The Great Worm Lich

After pondering for a while, Zhang Lisheng still could not recall how he had returned to his ancestral home by chance and turned into a snake body that had a human head with the body of Goddess Nuwa who was the witchcraft ancestor, which allowed him to succeed in transforming the wyrmdragon easily. He could only regard everything that had happened today as his lucky day.

Patting his forehead, the young man no longer thought about it; however, he realized that, as his head shook, a pile of hair fell on his shoulders.

He walked into the bathroom in the bedroom and saw that his skin showed a dull pale color in his bright mirror. With scarce hair and shaking teeth, he looked extremely ill. Upon seeing this, he could not help but smile wryly.

“Transforming three wizard gus is halfway to the life-to-death transformation, so I guess it’s already good enough that most of myself still looks like a living person!” Zhang Lisheng reassured himself in a whisper before turning on the crystal clear faucet on the sink. He took some water to wet his hair and put on shaving foam to shave his entire heaven-defying hair off.

Then, he treaded on the non-slip tiles and walked into the Japanese-style soft-breeze bath that was not far away to fill the bath with hot water intending to take a bath.

The slightly hot water flowed out from the edge of the bath, like a mountain hot spring. The young man had half of his body soaked in hot water and was gradually feeling comfortable. Without warning, under the illumination of the soft beige ceiling light, he noticed a handful of five-colored sand underneath the smooth log bath.

The bottom of the bath had sand and had a strange color on top of it. Even though Zhang Lisheng was usually a very laid-back person, he could not help but frown at it.

He pinched the sand from the bottom of the water and rubbed it between his fingers. With his extraordinary eyesight, he unintentionally found that the sand was not mixed from five different colors sand but instead, each of the sand had five different colors.

“Five-colored Soil? I-Isn’t this Five-colored Soil? B-but no matter how lucky I am, it’s impossible for me to just suddenly encounter a five-colored Soil when I’m having my bath, right?” While staring at the strange soil on his fingers, the young man had an idea pop on his head. Horrified, his jaw dropped.

In ancient mythology, the Water God Gonggong and the Fire God Zhuan Xu fought for the throne on the empire. When Gonggong was defeated, he smashed his head on Mount Buzhou, causing the Heaven pillars to crash, causing the nine provinces in China to tatter, the sky to tilt to the northwest, and the land in the southeast region to sink, while the raging flood would break out and blazing fire would spread out. If it was not for the Goddess Nuwa, the earliest ancestor of witches, who patched up the azure sky using Five-colored Stones, the world would have long perished.

This Five-colored Stone was refined from the Five-colored Soil from the Heaven.

Given that this Five-colored Soil had such an origin, casting aside its function, just the name of it alone was terrifying enough.

Zhang Lisheng snapped back to reality and carefully looked at the soil in his hand repeatedly in disbelief. He found that the surface of the soil that was in grains of micrometers was indeed uniformly covered in colors. Not only that, the color was very pure; with just one glance, one could tell that it was formed naturally.

After pondering for a moment, he suddenly commanded the wizard power in his body to gush out of his fingertip and seep into this Five-colored Soil. The soil that was not viscous at all despite being soaked in water suddenly sliced a tiny wound that was so small that it basically scratched as invisible wound on his finger. Together with his blood drip, he lumped them together.

“Jelly gem…” Feeling the familiar elastic touch, the young man blurted out at once. At this moment, remembering something suddenly, he hastily looked at his wrist and found that the jelly gem that he always wrapped around his wrist had disappeared somehow.

In a daze, Zhang Lisheng stared at his hands and fell into contemplation. After a long while, seemingly figuring out something, he abruptly stood up in the bath and carefully took out all the Five-colored Soil from the bottom of the bath.

Then, he crouched on the bathroom floor and carefully searched for the Five-colored Soil repeatedly for three to four times inch by inch, all the way to the bedroom. Finally, he eventually gathered a mud ball about the size of the original jelly gem.

“Among the 36,501 pieces, 36,500 pieces had been used to patch up the sky and the remaining one has fallen into my hand. I wonder how one could use such a small stone to patch the sky though… Oh that’s right! That Amazon who sold the stone to me said that when he first saw the stone, it was as big as a hill, but it inexplicably turned into such a small stone in the end. It looks like there may be some key conditions I don’t know of. Now, the stone is already shattered… shattered… it doesn’t matter if it’s shattered! Perhaps I can try to carry out the magical process of refining the Five-colored Soil into a Five-colored Stone. In mythology, the Five-colored Soil can be refined into the Five-colored Stone by tempering it with the fire of the Sun God! It sounds absurd, but there are two explanations if it’s scientifically analyzed—one, it’ll take a high temperature of over 6000 degrees to refine it from soil to stone or two; the refining of the Five-colored Soil into stone is unrelated to the temperature at all because it only needs to absorb the stellar spectral rays. Perhaps, it needs both conditions…”

Even though he could mould the soil after having wizard power seeped into it, its ability of returning to its original shape after deformation had already disappeared. The young man flattened the mud in his palms and muttered continuously in contemplation until a faint knock resonated from his bedroom door.

Snapping back to reality, Zhang Lisheng saw that the clock on the wall had already pointed to seven o’clock. He hurriedly dressed and opened the door.

Standing outside the door was a middle-aged man in a tuxedo. Sensing his courtesy and how he was neither humble nor haughty with a respectful attitude, the young man smiled and spoke before he did, “You must be my Butler, Mr. Torres then!”

“Yes, Sir! I’m Abigail Torres, and I’m here to serve you!”

“No, no, no, no! There’s no need to be so polite, Butler Torres. I’m a biologist, so I’m usually very casual in the house. You need not be serious at all times.”

“Yes, Sir!” Torres answered ‘yes’ but his attitude did not change at all. “Sorry for bothering your rest, Sir, but it’s dinner time now. You have a guest here, so I had no choice but to knock to remind you.”

“I have a guest?” Zhang Lisheng was stunned. “Oh, you mean Senior Sister Guo Caiying? She hasn’t left yet?”

“The biggest rainstorm in seventy-five years has just rained in Stanford City. The rain flooded a long stretch of the road, so I’m afraid Miss Guo would have to stay here tonight.”

“It’s raining? It was raining heavily outside?” Zhang Lisheng said in astonishment. “Forget it, it doesn’t matter. Take me to see her, Abigail.”

“Please come with me, Sir.” Torres guided Zhang Lisheng to pass through the living room and the solid wood corridor, before turning a few corners and finally reaching a small but elegant dining hall.

“My dear butler, thank you for not letting me see an ugly long wooden table in the middle of the banquet hall that is 1000 square feet wide,” Zhang Lisheng joked and went to sit beside Guo Caiying who was openly sitting on the table for two beside the French casement window. Apologetically, he said, “I’m sorry, Senior Sister. I overslept.”

“Even if you overslept, there’s no need for you to turn bald suddenly and turned even paler than before, right?”

“I’ve been resting too little on the Shrimp B1 Island recently, so my hair has been falling a bunch. That’s why I just shaved them all completely. I guess the reason I look pale must be because of the lack of sleep as well.”

“You can’t go on like this, Junior Brother! Even though you look loaded, no, wait, I should say EXTREMELY loaded, and that you’re smart too, girls our age now care a lot about appearances. You need to have a healthy complexion to be popular!” When Guo Caiying heard the young man’s reply, she advised in a sarcastic tone.

“I have a girlfriend and she doesn’t care what I look like. Moreover, even though I’ve sacrificed a little time to sleep in the past year, my result is not insignificant at all. I’ve already published four to five papers in the journals Science and Natural Science together with my supervisor!” Zhang Lisheng sat opposite the girl and argued back.

The two journals Science and Natural Science were leading publications in the global academic world. Each published paper was very significant and would have a definite impact in the academic circles. Usually, having one’s name appearing two to three times at the author column in this kind of journal was already an achievement ordinary scientists could manage to make in their entire lifetime.

For this reason, Guo Caiying stared at him in confusion after listening to the young man’s words, “Y-you’re joking right?”

Zhang Lisheng smiled noncommittally and no longer said anything. He took out a red wine from the ice bucket on the table and opened it with a ‘pop’. After filling a shallow half glass for the girl, he took out a can of Coke from the ice bucket before opening it and taking a sip, “Senior Sister, what do you want to eat for dinner?”

“You’re already drinking Coke so let’s eat burger.” Guo Caiying said unceremoniously.

“I’m sorry, I’m used to it.” Her attitude stunned Zhang Lisheng for a moment before raising the red wine to pour himself a glass as well.

Then, he heard the girl sitting opposite her saying, “Forget it! You’re already so pale; it’s better for you to drink juice instead. We don’t have to go to too much trouble for dinner too, just a steak will be enough.”

Upon hearing the girl’s words, the young man smiled, “Thank you, Senior Sister, you’re very considerate. Abigail, you heard it. Steak for dinner, please. Medium for me and a big portion please.”

“I want medium well please, thank you!” Guo Caiying said politely to the butler who stood next to him. Afterwards, she turned her gaze back to Zhang Lisheng and a curious look crept upon her face, “Junior Brother, don’t tell me the reason you’re so rich is because you’re misusing the research fund or something? Otherwise, you’re already a genius, so why would you still need to work so hard?”

“My money does indeed come from research but not misuse. It’s just that I’ve opened a factory after my research showed some results. However, that’s only a small matter. For me, no matter how much money I make, it’s only my means to accomplish my purpose…”

“I guess your goal in life must be to become a scientist like Einstein, Newton, and Darwin, right?” The girl suddenly interjected.

Zhang Lisheng once again smiled noncommittally and did not answer her question, “In the eyes of many people, my life is completely a mess. Sometimes, I don’t even have a chance to breathe, not even for 15 minutes. However, I find my joy in it.”

He did not say any passionate expressions; he also did not spoke of brave and proud words. His words contained no arrogance nor modest humility. The young man had a calm and composed look on his face, allowing the girl to see the shadow of another person in a daze.

After a while, she suddenly said in Mandarin, “No life, no fun, but you have a career and achievements. This is the most pitiful workaholic lifestyle I’ve ever seen, Junior Brother. I can’t believe you’re actually working so hard at such a young age.”

“Sister, I’m born to work, so I can only accept my fate.” Zhang Lisheng also replied in Mandarin filled with a Sichuan accent.