The Great Worm Lich

Zhang Lisheng was dumbstruck. Looking at the direction of the familiar voice, his eyes passed across the two to three young bodies that were constantly trembling as they howled in pain and saw the blushing red face of Ellen.

“Oh, Miss Ellen, looks like you have a pair of sharp ears,” the young man said in astonishment. “Can I ask how you managed to get to that answer just now?”

“My dad loves playing the board game Dungeons and Dragons the most. I would always play with him every weekend before I started high school. Also, the bedtime story that he would always tell me since my childhood was adapted from Cthulhu Mythos. For this reason, studying monster attributes is the only thing I am better at than physics.”

“Oh, I see. Looks like an eccentric father can often bring many unexpected talents to a child. In that case, why don’t you continue to study the ‘big eye’ in the sky and tell me when you find its weakness. If you’re lucky, this may even save your life.”

“But Lisheng, I’m afraid I’d become a dead body and twisted into meat sauce to shape this monster’s body before I could even do that. I’d definitely die if you don’t save me now,” Ellen said in fear and grief.

“I’m sorry, Miss Ellen, my situation is not even that good now, so I’m afraid I don’t have any extra energy to save you. To be honest, the thing that you should do now is to not ask for help but pray instead,” Zhang Lisheng answered while shifting his attention back onto the field.

With his keen eyesight, he found that, among the group of Truth Society’s black-robed people forming an octagonal diamond pattern chanting seemingly unknowingly with their eyes closed, there were eight of them who began to emit milky white light while forming slender light strands that connected to the huge ‘eyeball’ midair.

It just so happened that the eight people were standing exactly at the eight sharp corners of the octagonal diamond.

As it entranced him, Ellen’s voice, that was uttered with her entire force, once again reverberated in the young man’s ears. “Lisheng, I always heard Tina, Trish, and Sheila mention you. They said that you’re a person who advocates for fair principles the most. Today, today, if it wasn’t for me who proposed that everyone should gather to watch the football game, you’d have been separated from Sheila and Trish and would not have been able to save them so easily like this. You owe me… You owe me…”

Upon hearing this, Trish, who had her eyes closed out of pain since she saw that many people who were struggling in the stadium were familiar faces that she often encountered on campus, suddenly opened her eyes and clenched her teeth in sorrow as she interjected, “I’m sorry, Ellen. Please don’t plead with Lisheng and let yourself be disappointed again and again. Being able to help Sheila and me is already… already…”

When the girl turned her face to Ellen, she found that it differed completely from what she, who was a few centimeters off the ground, had imagined. A faint fog had already wrapped Ellen and had been lifted over the air, quietly drifting towards her. At once, an inexplicable joy hit Trish’s sorrow, making her no longer able to speak.

At this moment, Zhang Lisheng, who protected Ellen with his omniscient power and sent her next to Trish, suddenly whispered, “Miss Ellen, come to think of it, you’ve indeed saved me the time of looking for them. As an exchange, I promise you that your own weight will not crush you but that’s all I’m offering.”

“I promise that you’ve not saved the wrong person, Lisheng! I’ll prove my value…” Immersed in the fog and felt as though she had just taken some drug, Ellen, whose body had become so relaxed that she could almost fly, did not seem to be able to hear the indifference in the young man’s tone. Instead, she gratefully replied.

Before the girl could finish her sentence, a strong and young blonde man not far away kneeled on the ground and shouted in a hoarse voice towards Zhang Lisheng, “Y-You really have the power to counteract the monster’s superpower! Save me! Hurry and save me or others! I’ll announce it to everybody! I’ll definitely…”

Before he could finish his threatening words, a faint white mist had already condensed beside his mouth and penetrated straight into his mouth. After blocking his throat and esophagus, it began to roll about as though it was substantialized, tearing the young blonde man’s internal organs apart from the inside out and breaking all the bones on his body.

Right now, the young blonde man no longer could make any sound. Instead, he could only express his agonizing pain through the blood vessels bulging out of his face and his eyes that were widened till the corner of his eyes ripped and his red eyeballs became filled with blood.

Looking at his eyes filled with despair and terror, Zhang Lisheng finally muttered in reply in a ferocious expression, “I do indeed have the power to compete with that big eye, and that’s why you’ll die in a more horrible way than those miserable souls who became a meat puddle. This is not only because of your threat to me but your own stupidity. Are you having an illusion after that monster in the sky tortured you mentally? Isn’t it clear enough by looking at my face that I’m also a monster you can’t afford to mess with? In fact, I also play a similar role in the ‘big eye’ in the foreign world. It’s good to have an idiot like you too though. At the very least, by seeing how you wish to die but is unable to for several dozens of minutes, it should be enough to stop other people from acting stupid as well.”

While the young man spoke, he crouched on the floor and stretched his head to look around quietly. Everyone, who noticed the tragic scene of the young blonde man, did not dare to even look at him in the eyes, to the point where their trembling body would visibly freeze when his gaze swept them up.

The conduct of the surrounding people drew a satisfactory expression on Zhang Lisheng. At the same time, the strengthened gravity in the stadium disappeared again. When the gravity changed, blood began to gush out from the ears of many of the slender girls, elderly people, and people with hidden body diseases on the spectator seats as they fell onto the ground and lost their breaths.

After that, these bodies that had just died floated up again. When they rose to midair, they were twisted into a meat sauce by an invisible force and transformed into a meat rope that the red eyes in the air continued to engulf.

“L-Lisheng, so you’re actually such a hardliner. No wonder Sheila would say that ordinary people would not even have the courage to open their eyes when you’re furious.” Looking up at the red chains in the air, Ellen, whose face had become pale after not being tormented by the abnormal gravity, suddenly whispered.

Zhang Lisheng smiled noncommittally without saying anything, prompting Ellen to add again, “I believe that the eye’s superpower is psychokinesis.”

“Psychokinesis?” Hearing the girl’s overthrowing his own guess, Zhang Lisheng asked strangely, “Isn’t that a superpower like ‘gravitational control’?”

“Of course not, ‘gravitational control’ cannot twist the human body into a meat puddle…”

“I didn’t say that the monster only has one power of ‘gravitational control’.”

When Ellen saw that the young man disagreed with her view, she, who was eager to show her own value, hesitated a little before saying with conviction, “Believe me, Lisheng. I can accurately guess things when it comes to monsters like this. Judging from the moment of force when those slim ropes made of human flesh that was sliding in the air, and the power that the ‘big eye’ demonstrated, it only has one superpower which is psychokinesis.”

“I have heard of psychokinesis, but I don’t know much about it,” After listening to the girl’s confident reply, Zhang Lisheng looked at the horrifying big eye in the air that was getting more and more solid and clearer after sucking human flesh and blood for the second time. He then asked, “Miss Ellen, do you know what the specific definition of this thing you speak of?”

“Of course, in short, psychokinesis is the power to interfere with reality using one’s consciousness,” Ellen immediately jabbered on. “In a fantasy story, it is the simplest and most powerful superpower and to put it easily, it’s an invisible power that can raise, lower, and move something from one direction to another. To put it in a powerful way, as one power elevates, the psychokinesis can also strengthen infinitely when we speak in theoretical terms to the point where it’s even powerful enough to destroy a planet. Let us analyze the superpower that the ‘eye’ in the air used. First, it can make us feel as though the gravity is strengthened. One can do this by putting pressure on materials. Second, it can fly dead bodies in the air. Actually, this is raising the materials upward. Third, it can distort the dead bodies and turn them into meat sauce. Actually, as long as it applies forces on different points of the materials from different directions, it can easily crush them into pieces. Finally, sucking the meat sauce into the shadow, which can be easily done with invisible force, all of which can be explained through psychokinesis.”

“Miss Ellen, your conjectures make sense.” Zhang Lisheng thought for a moment before replying, “But it sounds absurd to use human fantasy to explain the monster that appears in reality.”

“Lisheng, many of the people who enriched the Dungeons and Dragons’ rules and the Cthulhu Mythos are outstanding scientists. I myself am also majoring in physics at Harvard. I can tell you with confidence that in fact, a lot of fantasy superpowers are subject to strict scientific calculations including psychokinesis,” Ellen refuted in a whisper.

The instant she finished her sentence, Tina by the side, who had not spoken for a long time, suddenly said, “Baby, what Ellen said makes sense. Even though I’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons before, nor do I know anything about the Cthulhu Mythos, we commonly see psychokinesis in science fiction movies and soap operas. Compared to those illusory superpowers, it actually sounds more plausible.”

“Is it so, Tina…” Zhang Lisheng’s girlfriend’s opinion had a greater weight than Ellen’s conjecture in his heart. He looked at the several young men who were turning brighter while standing at the eight sharp corners of the octagonal diamond formation made up of black-robed people and said in ponderation.

Before he could finish his words, the brilliance on one of the eight black-robed men that looked like powerful light bulbs suddenly weakened.

As one of the diamond-shaped octagonal corners gradually lost its brilliance, clouds began to gather in the sky above the field. Not long after, lightning began to flash above the giant eye.

In the midst of lightning and thunder, a hoarse and low voice quietly sounded, clearly filling in every corner of Harvard Stadium. “Believers, as the sage who worships me, how dare you randomly change the Pledger whom I’ve chosen!?”