Tens of ugly men, with speckled light-green skin, were running madly in the jungle while cursing with high-pitched voices. From time to time, they turned their heads around and used crossbow-like weapons to shoot at Ji Hao.
Fist-size metal bullets swished towards Ji Hao. Blasting out from those metal bullets, were poison thorns, lightning, ice-cold air or hurricanes. Each of those bullets’ explosion shattered tens of towering ancient trees into pieces.
However, all those bullets failed to harm even a hair on Ji Hao. A pair of red, fiery wings were slightly shaking on Ji Hao’s back. He trod through the air and easily dodged all those bullets, leaving fragments of illusionary silhouettes behind. The jungle behind him became badly damaged because of the thunderous bangs of the metal bullets.
“Run! Run!”
Those ugly men screamed. While running, they sometimes lowered their bodies and ran with both their arms and legs, just like hyenas;this caused their speed to suddenly double.
Nevertheless, Ji Hao followed them closely behind. It seemed that no matter how hard they were running, they could never escape Ji Hao.
About an hour later, they saw a ray of sunlight in front them. The jungle ended there, and the bright daylight poured down without any hindrances.
Great rumbling of a waterfall that would even make one’s heart shake could be heard. The dense watery-mist rose high into the sunlight. The sunlight spread on the rolling watery mist, and brought up tens of small rainbows, which were shaking and transforming shapes along with the wind.
An over twenty miles wide, rapidly flowing river split the jungle into two. In front of Ji Hao, the riverbed abruptly broke into a thousands of feet high cliff. The river was running down the cliff, forming a spectacular waterfall.
How mysterious and unpredictable nature could be! Right above this magnificent waterfall, a lean, ancient banyan tree, the age of which couldn’t be determined, had rooted on one side of the river, while its aerial roots had grown across the river and inserted firmly into the ground at the other side of the river.
This strong, ancient banyan had grown into an arch bridge above this great river.
Furthermore, naturally or artificially, tens of floating hills were tightly coiled around by the aerial roots of this huge banyan, which were so gigantic that took hundreds of people to wrap their arms around it; those hills could no longer float around, instead, drifting above the waterfall. Amongst these hills, the smallest was only hundreds of feet in radius, while the largest one was nearly seven miles in radius.
Blown by the roaring wind, these hills were slightly swinging in the air. Countless aerial roots of the ancient banyan were dragged and straightened by those hills; every time when the wind blew through those straight aerial roots, a beautiful, silvery, harp-like sound would be created.
The tens of ugly men fled onto the bridge formed by the roots of the banyan, cursing and running towards the other side of the river. The last man turned around and threw six fist-sized, red, metal bullets in a row towards Ji Hao.
The metal bullets bursted instantly up and turned the jungle into a sea of flame for miles around, swallowed innumerable towering trees, and cast a formidable blast wave transversely towards the waterfall, which caused a a great wave to surge high into the air and brought tens of round rainbows up under the rays of the sun.
Ji Hao walked fearlessly into the flame, with his body wrapped by an invisible power, twisting and dissipating all the nearest flame. A faint, fiery light circled around Ji Hao’s body, which reverberated till three feet away from his body. Ji Hao walked effortlessly through the flames, stood on the edge of the jungle, and waved smilingly at the ugly men.
“I’ll see you later,” said Ji Hao.
Ji Hao Paused for a second, laughed out loud, and continued, “go tell to whoever sent you, if they want to draw me out, to better find a couple of young and pretty girls. Sending a bunch of stupid ugly things like you only made me sick.”
Those ugly men had already ran thousands of feet away on the ancient banyan tree trunks, were suddenly stunned when they heard Ji Hao. They turned around, looking at Ji Hao confused, and seemed clueless as what to do.
This was not according to the plan. Why had Ji Hao stopped chasing them and returned to the edge of the forest?
On the other side of the river, tens of Jia Clan warriors, wearing heavy armours, rushed suddenly out of the jungle, while shouting towards Ji Hao discomfitingly. All of them were holding ropes, nets, and other heavy weapons. Some of the warriors with bad tempers even raised their weapons high and swung towards the jungle aside. Suddenly, hundreds of trees were uprooted into the air and destroyed by the violence of those Jia Clan warriors.
Above the waterfall, on a thousands of feet round floating hill, a well dressed three-eyed man, Di Sha, sneered, turned around, and seemed to leave.
“Respectfully Maguspriesstess, you never mentioned that this little guy is so smart! He isn’t even like one of your Souther Wasteland boys; he may be as shrewd and crafty as some as his peers within our Yu Clan!” said Di Sha.
This time, Ji Hao easily saw through their decoy, however, other clansmen of the Fire Crow Clan and Qing Yi Clan were not as vigilant as Ji Hao was; they could be tricked and captured alive, which would be a huge problem.