gloves was perfectly crafted, because all materials merged immaculately and all spell symbols were connected so accurately.
Netherworld Hierarch knew that as Yu Yu’s first disciple, Po was an extraordinary treasure artist. Priest Po had even successfully copied a few pre-world supreme treasures and pre-world spirit treasures. His works were not as powerful as the original pieces, but he did manage to copy seventy to eighty percent of the powers of those genuine treasures.
However, this pair of gloves was clearly not Priest Po’s work. Netherworld Hierarch sensed something different from these gloves.
With a complicated feeling, Netherworld Hierarch looked at Ji Hao. Did Ji Hao make this pair of gloves that could hurt people with the extremely negative power and damage souls? As Yu Yu’s young disciple, Ji Hao was unreasonably strong, but did he also have a ridiculously great treasure-making skill aside from that?
Even though he was a clone of Netherworld Priest, he might not be a good treasure maker like Ji Hao. The advanced treasure-making art presented by this pair of gloves made Netherworld Hierarch feel a bit weak.
"They’re friends. This is a misunderstanding, misunderstanding!" Ji Hao grinned, then walked to those guards lying on the ground, and waved his sleeves. Strands of silver mist flew out of their bodies, into Ji Hao’s sleeves. Ji Hao then locked his fingers together and cast a spell. A clear light was released from his hands, slightly quaking the surrounding natural powers. The natural powers transformed into pure life-force and merged with these guards’ bodies, soon replenishing their consumed spirit blood. Flushed by their strong spirit blood, their wounds healed speedily.
"Elder?" Tushan Inkstone glanced at Netherworld Hierarch in panic. He then looked at Ji Hao and paused briefly. Hurriedly, he walked to Ji Hao and asked, "May I ask, are you Marquis Yao? Eh? Eh? Is that crayfish, MMarquis Yao?"
Ji Hao grinned, rubbed his nose, and laughed a bit embarrassedly, "Hah, it’s a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding. I was wondering why Tushan Family opened a shop here in Kui Water. I thought you were colluding with the Gong Gong Family…I was gonna find a chance to flatten this shop, but I didn’t think…"
Cold sweat oozed out of Tushan Inkstone’s forehead. He helplessly showed the whites of his eyes and glanced at Netherworld Hierarch with a lingering fear.
If Netherworld Hierarch wasn’t in this shop, if he didn’t open this shop to entrap those water-kind beings, and if Ji Hao really had a good reason to flatten this shop and kill every last living being in it, according to the scary fame he had created in the past few years, this tiny shop might not be able to survive a few punches of Ji Hao, right?
"How can our Tushan Family do anything like that?" Because of the lingering fear, Tushan Inkstone felt extremely cold. With a big grin on his face, he said, "We opened this shop to do nothing else but coordinate with elder Netherworld. This is a mission assigned by Emperor Shun himself!"
The broken folding screen was replaced with a new one, and so was the broken wall fixed. In the well-decorated, anciently-styled reception room, Ji Hao and Netherworld Hierarch sat down, facing each other, while Tushan Inkstone boiled the tea himself. Tasting the tea together, they started telling Ji Hao the whole story.
It was not complicated. Netherworld Priest was the ruler of the netherworld. He had no interest in living beings, and instead, he liked to collect strong souls, especially the souls of fallen warriors, which had a strong will of fighting; those kinds of souls were his favorite. Other than souls, he also liked to collect strong dead bodies, especially those extraordinary strengthful ones, because they bodies were the best material for him to create zombie warriors.
Therefore, this time when Gong Gong raised the flood to hurt the human-kind, Netherworld Priest was the happiest one to see this.
Human leaders and Netherworld Priest had been maintaining a close cooperative relationship. During the past few years, when the flood run rampantly in the world, through the alliance of human clans, human leaders had sent millions of corpses of powerful water-kind creatures to Netherworld Priest. The harvest from the past few years was enough for Netherworld Priest to luxuriously do whatever he liked for hundreds of years. But seeing the flood-control mission was about to reach the last second, Netherworld Priest wanted to get the most out of those water-kind beings. After all, the current water-kind armies were based on the twelve water worlds, and the number was huge. Pan Gu world never had so many water-kind spirit creatures before!
Therefore, Netherworld Priest sent out one of his three clones, Netherworld Hierarch. With the power of the Tushan Chamber of Commerce, he secretly came to the nine water gates area with a batch of ‘Chaos monster remains’, like the shell of the Chaos soul-eating crayfish.
Within the past two months, with all kinds of methods and excuses, Tushan Chamber of Commerce had already sold a batch of ‘Chaos monster remains ‘ to tens of high-level spirit creatures, who had countless warriors under their command. As long as these spirit creatures cultivate themselves with the secret method recorded on those remains, they would gradually become netherworld beings. Instinctively, they would also spread the cultivation method in their families, and let their families use the same cultivation method.
Therefore, after a certain period of time, the effects of the sold batch of Chaos monster remains would begin to show. According to Netherworld Hierarch’s estimation, about ten percent of all water-kind creatures in the nine water gates area would become netherworld warriors under Netherworld Hierarch’s control.
If Netherworld Hierarch and the Tushan Chamber of commerce had the time to spread more Chaos monster remains, Netherworld Hierarch might even empty a big half of the water-kind forces in this whole area, and turn all those water-kind beings into his own warriors.
"The netherworld has been cold, desolated, and empty since the start of time. Finally, this time, that place can have slightly more vitality." Netherworld Hierarch raised his head and sighed intoxicatedly. "It’s worthy for me to send out all of my eighteen hell clones."
"Eighteen hell clones?" Ji Hao asked curiously.
"Hmm, you’re my friend Yu Yu’s disciple, so I’m not gonna hide it from you. Eighteen hell clones are one of my great Dao that I am currently perusing." Netherworld Hierarch pondered for a short while, then smiled frankly and said, "The hell in the netherworld was divided into eighteen parts. Starting from the first part, each next part goes deeper. Each part can be considered as an independent world, with an independent great Dao."
"I am Netherworld Hierarch. I combined the eighteen great Dao of hell and created eighteen hell clones. Those are eighteen clones of mine. Only when eighteen clones merge back together, you can see the true face of Netherworld Hierarch!"
Netherworld Hierarch explained slowly, while Ji Hao was hooked.