The Great Worm Lich

A strange charred smell surrounded the jungle, being very distinct despite having it spread out from a hundred meters away.

“T-Too cruel! This is hell…” Xu Naijia, who was sitting on the branch, saw the source of the scent and no longer had the nonchalant expression that she used to have on her face. Instead, she muttered in shock with her body trembling.

“Dr. Xu, in western Sichuan, there are many people who will catch monkeys alive and split open their skulls, pour boiling oil into it, and then scoop up the monkey brain using a spoon to eat while listening to the shrill cries of the monkeys. All of this is none other than the law of the jungle,” Looking in the distance while waiting for the correct timing, Zhang Lisheng said with his lips curled. “However, I didn’t expect that a human will have such a strong scent after being cooked.”

When the young man was speaking, the giant apes had more or less finished devouring the wailing wounded people in the camp. With no sound as guidance, their speed of hunting was greatly slowed down.

Some unfortunate apes could not catch any living person despite looking around for a long time, so they could only begin to eat the corpses in a miserable manner. Even so, there were still some lucky bastards around. When a group of not over ten giant apes were scrambling around the campsite, they seemed to have suddenly seen a shadow moving under an overturned jeep.

Screeching loudly, they rivaled with each other as they surrounded it. One of the strongest and tallest monkeys smashed out its palm and sent a car flying, revealing several naked, fat, fair living people who were constantly wriggling on the ground.

With such a delicacy presented in front of them, the strong ape discarded its friendship and barred its fangs while hissing at its companions, who were leaping around on both sides. Grabbing one living person with each hand, it no longer barbecued them via the electrical fence nor so much as take a glance at it, in fear of having them snatched away, and put them directly into its mouth.

When the rest of the apes saw how deliciously it felt as it was feeding on its prey, they began to fight for each other to swallow the remaining living people as well, before putting on a satisfied-looking expression that was similar to how humans look on their faces.

The apes ate carelessly and noticed nothing strange. However, by relying on his amazing eyesight, Zhang Lisheng, who was watching from afar, could see that those fat living people did not have any facial features on their faces. At once, an expecting expression appeared on his face.

Sure enough, just as he expected, over 10 seconds later, several of the apes that swallowed the fat living people began to leap between the ruins of the camp and suddenly fell from the air.

Then, as though they were drunk, they stood up staggeringly as their eyes gradually turned red. The blood vessels in their body began to pop up densely like small snakes.

In pain, the apes began to screech maniacally and tore off the mottled yellow fine fur on their bodies, one handful of fur at a time, along with blood and flesh. After the apes were entirely bathed in their own blood, they began to go berserk and bare their fangs while charging at their own kind.

The instant these mad apes attacked the normal apes that were looking for living people, being caught by surprise, they immediately fell into a disadvantageous position. Being clawed and bitten as the mad apes pinned their own kind down on the ground, it did not take them long to be covered in blood.

Not far away from the ape fight, beside a wrecked war chariot enveloped by the flames that had already burned everything combustible and was about to extinguish soon, a man’s head, that was covered in tiger patterns with a mouth that resembled a mosquito and round eyes bulging out, protruded out from the soil while watching the ape’s group fought with each other crazily as it muttered, “Senior Brother, these few Faceless Yin Corpses are amazing but what a waste.”

“That’s right! It has almost been 60 years since I became a Rank-12 Wizard and 30 to 40% of my effort has all been spent on these few Faceless Yin Corpses. However, I have no choice but to make it self-destruct.” When the mosquito finished saying so, the soil beside it wriggled and a flat head appeared. Hissing its long slender tongue, it gnashed its teeth as it answered, “If I knew about this earlier, I’d have unleashed them so they could kill more apes just now!”

As soon as it became enraged, the mad monkeys grew more violent and mad than before. Without giving a damn if they would injure themselves, they attacked their same kind desperately.

At the same time, the two Nine Provinces Dragon steel giants, who had the bottom half of their bodies shattered and had fallen into the jungle, suddenly had a dim silver brilliance lit in their eyes, as both of their eyes dimmed out. Miraculously, they had activated again and pushed themselves up from the ground as a series of mechanical sounds could be heard. Dragging the wreckage of their lower bodies, they proceeded to charge towards the camp by substituting their legs with their hands.

“These robots are quite sturdy and durable…” Upon seeing the trash-like steel giants in the jungle, who suddenly regained their vitality while stubbornly heading towards the battlefield once again from a branch, Zhang Lisheng could not help but mutter in astonishment.

“Lisheng, we call these robots the Nine Provinces Dragons. They’re the most advanced anthropomorphic war machine in China. Their heads, limbs, and chests have independent power systems; different operators control them as well. Even if there’s only one arm left, theoretically it could still move!” Guo Caiying bragged in a low voice without scrupulousness.

“So it’s a robot that has its various parts independently controlled. No wonder its size is much larger than that of the US Steel Warrior. I think the more difficult thing about this kind of ‘Iron Man’ is to train the operators to work in coordination to operate a steel robot that resembles a human’s body structure.” Zhang Lisheng casually mentioned the crucial part of the Nine Provinces Dragon which shocked Xu Naijia who was standing by the side. With a hard squeeze on her cousin’s arm, she stopped Guo Caiying from continuing the conversation.

The young man noticed Xu Naijia’s hostility and merely smiled without saying anything. He continued to stare at the distance and watched the Nine Provinces Dragon C7 and C8 rush into the campsite from a distance with just half of their bodies while slamming on the giant apes on the ground.

Originally, it was hard for the heavily damaged robots to hit the giant apes for they had very sharp movements, but since the apes had started to show signs of killing each other, it caused the monkeys to gather at once; the two Nine Provinces Dragons then killed the apes one after another.

Under the impact of a steel hand close to the size of an ordinary house, even though the apes were not killed immediately, it was still enough for them to be slammed into the soil and become severely injured.

When they struggled and gradually extended their heads out of the soil, many unknown and strange bugs would crawl into their seven bleeding orifices, and soon, these giant apes would no longer have the energy to break free.

Upon experiencing the horror of the steel giants, the clever apes began to flee quickly. However, at this critical moment, many soldiers who were wearing black armor suddenly appeared from a secret place in the ruins of the camp. They would either be shooting around with their heavy-duty guns or would release all sorts of bombs from the cracks on their chests while they were flying around with the help of fire spouting behind them.

All in all, they did their utmost to prevent the giant apes from scattering. Some armored soldiers already suffered from heavy damage on their armors, so when they began to lose their flying ability and were about to crash, they directly crashed into the apes, hoping to inflict serious injury to them even though they would have to sacrifice themselves as well.

“Looks like there’s nothing holding everyone back anymore…” Looking at such an intense scene from afar, Zhang Lisheng muttered.

Just as the young man was muttering to himself, the monkey king, who had stayed silent for a long time after inflicting the earth-shattering terrifying blow, finally made his move again. It leaped out of the deep pit while holding its wooden stick and once again leaped up high into the air. Brandishing its stick to become a towering giant pole of wood, it gestured multiple hits in the air and transformed one of the wrecked steel giants into a pile of scrap metal.

When the monkey king landed, it jolted its stick forward and sent the other robot flying into the air, hundreds of meters away. Swaying its wooden stick fancily, it cracked open the heads of the few apes that had gone maniac.

However, peculiarly and horrifyingly, after it smashed those mad apes’ heads, they did not die right away. Instead, they seemed to become even more energetic while stretching out their hands and clawing everything that they could get a grip on. After a while, their bodies suddenly expanded and a gust of soft, white, fat-like, thick and viscous fluid spurted out from the open wound on their necks.

Those fluids splattered everywhere. Most of them landed on the ground and corroded the soil until it bubbled and slowly sank. A small part of it landed on the normal apes and infused into their bodies. In just a few seconds, they fell to the ground and began to twitch as their furs fell out everywhere. Blood gushed out from their nose and mouth while they were on the verge of death.

When this unexpected event occurred, the monkey king agilely leaped behind and dodged away from the spurting of the poisonous fluid but could not protect its subordinates. When it saw that there were even more casualties after it made its move, it quickly became enraged. Raising the giant tree that the monkey king transformed using the wooden stick, it slammed it down recklessly and smashed the mad headless apes, along with the dying normal apes, into piles of bloody flesh.

When the monkey king raised its stick amidst its rage, it did not realize that the two blobs of sticky bloody flesh, that was stuck on the stick, were flowing down. After it gave the powerful blow, the two sticky bloody flesh blobs fell from the wooden stick and landed beside the monkey king’s feet. Without warning, several big pale hands stretched out from the pile of bloody flesh and grabbed onto the monkey king’s ankle tightly.

Then, several heads with widely opened green-black mouths extended out of the bloody flesh, before sinking their teeth into the monkey king’s nether region. During its shrill cry, the two blobs of bloody flesh transformed to become two ferocious, three-headed, six-armed, living corpses that were six to seven meters tall and gripped onto the joints of its four limbs tightly.

Right at this moment, an area of soil in the campsite suddenly exploded. Amidst the billowing flying dust, a slender humanoid, covered entirely in a tiger pattern of yellow and black, with a height of over two meters and thin cicada-like wings fluttering continuously behind it, charged towards the monkey king as fast as lightning, before sinking its long mouthpart into the monkey king’s neck that was not covered with fur.

After a round of sucking, the eyes on the humanoid monster’s protruding face turned blood red. In pain, the monkey king violently threw out a fist and actually ripped the living corpse that was locking its joint into two forcefully. It also smashed the blood-sucking monster into a pile of bloody mess that the monkey king sent flying in the air while leaving behind only the mouthpart on its neck that was gurgling out blood.

At this moment, before the dust flying in the air had yet to settle, several bloody, widely opened mouths, about six to seven meters wide, suddenly charged forward in the dust and swallowed the monkey king in one bite.

Watching at the flashy change of the battle scene that took place in such a short time from the jungle afar, Zhang Lisheng looked at the humanoid snake monster that had its tummy bulge out as it landed on the ground on all fours, constantly wiggling its body as though it was trying to wring the monkey king to death after it and murmured in a woeful voice, “So this is the Bashe that swallows elephants mentioned in the True Text of Mountains and Seas. First, there was a bloody mosquito that pierced the neck, and now there’s this Bashe that could swallow an elephant. Those who can become Grand Wizards are indeed no ordinary man. Unfortunately, the enemy they come across is much stronger and looks like it’s finally time for me to enter…”

(T/N: Bashe was a python-like Chinese mythological snake that ate elephants.)

As the young man spoke, an inexplicable brilliance gleamed in his eyes, with blue-yellow scales, that had a square shape on the outside but round in the middle, appearing on his entire body. Transforming into a ferocious giant with steel-like muscles, he focused his attention on the right timing.