The Great Worm Lich

The bottom of the ocean-going sea vessel was soaked in seawater for many years so naturally, it would be covered with a layer of thick dark green sea moss. During the daytime, the sea moss would show no abnormalities under the bright sunshine, but when the sky gradually turned dark, some places began to show faint light under the reflection of the firelight.

Even though those twinkling lights was subtle, it was very familiar to Zhang Lisheng.

He was astonished for a while. Feeling the peculiarity, he walked to the bottom of the huge ship that was like a collapsed wooden wall. Touching with his hands, he could feel that the texture was smooth and delicate with some elastic softness, it did not feel like touching on hardwood at all.

“The wood has decayed since it was soaked in the seawater? Then how did it manage to travel across the ocean…” Zhang Lisheng made a guess to himself but in the end, negated his thoughts and shook his head. Then, he continued to dig at a spot where it had the most dazzling light.

The bottom of the wooden ship felt soft, but in truth, it was extremely tough. The young man, who had returned to his normal form, unconsciously activated his transformation power and inserted his arm that had become long and slender sharp claws that was covered with diamond-shaped scales into it.

As his claw deepened, a popping sound, like a bubble bursting, resonated. Suddenly, a smelly stench of thick black liquid flowed out of the bottom of the wooden ship. Zhang Lisheng, whose hand had been fully covered with blood, also felt as though as his palm had been immersed in the warmth and flesh of the human body.

“This is not a ship deck at all! I-It’s an animal body! Not only that, it’s a body that has not completely cut off its life force yet…” The young man was stunned on the spot! Then, he suddenly felt a large sucking energy from his arm that he had inserted in the bottom of the ship. This also caused him to stagger for a moment.

At the same time, several dozens of people among the several hundreds of craftsmen, who were dismantling the wooden ship, suddenly cried out loud. Without warning, a green branch-like tentacle, that extended out of the ship body, wrapped around them. With a terrifying scream, they were pulled into the depths of the cabin.

Then, a series of millstone whirring and grinding sounds suddenly resonated from the dark black hull. In an instant, everything was restored to calmness again.

The suddenly terrifying situation caused the huge wooden ship illuminated by the dancing fire to become gloomy and terrifying right away. The Tudenan craftsmen leaped away from the big slanting ship in horror one by one. When it came to courage, these aborigines, who relied on their craftsmanship to survive for generations, only had a level of courage that was at most equal to the women and children in the tribe.

The tribal warriors spurred the giant spiders they were sitting on and held up the sharp spears in their hands. Yelling and chanting in an intimidating manner, they went closer to the wooden ship. It was apparent that these warriors selected out of the Tudenan hunters were much braver than their fellow craftsmen.

At this time, Zhang Lisheng, who had transformed into a majestic giant with the power of Money Toad, had already stabilized himself and pulled his arm out of the thick bottom of the wooden ship.

Spreading his claws, he looked at the piece of shattered small stone shimmering in dazzling light like star luster despite being covered by smelly blood. Unable to suppress himself, he muttered, “Spiritual monster! The reason this wooden ship didn’t sink because an ocean spiritual monster has attached itself on it…”

Then, with a pleasant surprise, he raised his voice out loud, “Everyone, get back! I’ll deal with it!”

Upon hearing the Raider’s orders, the Tudenan warriors, who were getting closer to the unknown monster, hurriedly drove their ‘partners’ to retreat. Just as they retreated to a distance of a hundred meters away, the wooden ship, that had been dismantled in scatter, suddenly creaked horrifyingly. The entire hull began to slowly tear by the dark green fleshy branches that infiltrated the gap.

After a while, it turned into a pile of broken rotten wood that hung on the rectangular jelly-like pile of corpses formed by several hundreds of human remnants that were wrapped by countless wriggling branch-like tentacles.

When Zhang Lisheng saw the hundreds of corpses with ferocious expressions, that were composed of old and young people, male and female, some who were dressed elegantly with beautiful headdresses, some whose hair was sparse and covered with dust, staring at him with their hatred-filled blinking eyes when he walked up to the translucent corpse pile, he only managed to calm his frantic beating heart by muttering a few incantations.

“No wonder the Gold Core formed in the body is a fragment grain! It has indeed mutated a lot…” As he muttered, he opened his black mouth wide and in an instant, a gust of strong wind was ejected from his mouth, piercing the ‘corpse pile monster’ right in an instant. At once, a huge gust of black and smelly pus gushed out from the monster’s wound like water from a hot spring.

All of the human heads of this heavily injured ‘corpse pile monster’ showed a terrified expression. Shouting soundlessly, it waved its tentacles full of sarcomas, that was like a branch that was full of leaves, with force and wrapped around Zhang Lisheng. Of course, it was greeted with another gust of roaring cyclones that pierced through it.

Just like this, Zhang Lisheng firmly planted his feet into the sea sand with his heels, allowing the thousands of pliable tentacles of the ‘corpse pile monster’ to whip on the giant round-shaped scales on his body with a dull muffled sound till a series of faint whip traces could be seen. Again and again, he shot out cyclones onto the monster till it was riddled with holes.

Even though the wound would quickly heal after it appeared, the body liquid that gushed out for the first three to five seconds every time a wound appeared soon made the body of the ‘corpse pile monster’ dry up. In the end, it became a pile of rancid, colorless rotten meat, covering hundreds of human heads.

Zhang Lisheng, who had never defeated a spiritual monster so easily before, did not let his guard down. He took a few steps back to put some safe distance in between and transformed his transformation power from Money Toad to the lizard. After finding his target, he suddenly ran up towards the ‘corpse pile monster’ while treading on the sand carefully and pulled out another piece of Gold Core’s fragment.

Now that it was attacked, the ‘corpse pile monster’ struggled a few times in vain and was suddenly tied by the numerous silk threads that suddenly burst out from the sandy beach underneath.

Not far away, when Zhang Lisheng saw that the monster had been trapped by the ‘Heaven encompassing net, capture everything in a flash’ omniscient power of the wizard gu, he finally relaxed and strode up to the ‘corpse pile monster’ to calmly collect his war trophies from the gap between the net.

Soon, Zhang Lisheng found 37 Gold Core fragments, which ranged from being as big as a soybean and as small as a rice grain. When he pulled out the last piece from the body of the corpse pile monster, this terrifying looking monster, that was actually very weak, stopped its wriggling and struggling completely. The heads on its body also gradually closed their eyes and became a pile of dead meat.

When Zhang Lisheng saw that the corpse pile monster seemed to have died, he pondered over it for a moment and walked up to a very old Tudenan tribesman. Picking up a Gold Core, he asked in a whisper, “Do you know what this is?”

The old aborigine, who had an inferior position in the tribe, had never thought that he would actually have a chance to have a private conversation with the Raider alone. In front of the living faith’s inexplicably bloodcurdling gaze that was staring at himself, he stared at the Gold Core’s fragment with forcefully widened eyes as his black face full of wrinkles turned red, trying his best to do the best that he could.

However, his poor experience could only allow him to kneel on the ground and stammer, “Great Raider, y-you’re holding small p-pebbles that can shine.”

As soon as the words of the old aborigine left his mouth, the bloodcurdling gaze in his eyes converged right away. Since the Gold Core’s fragment was not common knowledge among the Hellfire people, the next step would be much simpler already.

“You’re right! These are indeed pebbles that can shine!” He smiled at the aborigine who was crouching under his feet and then raised the Gold Core’s fragments in his hand high as he shouted loudly, “The monster has been killed by me! Aruba, bring your men and see if there’s anything usable under these wrecked wood. As for the other Tudenan people, light up the torch and carefully search within a radius of 1000 steps to see if there are any shiny pebbles scattered around. ”

Upon hearing the Raider’s instructions, all of the Tudenan’s people on the beach cheered. Half of them had a regretful expression that looked as though they were still badly shaken as they rushed towards the wooden ship’s fragments while the other half rushed towards the docks and fisheries on the black reef in the distance to get torches. Not long after, everyone was scattered around and get busy.

Time passed slowly. At dawn, after putting the wooden ship’s wreckage together and carefully studying its entire structure, the exhausted Aruba reported to Zhang Lisheng in a surprised manner, “Raider, even though the wooden ship is wrecked, it’s not too badly damaged. The possibility of success in copying has only been reduced by 10%. During the process of putting the wooden ship together just now, I suddenly gained inspiration and found a new understanding on the construction drawings of several giant ships among the ‘source of wisdom’ that you gifted to us. I have great faith in manufacturing a big ship that has a span of 30 steps between the bow and stern with three stories of cabins!”

Unlike the ambiguous length units of the other Hellfire tribes, the ‘step’ used by Tudenan was exactly the same as the ‘meter’ on the Earth. Not only that, a three-story wooden ship that was 30 meters long from the bow to the stern was already quite huge, it could load more than 200 people to sail.

“Very good, Aruba!” Looking at the Gold Core fragments that had been increased to 54 pieces in his hand, Zhang Lisheng, who was facing the sun, and was getting more and more happy and perplexed at the same time, casually replied.

The reason why he was happy, was because now that he had over 50 fragments, his plan of creating a Super Hellfire Man would soon be able to be implemented immediately.

The reason he was surprised, on the other hand, was because when these Gold Core fragments in his hand were added up together, they were equivalent to the total amount of Gold Core that four ordinary spiritual monsters that were newly bred possessed. Not only that, their mottled luster was uneven, it was very hard for him to imagine that all of these were actually taken from a ridiculously weak mutant spiritual monster.

Since Aruba who was by the side was a one-of-a-million rare genius craftsman, of course he had a curiosity that was many times more than that of an ordinary aborigine. When he saw the contemplating manner of the Raider, who was thoroughly accomplished and versatile in the heart of all Tudenan people, he struggled for a while before asking, “Raider, is there anything unusual about these shiny stones? W-What are you worrying about?”

“This kind of shiny stone is very precious. I don’t understand how they can appear in the belly of such a weak monster,” Zhang Lisheng, who was lost in thought, blurted out.