Chapter 169 - Apprentice
Pu Ban City was over there, which was described by Si Wen Ming as the best place in the world, that even milk and honey were flowing through the rivers.
Ji Hao was lying on the mountain side, looking at the flatland about a hundred miles away from him, which was filled with blooming flowers and loomingly visible, magical light streams flowing in the air.
The fresh grass around him was tender and juicy, emitting a nice pleasant smell. The grassland was thickly dotted with different coloured wildflowers. Those flowers seemed to be covering the entire mountain. Ji Hao strained his eyes to look into the distance, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see the end of this flower grassland.
A brook was wriggling and flowing under the mountain; the water in the brook was crystal-clear and had a magical, egg-white coloured glaze-like luster; although it was only clean water, it still emitted a faint, nice scent. A few fishes happily leapt into the air from the brook, splashing water drops up; every water drop drew a very thin line from the brook, apparently, the water in the river was actually very thick and sticky.
This place was filled with natural power, even the water in a brook had absorbed too much natural power and had become as sticky as glue.
Ji Hao picked up a wild grass and put it into his own mouth, and began to chew it carefully. The grass juice tasted bland, and didn’t have any special flavour, however, a thick stream of natural power instantly gushed into Ji Hao’s body through his throat, and directly merged with his meridians. Apart from the medical effect and judging from the amount of power that was contained in the grass, this kind of ordinary grass, which could be found everywhere, was much more powerful than any kind of hundreds of years old herbal medicine in the Southern Wasteland.
A group of chubby sparrows rose from the grassland and hovered in the air. They chirped to each other and their tiny black beady eyes were shining with the faint light of wisdom. Nourished by the rich natural power around here, these ordinary sparrows now had the intelligence that was not worse than that of human teenagers.
This was Pu Ban City.
Behind the mountainside that Ji Hao had been lying on, tens of adult-waist-thick chains thrust out from the ground, which firmly chained a floating mountain that was thousands of zhangs tall and tens of miles in radius. The black-coloured mountain didn’t have a single grass growing on it, and a square entrance was clearly visible on the mountain side.
This mountain was the entrance of the Magi Palace.
Wulong Yao guided Ji Hao out from this entrance, and told him to take a walk in the surrounding area, after which he had hurriedly left.
Through a transporting magic formation, one could get to the mountainside of this floating mountain, then walk to the outside world through a short path. According to Wulong Yao, there were more than tens of floating entrances like this.
Except the few core elders, who possessed the highest status in the Magi Palace, no one knew where the Magi Palace actually was located at, and all could only get in and out of the Magi Palace through the transporting magic formations. Some people had roughly done the math that according to the air pressure inside the transporting magic formations and transporting time, the Magi Palace was located within a million-mile radius area around the Pu Ban City.
A million-mile radius area was an immensely broad range, it was not possible to find out the precise location of the Magi Palace by human search.
“The place that gathered the wisdom of the entire humankind.” Ji Hao laid his head on his own hands while sincerely praising the Magi Palace.
Countless Maguspriests stayed here, gathering all kinds of special techniques and knowledge that had been created by all the clans in the four wastelands and Midland, achieving mastery through comprehensive studies of those knowledge, then turning those techniques and knowledge into the power of the entire humankind. As for the other Magi Palace members, who had been travelling around the world like Si Wen Ming, every time they passed by this place, they would intentionally and subconsciously spread out the knowledge that they had learned in the Magi Palace.
Just like those simple planting and animal raising skills Si Wen Ming had taught those clansmen of the Gold-Eyed Lion Clan, and the life-saving detoxifying prescription Ji Hao had taught them. Even if these knowledge could only help the Gold-Eyed Lion Clan to raise three to five thousand more clansmen, these three to five thousand people would be added to the entire humankind and a new emerging power.
Who could tell for sure that another powerful and talented people like Si Wen Ming or Ji Hao wouldn’t emerge from amongst these three to five-thousand people?
Ji Hao silently laid on the mountainside for quite a long while, around two to three hours, until the sun went down and hung on the mountain peak in the West, and Wulong Yao abruptly appeared beside Ji Hao, along with a gentle gust of wind.
“Kid, I told you to look around, you just lied here and slept all the time?”
Ji Hao leisurely narrowed his eyes, sensing the soft wind blowing across his face along with a warm power that only existed at dusk, and lazily responded, “Ah, very comfortable, and I’m too lazy to walk around. What would be interesting to look at around here?”
Wulong Yao smirked, brushed his long beard with his fingers and said with a slightly vicious, low voice, “Quite a few large-scale markets, which were built by the apprentices of the Magi Palaces, are located around here. You will find many interesting things in those kind of markets, such as beautiful mermaids from the Eastern ocean, don’t you wanna see?”
Ji Hao threw a sideway glance at Wulong Yao, let out a cold smile and said, “Well, although I came from the poor and far Southern Wasteland, it’s not like I haven’t seen any interesting things at all. Grandpa Wulong, you can just stop luring me with such a childish method, I have already decided to join the Magi Palace.”
Wulong Yao was slightly stunned by Ji Hao’s words. He had taken Ji Hao to walk around the Magi Palace earlier and showed him a lot of magical and interesting things that wound often happen in the Magi Palace, then guided him out of the Magi Palace, attempting to let him walk into those few special and bustling large-scale markets by himself, and be shocked by all of those strange and magical things in the markets, then develop a longing for the Magi Palace, eventually screaming to join the Magi Palace in tears.
During all these years, many kids who had come from the four wastelands had been through all above shocking mind-blasting events and became loyal apprentices of the Magi Palace.
In the few large-scale markets nearby, you could find top-quality armours, precious magical medicines, and all kinds of rare treasures, even extremely exquisite puppets, weapons and especially powerful magic treasures and spells.
All those came from the Magi Palace.
Those armours were forged in the Magi Palace, those magical medicines were connoted in the Magi Palace, those powerful spell symbols were drawn by Maguspriests of the Magi Palace, and those magic treasures were thoroughly tempered in the Magi Palace. Any simple young man, who had never seen how interesting and splendid the outside world was, would definitely be attracted by all this!
However, Ji Hao had reacted in a totally different way, he was too calm, too relaxed. Looking at Ji Hao in the eyes, which had been shining with a deep, calm and wise light, Wulong Yao embarrassedly touched his own face.
He suddenly thought of what Si Wen Ming said about Ji Hao, that compared with the other apprentices in the Magi Palace, he was a completely different kid.
“Well…in fact, the reason why Si Wen Ming brought you here was that he wanted you to join the Magi Palace,” said Wulong Yao while taking out a palm-sized bronze tablet out from his sleeve and threw it onto Ji Hao’s belly, “From now on, you are an elementary apprentice of the Magi Palace, and you shall start with this basic knowledge. We will find out what you are mostly interested in, and which subject is your speciality. We have so many great Maguspriests in the Magi Palace, they will cultivate you further based on what you are good at.”
Ji Hao grabbed the tablet and gave it a close look.
The bronze tablet had a simple and smooth shape, but the patterns engraved on it was very special.
On the front side of the tablet, patterns of clouds and wind hand been engraved on it, within those clouds and gusts of wind, dragons and phoenixs had been hovering in the air, and a sturdy yet hazy human silhouette had been standing on the ground with his head held high.
On the backside of the tablet, layers of patterns of stars, the heavens, and the earth were carved; in the middle of the tablet backside, a character of ‘Magus’ had been stamped in an ancient and unsophisticated style, giving a feeling of vigor and force; two smaller characters were engraved under the Magus character, which was nothing else but Ji Hao’s name.
As for the four edges of the tablet, they were carved with a spell, which was able to banish evil spirits, protect the spell user, clean the mind and prevent diseases.
Since today, Ji Hao had formally become an elementary apprentice of the Magi Palace.