Chapter 427: Return Journey
Translator: Law Editor: Hitesh
Not even a slight trace of cloud could be seen in the azure sky. A great distance away, a line of enormous floating mountains was being blown into the air by the void gale, drifting slowly towards the north, looking just like a gigantic string of green pearls. From further away, there came deafening roars given by tercels fighting against the fierce void gale.
Over ten enormously-shaped, multicolored birds swiftly flew across the air. Archers sitting on those birds seemed to be brimming with pride and delight while waving their hands towards battalions of warriors who had been moving south slowly on the ground.
Ji Hao raised his head, watching those archers swish across above him, flying forwards for around a hundred mile, then circling around and patrolling back towards the tail of the troop, leaving a huge arc in the air.
Soon, over ten giant eagles flew across. Warriors sitting on those eagles carried wineskins in their hands, laughing loudly while pouring wines into their mouths. Their faces had all turned glowing red. Obviously, they were nearly drunk.
Ji Hao was sitting in a four-wheeled chariot. The rigid wheels banged against the rough road, constantly making loud noises. The chariot itself was rigid as well, barely absorbing the shock. Therefore, the bodies Ji Hao and the others sitting on the chariots had been swaying all the time slightly.
Ji Hao and his teammates, including Po, were all sitting on the chariots that were surrounded by over a hundred heavily armored, elite human warriors, mounted on ferocious-looking tigers.
These warriors were seen as elites, yet, only their high-grade gears could depict that right now. When they were marching, those large leather wineskins never left their hands, and the laughing and joking never stopped. They had been drinking all the time and looked just like a group of sheep without a shepherd.
Although these warriors were now under Ji Hao’s command, they were only temporarily assigned to Ji Hao according to Si Wen Ming’ order. These warriors still belonged to the clans they came from.
Once they returned to Pu Ban city and back to their own clans, their relationship with Ji Hao would end completely, and Ji Hao wouldn’t be able to command these warriors anymore. At that point of time, he would thoroughly become a commander without any soldier.
Ji Hao glanced at these warriors, who had been indulgent, unbridled and wantonly having fun because of the great victory that was just achieved by the humankind, he could only shake his head silently. He didn’t have any close and trusted clansman in Pu Ban City, which was the reason why things became like this.
Large groups of non-humankind slave warriors and slaves had lined up and had been moving forwards expressionlessly. Those tall, dark-skinned and muscular slave warriors were quite combat-worthy; among them, there was no lack of senior-level powerful ones. Therefore, all these slave warriors were strung together by ropes made from tanned beast tendons and enchanted with magic spells. The ropes went through their shoulder blades, stringing over a thousand slave warriors into one. In addition to that, they had taken body-weakening medicines.
These slave warriors had been remaining silent. They were still acting in the same way as they were supposed to do in Yu Clan’s armies. Their paces were consistent when moving and roughly divided themselves into groups according to the old arrangements in the armies of the non-humankind. Judging merely from the behavior of these slave warriors, they looked like soldiers more than those human warriors.
As for those non-humankind slaves, those were now in an entirely chaotic stage.
Those monkey-like, hideous-looking non-humankind slaves were weak and insignificant and had been yelling and screaming, making all kinds of noises all the time. As they were rather weak, the human warriors didn’t take any preventive measures with them. Instead, they had been moving forwards just in a cluttered array.
Compared to those orderly lined slave warriors, the array of these non-humankind slaves seemed like a flock of crazy beasts. They were scattered in small groups, completely in disorder.
Furthermore, they just couldn’t shut their own mouths while walking. They twittered all the way in their own languages, and no one knew what they had been talking about. That shrill and ferruginous buzzing noise let out by them could give anyone a sharp headache.
This time, in this great battle that happened in Chi Ban Mountain area, the humankind had achieved the ultimate victory.
The Blood Moon was forced to leave all their slave warriors and slaves to the humankind. Following that, in accordance with the condition brought up by Si Wen Ming, the few big Blood Moon families had still been constantly sending their slaves to Chi Ban Mountain as war reparation.
All these slave warriors and slaves were trophies attained by the humankind, but sending them all the way back to Pu Ban City was a rather troublesome mission.
Ji Hao was unluckily chosen for this mission. Along with the roughly thousand human warriors under his command, he was enrolled in the transportation troop. He only had around a thousand warriors under his command, yet, the number of slave warriors and slaves that needed to be escorted back to Pu Ban City was nearly a hundred thousand. Human warriors moved around the troop in a scattered fashion, while those slaves were completely out of order, like a giant flock of quacking ducks. This made everybody feel terribly anxious, and now had an indescribable fire of anger growing inside the heart.
When this troop was moving in such a messy state, over a hundred human warriors, who stayed by Ji Hao’s side, and could sort of be counted as elites, had still been binge-drinking. Facing such a great mess, Ji Hao just didn’t know what to say.
Abruptly, on the frontal side of the troop, three to four miles away from Ji Hao, over a hundred earthy slaves that had dark-brown-skin with gray flecks let out shrill screams and started a fight against another group of slaves that had dark-green skin and dark-red stripes, shaped like frogs. This happened for an unknown reason. Over a hundred short slaves, who were only over three-foot and less than four-foot tall, conveniently picked up stones from the ground and burst into an intense fistfight against each other.
Those over a hundred slaves madly bashed each other, and soon, blood splashed all over the ground.
Slave warriors, who had been moving quickly forward, completely ignored this incident and instead remained moving south in a perfectly ordered line. However, other slaves were not as calm as them. Those ugly creatures were all agitated suddenly, shouting out and rushing up to each other, yelling and cursing with their own dirty languages, crazily wielding their arms to cheer for those slaves who were fighting against each other!
“Ah-haha!” Followed by a short and wild laughter, a heavily armored warrior moving beside the chariot that Ji Hao and his teammates were sitting on suddenly leaped up, dashing over three-mile away with only two steps. He pulled his sword out and wielded fiercely. Next, a series of howls rose from the crowd of slaves. Those poor ugly slaves that were barely as powerful as ordinary Novice Magi were instantly chopped into pieces. Filthy smashed bits of internal organs sprayed out like raindrops, falling all over the ground.
Within the short span of a few breaths, those over a hundred slaves who had been fighting each other were all killed. Apart from those, the other three to four hundred slaves that had been watching the fight and cheering were chopped to death by this human warrior as well.
Under the effect of alcohol, this heavily armored warrior who had nearly lost his mind, burst with another wild and boisterous laugh. Abruptly, he launched another fierce sword move and following that, tens of slave warriors, who had no power of resistance were hacked into pieces by that human warrior, even though they had nothing to do with the fight and hadn’t even shown any interest towards it.
The other slave warriors in the surrounding stopped moving immediately. They tightened their faces, looking at that human warrior with bleak and ice-cold faces.
The human warrior, whose face, ears and neck had all turned glowing red, raised his long sword high and hoarsely cursed, “You bunch of damned idiots! Why are you looking at me?! Just hurry up and move! If you dare to waste any more minute, you’d all be chopped! Bastards! If we were not being dragged by you, we would have returned to Pu Ban city and been with lovely ladies long ago!”
From a distance away, over ten human warriors rushed over, wielding their long whips and lashing on those slave warriors.
Those long leather whips were heavy enough to leave bleeding slashes all over the bodies of those slave warriors. Quite a few slave warriors had their bones and tendons broken; they fell on the ground and couldn’t move anymore.
Ji Hao watched all this from a long distance away. Finally, he stood up and said, “Enough. Each of them will be worth a lot back in Pu Ban city. If you kill them all, should this sum of money be deducted from your guerdons?”
The group of warriors laughed tauntingly. They stopped their moves, glancing at Ji Hao from up to down with slightly scornful and teasing looks.
“Spoiled brat, what do you know?”
From the crowd of warriors, cold, teasing sneers came.