The Great Worm Lich

Time passed in haste. Unknowingly, 30 days had passed.

On the early morning of this morning, in the open space at the center of Tudenan, in an extremely huge dark bark house that was recently built, 30 strong indigenous midgets kneeled in front of Zhang Lisheng and attempted to stick their heads close to the cold ground as they saluted.

“This blessing ritual only has a 30% survival rate. Have you guys thought clearly about it?” The young man was wearing a blue surgical gown with a mask, looking like a surgeon, as he asked without restraint, while washing his hand on the stone channel that had a constant flow of water.

“Great Raider! Being able to accept your blessing ritual is the glory of our life, we’re willing even if we have to pay with our lives!” The aboriginal warriors said while kneeling.

“You’re willing even if you have to pay with your lives? It must be Tugra who taught you guys such sensational words, right?” Zhang Lisheng mumbled and pointed to the many stone platforms in the bark house before saying with a raised voice, “All of you already have the medicine you have to eat when you accept the blessing, right? Just randomly pick a stone platform and lie down on your stomach. Eat your medicine and we’ll start the ritual immediately.”

“Yes, Raider!” Upon hearing the Raider’s instructions, the Tudenan chief warriors climbed onto the stone platform and cautiously lied down on their stomachs. Then, they took out a large bag of bitter white-colored medicinal tablet from their waist wrapped in bark paper. After munching it and swallowing it directly, they quickly fell asleep.

“To think that I actually need to use sleeping pills for elephants to anesthetize these Hellfire people. I really don’t get how these midgets evolved to such a stage…” After washing his hands, Zhang Lisheng turned to the natives who had lied down on the stone platform and began to examine their breathing before binding the natives’ limbs with shackles.

After he walked around them and saw that all the indigenous people had really lost consciousness, the young man nodded with satisfaction and went to the stone table beside the wall. Then, he pressed the buttons on the top of the two cylindrical silver containers.

He split the container into several petals like a flower in full bloom, revealing 30 pieces of dazzling Gold Core fragments hovering inside.

“These are the last 30 pieces…” Zhang Lisheng whispered to himself. He picked up a syringe and walked to the nearest native warrior before injecting a full tube of ‘stabilizer’.

Then, he went back to the stone table and dropped the syringe. Picking up a fragment with a tweezer in one hand, a sharp scalpel on another. Then, he came to the aborigine who had been injected with the ‘stabilizer’ and began to slice open the flesh on his spine skillfully, revealing their spine bone. After he cut it in half, he put a Gold Core fragment into the cut area without hesitation.

During the last successful process of fragment transplant for the nine Tudenan warriors, Zhang Lisheng found the fact that he and his supervisor was repeatedly using a fragment for the transplant was actually a grave low-level common mistake—which was a genetic infection.

Since the transplantation of Gold Core was like an allogeneic organ transplant, the first condition for success was whether it could suppress the body’s rejection of it. Every time they transplanted the fragment, even if it was unsuccessful, it would be subject to genetic infection, and this would make the success rate of the next transplant to be smaller and successively decrease in turns.

The fact that Steven could still develop a mature stabilizer to ensure the success of his own transplantation of the Gold Core fragment and how Zhang Lisheng could still improve this stabilizer to be more suitable for the Hellfire tribesmen’s body in such a situation was completely unfathomable other than calling it a miracle. Even so, all of the fragments they used in all of their successful transplant cases were new and uninfected.

“I’ve used 1380 Gold Core fragments in 30 days. How exhausting yet exciting! If there were so many experimental materials in the first place, my supervisor and I wouldn’t have made such an obvious idiotic mistake. Still, if we didn’t make any mistake, an effect stabilizer might not have been produced instead. Well, aren’t most great scientific discoveries emerged from good luck anyway…” Zhang Lisheng whispered amid an ear-piercing howl. After placing the last fragment into the aborigine’s white bone marrow using a tweezer, he let out a long sigh of relief and retreated to the wall, as he watched the tragic scene in the bark house.

Under his gaze, a ‘pop’ sound resonated. An aborigine warrior whose body had swollen to over three meters high and whose muscles had bulged out like earthworms suddenly exploded. Before his flesh and blood could even touch the ground, it had already evaporated into ashes.

As time slowly passed, 21 out of the 30 powerful Tudenan chief warriors turned into ashes and disappeared into nothingness. Nice survived and fell into a long sleep of transformation.

The success rate was exactly 30%. Without improving the stabilizer, the only possibility for the success rate of the fragment transplantation to have risen from 25% to 30% was because of psychological factors.

That was to say, due to the increasing number of Super Hellfireman who were successfully transplanted with the Gold Core, the Tudenan people who received the transplantation surgery had an increased confidence in the Raider’s blessing, resulting in a continuous increase on the success rate. This had the same principle with taking an ineffective placebo medicine that could sometimes treat diseases.

Of course, there was always a limit to this kind of improvement that was only because of the simple psychological effect. The fact that it had increased to 30% meant that it had already reached its maximum height. Even so, the number of chief warriors gaining extraordinary strength in the Tudenan tribe had reached to 400 people in total.

“There are nine chief warriors who successfully accepted the blessing this time. Send them to the pool and soak them.” After he finished looking at the surgery results, Zhang Lisheng walked out of the wooden house and stretched his limbs in the warm sunshine of the noon as he commanded the chores to the chief who had bowed his fat waist down, awaiting by his side.

“Yes, Raider!” Upon hearing the tribal Raider personally commanding him to carry out a task, the chores chief appeared to be a little excited as he threw a meaningful glance at a group of sturdy indigenous women and then quickly walked into the tree house.

Zhang Lisheng, on the other hand, casually walked around in the tribe and asked the Tudenan headman who had been following beside him, “How is it now, Tugra? Is there any movement from the tribes who wanted to wage war against us?”

“No, Great Raider! They fear your powerful strength after you managed to conquer the two powerful tribes Kaqilu and Mokacho within a day. It’s said that they have formed a coalition, but in truth, they still cower in their holes, not daring to move forward,” Tugra used a scornful tone towards the enemy as he answered respectfully.

Since the Tudenan chief warriors, who mastered the ability to cast sorcery, began to wake up one after another, in a group of over ten people every time, the tribal headman’s face whom they once burdened with worries gradually relaxed now.

“How many times have I said? It’s not me who attacked Kaqilu and Mokacho…” Zhang Lisheng waved his hand and said, “Ah forget it! You can think whatever you like. I’ve calculated before; right now, our tribal hunting ground is close to one-sixth of the entire island. To be safe, we must occupy at least one-third of the island’s territory. Since those tribal coalition forces are not coming to us, we will go to them instead! Be prepared! By the time all the chief warriors undergoing the blessing ritual have awakened, we’ll go greet the Hellfire tribes on this island that are hostile towards Tudenan!”

Usually, if the spiritual monster guarding the Hellfire tribes were not forced to fight in some special circumstances, it was very rare for them to be willing to fight till their death; not only that, even if a tribe had completed its expansion, it would take about ten years to 100 years for it to lay a solid foundation.

These two factors caused a true real battle of conquest to break out rarely among the Hellfire tribes despite the persisting animosity between them.

However, to the Tudenan, the situation was different.

First, its Raider could use some peculiar biological knowledge to transplant the spiritual monster’s Gold Core fragment to create Super Hellfiremen, allowing them to redeem the harvest after a war in the shortest time possible.

Secondly, all the rights of this tribe were concentrated in the hands of one person with no constraints.

Lastly, it had ample food sources to raise powerful war mounts and to implement the ‘separation of soldiers and civilians’, which greatly reduced the number of soldiers who needed to go to the battlefield. This had also greatly reduced their corresponding spell-casting power but at the same time, it greatly increased their combat effectiveness.

In short, only by having a sufficient foundation could the Tudenan turn into a fierce war machine that could march straight on the island.

The Gold Cores, contributed by Kaqilu and Mokacho, that they turned into fragments and successfully transplanted into 400 Tudenan chief warriors had given this tribe the foundation it needed.

From the Raider’s urgent needs of the spiritual monster’s corpses and his solemn order of careful handling, along with how he had actually successively performed thousands of blessing rituals after destroying both Kaqilu and Mokacho, Tugra could already guess that the so-called ‘blessing’ must have something to do with the spiritual monster’s corpses. He had also vaguely seen through the key to this matter.

Therefore, when this overcautious Tudenan headman heard Zhang Lisheng’s instruction, he immediately acted out of character and replied with sincerity, “Yes, Great Raider! I’ll convey your order now and ask all warriors to get prepared.”

“There’s no need to rush it. We still need to wait for a month for the chief warriors whom we had blessed to wake up. During this period, I plan to leave the tribe for a while. I think it’s better for you to get ready for the battle after I come back. Now, with an interval of two days at most, 12 to 13 chief warriors who have mastered the power of spell-casting will wake up soon. I think, after a few more days, even if the tribal coalition forces suddenly launch an attack, it would be impossible for them to defeat Tudenan.”

“Don’t worry, Great Raider! Even the most powerful Kamando tribe on this island doesn’t have 40,000 elite warriors who are riding the giant millispiders. Now that we have support from sorcery, we’re invincible.”

Kamando was the tribe of the group of savage aborigines Zhang Lisheng had encountered when he first entered the Shrimp B1 Island by mistake on the Elizabeth Holiday.

This tribe inhabited a corner of the island, occupying one-third of the hunting ground on the Shrimp B1 Island. It had more enemy than Tudenan and it was far from their tribe. There were about three to four powerful feudal tribes in between them, so it was impossible for this tribe to take part in any tribal coalition. It was purely a metaphor when Tugra used it as an example.