Stalemate

"Ba...B*stard!"

The three-eyed young man cursed in a trembling voice; he was vomiting blood, and soon, his nose and ears also started bleeding.

The power Ji Hao gained from years of cultivation on the [Mantra Dan with Nine Secret Words] was full of variety, which meant that Ji Hao could choose what kind of power to use when he casted an attack. The power he used to hit the three-eyed young man just now was wild and strong; like the heaven falling and the earth cracking; like the eruption of a volcano. The power burst suddenly, directly causing tremendous damage to the three-eyed young man's internal organs.

Toba and Toao finally got out of that slurry pool. They wiped clean the slurry off their faces embarrassedly, then saw their leader sent flying by Ji Hao's punch and seemed to have been seriously injured.

"Die!" Toba raised his sword. A fierce cyan wind gathered around the sword; a cyan phantom of the sword appeared a few feet away from the sword edge and chopped toward Ji Hao.

Toao picked up his bola and darted towards the three-eyed young man as well, leaving his shadow behind him. He stretched his arms and threw out his chest that made it seem that he was going to shield the young man with his own body.

Sharp cawing came from the sky. Mr Crow, who was sent away by the wind from the young man's erect eye was now diving from above. His wings shook and ejected numerous blazing black feathers towards Toba and Toao. Those feathers descended from the air like raindrops; every single feather left tens of feet of a long trail of black smoke.

Toba and Toao simultaneously let out roars half-angrily and half-sorrowfully. Faced with Mr Crow's attack, they took a deep breath as they firmly stood.

Several smooth lines lit up on the surface of their armours; tens of fist-sized spell symbols then emerged from its surface and started to flash with a piercing light. They kept their heads down and let those blazing feathers hit their bodies.

Followed by thundering noises, the feathers overwhelmed their bodies. Mr Crow was cawing sharply; tens of feet long fire stream spurted out from his blood-red eyes. Toba and Toao's bodies were trembling intensely; the spell symbols on the surface of their armours were rapidly flashing. From time to time, feathers broke through the spell symbols' light and struck the armours, leaving deep cuts on them.

Every second, Mr Crow threw over ten thousand feathers towards Toba and Toao. These feathers had an unknown source, seemingly like an incessant river flow, flushing through the armours of Toba and Toao. The armours of Toba and Toao were lashed by the feathers; large fire sparks often broke out near their bodies and armour fragments kept falling on the ground.

Suddenly, Toba let out a howl. His shoulder pauldrons were completely damaged by the feathers; three six-foot-long blazing feathers pierced through his shoulders and had gotten stuck in his scapulas.

The three feathers were wrapped by a golden red flame, which burned Toba's shoulder. The stinky stench of burnt meat pervaded throughout. Toba's face wretchedly twisted in pain.

Toao had now forgotten to cover the three-eyed young man; instead, he opened his arms and tried to catch the feathers which were flying towards Toba.

Ji Hao darted behind the three-eyed young man who was coughing up blood and trying to flee. Ji Hao's fists moved at a lightning speed and brought out tens of phantoms, punching towards the young man. The young man's body trembled violently, blood continuously spurted from his mouth.

"Die!" The young man who was nearly pummeled by Ji Hao's punches abruptly turned his head around, the erect eye between his eyebrows suddenly lit up; a tens of feet long, sharp wind-knife emerged out of that eye along with an ear-piercing sound.

However, once the young man turned his head, Ji Hao quickly smacked his face; before the wind-knife darted out, the young man was whirled by Ji Hao's smack. The sharp wind-knife from his erect eye then sliced the air merely an inch away from Ji Hao's face, darting ten thousand feet away in the blink of an eye.

The wind knife was incomparably sharp; it split all of the rocks and plants in its path. Tens of unlucky Savage warriors who were standing in its path didn't even make any noticeable sounds before they were sliced into two by the wind-knife.

Along with a cloud of crimson mist, the wind-knife exploded into a cyan whirlwind ten thousand feet away. It rotated with hundreds of palm-sized wind-knives and shattered everything around hundreds of feet, slowly subsiding afterwards.

Ji Hao was slightly shocked by the power of the wind-knife. "This wind-knife has such a scary power. If one casts a wind-knife like this in a battle, it probably can kill at least hundreds of enemies." Ji Hao thought in his mind.

Ji Hao didn't wait until the three-eyed young man realised what was happening; he grabbed the young man's cyan long hair and threw a kick to the vital part between his legs skillfully. Before, the young man kept on shaking his head and tried to fight back but now he stooped down instinctively and using his hands, he covered the vital parts between his legs which were tremendously damaged.

"Kneel down! You, kneel down!" Ji Hao growled and kicked the young man with his right leg.

Within the span of a single breath, Ji Hao had thrown at least a hundred heavy kicks on the young man's shanks. Along with loud thuds, Ji Hao felt that his toe bones were nearly shattered. Finally, with a cracking sound, the young man's shank bones broke into pieces.

"Damn bastard!" The three-eyed young man screamed out; tears and snot gushed out simultaneously.

Ji Hao took out a dagger and stabbed it into the young man's mouth while he was screaming and cursing; he started cutting the inside of his mouth. Ji Hao shook his wrist, feeling as if he was cutting a piece of leather using a blunt knife; he spent a lot of effort and finally sliced the young man's tongue. The young man's body intensely trembled from great pain, suddenly becoming limp and losing all resistance.

Mr Crow cawed and landed on the ground, opening his beak and releasing a breath of golden red flame towards Toba and Toao.

Toba and Toao howled simultaneously when they saw that the three-eyed young man was captured by Ji Hao. They ignored Mr Crow's flame and rushed out like they were running away from certain death; they went up to Ji Ying and Ji Lang who were badly injured and were lying on the ground, then pulled Ji Ying and Ji Lang up and held them in front of their chests.

Mr Crow suddenly popped up his eyes when it saw that Ji Ying and Ji Lang was about to get burned by its fire. It then widely opened his beak and inhaled the fire back.

'Bang!' The fire was drawn back inside Mr Crow's lung and soon exploded inside his body. Two wisps of smoke puffed out from its nostrils. Mr Crow was being choked by the smoke and started cawing loudly; tears gushed out of his blood-red eye sockets.

Ji Hao held the dagger against the young man's temple, and twisted his wrist; the dagger tip cut the young man's soft skin open; if Ji Hao pushed just a bit harder, the dagger would pierce through the young man's head.

"Release! Release them!" Ji Hao looked at Ji Ying and Ji Lang, who was grabbed in Toba and Toao's hands and growled. "If you don't want this three-eyed kid die, you better release them now!"

"You release our captain first! Now!" Said Toba and Toao. Their eyes turned red and their bronze skin turned slightly black. "Besides the two of them, we have many more of your people!"

The underlings of the three-eyed young man, who walked out of the jungle earlier as a troop have now showed up; each of them held a Fire Crow Clan warrior or a Qing Yi Clan warrior in their hands. All of those warriors were terribly injured by Toba and Toao and were powerless to resist.

"Kill three first!" Ji Hao was about to say something but Toba interrupted him and shouted out.

Three dark-skinned muscular men growled and chopped the heads of the warriors held in their hands off backhandedly.

"Kill!" Ji Hao roared in rage, then stabbed the dagger into the right eye socket of the young man, wholly digging out one of his eyeballs without any hesitation.

"You think that I won't dare to kill a man? Let's die together!" Ji Hao roared and threw the eyeball on the ground, smashing it into a paste.

Toba and Toao stared at Ji Hao stunningly as if they were seeing a ghost. The Cold Stream Valley suddenly became deathly silent.