The Great Worm Lich

“Aruba, there’s no ‘buts’, but since I’ve already given out my order, you’re now the chief of the tribal craftsmen. Not only that, I also think that this is what Tumulu wishes,” Zhang Lisheng said as he walked up to Tumulu under the reddish glow of the firelight. He plucked out two feathers from the old man who still had a delighted look on his face and turned to look ay Aruba to insert it into his thick black hair.

“This is indeed my wish, Great Raider! Thank you for your gift!” Even though Tumulu’s face had turned gray a little after having two of his feathers taken away, once he saw the three feathers illuminated by firelight on his son’s head, he still said this emotionally in tears.

“Great Raider, I won’t let you down! I’ll make Tudenan become more powerful and rich.” Seeing that everything has now settled, the new Tudenan’s chief craftsmen straightened out his feelings and laid his body entirely on the ground as he said loudly.

“Then, I’ll watch with care how you’re going to bring this change to the tribe.” Zhang Lisheng caressed the back of the aborigine head that had been buried in the cold and damp ground by his feet and whispered. Then, he turned around to walk into the natural passage leading back to the surface.

After walking out of the underground river, Zhang Lisheng entered the bark house.

This bark house enshrining the tribal book of history still stood beside the Tudenan’s totem pole but its area had been expanded to five to six times bigger than before. Zhang Lisheng looked around and found that all of the furnishings had not changed. It’s only that the size of everything had become big by several times. According to his usual habit, he sat on the huge animal skin near the right wall.

As his body sank into the soft fur, it gave him a very pleasant and comfortable feeling. The bark house was just so happen to be built above the underground river so the temperature inside was very cool. After staying silent for a while, Zhang Lisheng suddenly said meaningfully, “Tugra, the new bark house enshrining the Tudenan tribal book of history is far more spacious and more magnificent than the old one. Even the animal skin on the ground is much softer and thicker now. From here, you can see the importance of ‘change’. Change! Change! Everything in Tudenan is born from the Hellfire’s tradition but in order to grasp an incomparably strong position, we must seek ‘change’!”

“Raider, it’s all because of your frightening and compelling power that Tudenan can miraculously change from a tribe that is about to be destroyed…” Tugra, who did not understand the meaning of Zhang Lisheng’s words yet, complimented him as usual while kneeling in front of him.

“Stop saying useless flattery! As the tribal headman, can’t you see the hidden crisis of Tudenan?” Zhang Lisheng frowned and cut him off.

Tugra froze. Then, while still kneeling, he buried his head into the animal fur. “Raider, I understand the lurking peril hidden in the tribe. When you’re here, Tudenan is all powerful but when you leave, the huge tribe will fall into a situation of poverty without the protection of a spiritual monster. However, wanting to find a suitable guardian would have to rely on luck…”

“I know this, Tugra. But, in accordance with normal circumstances, a Hellfire tribe that has a total of 150,000 tribesmen would need at least 30 spiritual monsters as guardians. Some of the powerful tribes may even have twice the number of guardians. If every one of them depends on luck, just how many do you think you can come across in your entire life?”

Tugra was stunned, not knowing how to answer this question. In the midst of his anxiety, a lightbulb suddenly appeared in his head as he said bluntly, “Great Raider, if we really want to rely on luck, I’m afraid I won’t be able to recruit enough guardians for Tudenan in my entire life. F-For this reason, Tudenan must change! ‘Change’! But, I still don’t know what change should it be…”

At this time, Zhang Lisheng became satisfied and continued to add on to Tudenan’s headsman’s words. “You’re right, Tugra! We must change! This is why I’ve decided to use a secret method to grant the chief warriors in Tudenan to master the sorcery ability of the spiritual monsters so that they can substitute the guardians and help guard the tribe. I believe that this doesn’t violate the tradition of the Hellfire people right?”

Zhang Lisheng played down his words but Tugra quaked with terror when he heard it.

“Y-You said you want to give the Hellfire people the ability to cast spells? J-Just like the sorcerer and wizards of the Mainlanders? O-Of course this doesn’t violate the Hellfire’s tradition, Great Raider. The legendary Island Gods that are believed by the Hellfire tribes that have a population of millions of people have the powerful ability to grant Hellfire people the ability to cast spells. E-Every time this magnificent feat appears, it’s said that it would always be regarded as a miracle…”

“No, Tugra! Stop praising and lamenting for now!” When Zhang Lisheng heard that it was not a violation to grant the Hellfire people the ability to cast spells, he secretly sighed in relief and looked at the Tudenan’s headsman who started to have an anticipating look on his face before waving his hand and saying, “The power that I master right has not reached the stage where I can safely and unmistakably grant the Hellfire warriors the ability to cast spells every time. It’s considered as not bad already if I can succeed in giving one out of four or five people. However, those who fail would end up becoming ash and disappear from this world.”

Succeeding in one out of four or five people was equal to a probability of about 20%. After calculating this number, Tugra, who was originally overwhelmed with excitement, suddenly froze but still continued to say, “E-Even so, it’s still an unimaginably powerful strength! According to the Hellfire’s tradition, it’s a supreme glory for the tribal people to be able to please the Gods with death…”

“Tugra, shut up! I’m not the type of God who want my believers to sacrifice themselves just to satisfy the distorted desire of myself…” Zhang Lisheng interrupted Tudenan’s headman’s words, but at the instant he remembered about the fact that he had to rely on mass slaughter to harvest a lot of negative emotions to seek for a breakthrough was not much better from those spiritual monsters who obtained more strength through blood sacrifice, so he could not help but choke a little.

After pondering about it, he added, “In short, I’m not the kind of God who likes to watch my believers dying for no reason. Alright! Let’s talk about this in the future. I want to know now, what are the closest tribes to us? ”

“Now, the tribe that is closest to Tudenan is the Kaqilu tribe located about 120,000 steps away in the east and the Mokacho tribe that is 115,000 steps away in the north-south direction!” Tugra, who was used to the Raider’s way of switching topics, answered immediately.

“Kaqilu and Mokacho…” Zhang Lisheng muttered under his breath before asking again, “How big are these two tribes?”

“The Kaqilu tribe has more than 70,000 people, and the Mokacho tribe has more than 80,000 people. If we want to attack and capture them, as long as you let your powerful ‘companions’ kill the two spiritual monsters that are guarding these two tribes, it would then be a breeze for us to do so,” Tugra hesitated for a moment before answering. “However, I’m afraid that if Tudenan continues to expand in such an unscrupulous manner, we may attract the attention of the big tribes on the island. ”

Upon hearing the population of the two aborigine tribes that had a connected hunting ground with Tudenan, Zhang Lisheng immediately recalled the miserable encounter of the six Grand Wizards and twelve elite disciples who was tricked by him to battle with Pumanra who had a population of 50,000.

After deliberating on the fact that his strength might not even reach the level of the weakest Grand Wizard, adding on to the fact that he had no complete faith on his 20,000 Tudenan elite warriors who had partners to defeat a Hellfire tribe with a population of 70,000 tribesmen, he sighed and shook his head with a wry smile. “You don’t have to worry about this, Tugra. I won’t easily provoke such tribes like the Mokacho and Kaqilu without absolute certainty.”

Tugra did not know that the reason the tribal Raider was able to achieve such great achievements on that ‘glorious night’ was because of his lies and tricks. He thought that Zhang Lisheng was already satisfied with the huge size of Tudenan for the time being and did not have the intention to continue his expansion anymore. For this reason, he even secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

When he was about to sing a few words of praise to praise the wisdom of the Raider, he suddenly heard, “Tugra, tell all of the Tudenan tribesmen that if they come across any spiritual monster on the hunting field, no matter whether it already has generated wisdom or not, they must jot down the coordinate as long as I’m here in the tribe and return to inform me immediately!”

“Yes, Great Raider!” Tugra was surprised before replying respectfully.

“Go spread out the order then! I’ll go take a look at the beach!” Zhang Lisheng stood up from the animal skin and walked out of the wooden house. He commanded Ghostface that was hanging on his shoulders to jump down and expand its size so that it could carry him to walk towards the beach along the forest road that led straight to the sea from the tribe.

On the way, from time to time, he would see Tudenan’s craftsmen driving a group of three to five Lohlos that were carrying huge woven vine baskets filled with ocean fish, transporting the catches. It looked like all of the wild Lohlos in the tribal hunting ground had been domesticated into the craftsmen’s partners.

Upon seeing the tribal living faith riding on a legendary creature while passing across their heads, the Tudenan’s craftsmen would kneel down on the ground to worship for a while before continuing their ways. Their huge partners would also kneel down too, appearing to be very comical.

Unfortunately, these comical antics of these Lohlos was still unable to lift the weight from Zhang Lisheng’s mind. It was only until he had walked out of the jungle, drove the wizard gu to jump on the delicate white beach and stared at the vast and magnificent scenery of the sea and the sky that his mood became slightly better.

Other than the magnificent scenery and fine sand, there were also several docks and fisheries that lied on the flattened black reef on the beach.

The number of ships and fisheries here were much fewer than that of the underground Golden River. After all, even though the fish and shrimp resources in the shallow sea was extremely rich since nobody had ever fished here before for thousands of years, fishing in the ocean would not be as easy as in the underground river that flowed slowly throughout the entire year without any billows of waves.

The amount of catches was a great factor to the survival or perish of the Tudenan tribe that had already implemented the ‘separation of soldiers and civilians’. Even though the tribal chiefs did not dare take the fact that the Raider had high regards towards the ocean, they would still never invest in the ocean the same amount of manpower they invested in fishing in the underground river.

Zhang Lisheng certainly understood this simple principle so when he saw that even though there were only three to five sparse fisheries and docks, the scale did not seem to be small. For this reason, he nodded quietly in satisfaction and when he was just about to get closer to them, he suddenly saw a tiny fuzzy dot appearing on the distant sea surface.