The Great Worm Lich

A feeling of paralysis suddenly flooded his body again. Zhang Lisheng gently pressed down his hand, and instantly, a small hill broke out of the floor of the treehouse and tore through the animal fur carpet, before erecting behind the young man.

“Very good, Tugra. I can always feel reassured when it’s you who carried out the deeds.” When the hill appeared, Zhang Lisheng leaned back on the foot of the small hill like nothing happened. “Oh yeah, how are my outlander companion who went to the Green Lead Mainland with the mainlanders? They still haven’t returned to Scorpion Island?”

“Yes, your companions have not returned to the Scorpion Island, but 30 days ago, the mainland merchants who brought them away returned from Scorpion Island. The caravan has grown much bigger, and they actually brought tens of thousands of mainland slaves to trade with us. The leader also brought your friends’ message, telling you not to worry about them. They’ve already obtained the identity of being aristocrats for helping the Kattaman City State resist the invasion of their foreign enemies. They are now traveling around the Oasis Mainland.”

When the young man, who had never placed much attention in Shrimp World No. 2 exploration mission, heard the Wizard Li headman’s answer, he blurted out a chuckle. “Oh? I can’t believe that a group of aliens and spies could actually manage to obtain a pass in entering the upper social circle of the mainlanders. Although being an ‘aristocrat’ of a city-state alliance founded from commerce is not that valuable, it could still be said as a good-enough stepping stone.”

Tugra did not really understand what Zhang Lisheng meant, but he was smart enough to not ask more about it. Kneeling on the ground, he continued to praise per his own thoughts. “Great god, I will now report about the redheaded people you’ve driven away for burning and destroying the tribe’s ancestral land. They started to beg and ask for help, not long after you’ve left. Since they said that they’ve received your pardon, I gave my order to fulfill all their reasonable requests. Now, they’ve already followed the mainland caravan to the Hellfire Archipelago.”

“So this means that the two expedition teams will soon merge. This is a good thing,” Zhang Lisheng listened and muttered to himself. Suddenly, he felt waves of stiffness engulfing his body quickly. He waved his hand with great difficulty and motioned for the Wizard Li headman to retreat.

In the days to come, the young man’s body would be in good and bad conditions alternately. He could only stay in the treehouse, killing his time by cultivating the secret method. Still, it was fortunate that he had returned to the land of his own faith, where his divine power and billions of believers were available for him to use. For this reason, he no longer had the anxiety he had when he was in the Noah World, and the days were not that hard to endure.

Just like this, a bleak and straightforward two weeks went by, and the Wizard Li expeditionary army finally completed its reorganization. Among the 72 legions, except for the 10 brigades defending each of the territorial islands, the remaining 62 legions with 12.4 million elite warriors had already made their final preparations for the cross-sea expansion.

When Zhang Lisheng saw that it was already time, he, who was feeling unwell, ordered for an inspection on the Wizard Li islands. He did this to find for the strongest and heaviest tree to build a vast wooden couch for him to sit on it. Then, 36 spellcasting chief warriors carried him for the cross-sea expedition and re-enacted the demeanor of the Grand Wizards when they went to the wars in the ancient times.

Under the attack of the tens of thousands of elite warrior army under his command, the resistance of the Hellfire foreign tribes was even worse than the previous expeditions. They were armed with heavy armor, spears, swords, and fires. In just seven days, Wizard Li expeditionary army conquered a large island of about 300,000 square kilometers and stood on the heel of radiation attacks.

After winning the crucial battle, Zhang Lisheng, who was nurtured with a lot of negative emotions, felt that there was finally a surge of wizard power in his flesh and blood. However, his body had deteriorated to the point where he could not even move his fingers. Thus, he no longer followed the expeditionary army for the war.

He named the newly conquered island as ‘Rebirth’ in a port city that was gradually taking shape near the coastal area. Then, the young man built a large tree house supported by the totem pole and lived a life of seclusion.

Every day, the belief offered by hundreds of millions of natives was transferred into Zhang Lisheng’s soul through the hundreds of stone pillars. This allowed him to become closer to a breakthrough Rank-11 Wizard stage of the Witchcraft’s Gate of Sacrifice, closer to the Soul-God Consolidation stage.

As the young man’s soul transformed, it transferred the last moments of anger and hatred of all foreign tribe warriors before Wizard Li expeditionary army killed them under the blessing of his divine power. This was possible through the totem poles to his body.

Just like this, when the war was ruthlessly spreading around the Hellfire Archipelago, with the 62 tribal legions who were brutally swallowing the vast hunting grounds inhabited by the foreign tribes in the south of the Nutao Sea, the Wizard Li’s god underwent his final transformation from a caterpillar crawling on the dirty soil to the butterfly flying under the blue sky with great difficulty

Four months have passed in a blink of an eye. The enemy of the Wizard Li expeditionary army was originally spreading in several dozens of islands with over 2.5 million square kilometers of land before the expedition turned to only nine small islands that were barely 200,000 square kilometers combined.

When the army rested and reorganized, it gathered once again, and the horn of war rang again. After obtaining a victory in the tragic battle seizing a beachhead, a few more totem poles were erected one after another in the Hellfire Archipelago. Right at this moment, Zhang Lisheng, who was living in seclusion, began to feel the change in his body.

“It has finally come, or would it just be like a false alarm again like the previous few times?” Sensing that his body had boiled in turmoil from lack of vigor within a short period, Wizard Li’s god first showed excitement on his face. Leaping up from the animal skin carpet, he carefully pondered over it and muttered to himself with a sigh.

When his words left his mouth, he suddenly heard faint hissing resonating beside him. Puzzled, he looked at the direction of the sound and saw that the khaki and blue color on the totem pole supporting the treehouse began to flow slowly.

As they overflowed, many fine and irregular powder scattered from the stone pillar. What was even more strange was, not long after, a bloodcurdling red-stained rust color began to appear on the totem pole.

“Since the totem pole has started to show signs of change as well, it shouldn’t be false anymore.” Staring fixedly at the stone pillar, symbolizing the Wizard Li’s power of faith for 15 minutes, the young man’s expression became grave as he clenched his teeth with anticipation. He took this opportunity to activate all the wizard power in his body and soul according to the secret method record.

At first, the wizard power commanded by Zhang Lisheng could still roughly be under his control. Still, soon, the sudden soaring of the soul power shattered the barrier between his consciousness and his body. It caused the two wizard power that was initially separated in his body and soul to merge and grow out of control.

He had lost control of his power. However, unlike the pain he suffered before under the effect of both wizard power, the young man felt that his soul and his body became carefree. This allowed him to fly in the air with no restraint.

He flew higher. Unwittingly, a stretch of stars that stretched out as far as the eyes could see was already surrounding him. At this time, when he looked down, the ground, ocean, and countless creatures spread out before his eyes, as though he could just reach out a finger and smash everything with just a tap.

A sense of omnipotent power that he had never felt before slowly oozed out of Zhang Lisheng’s heart, causing him to gradually lose his consciousness in his joy. At the same time, the young man’s body began to crack and break into a pile of shattered body mess, half dry with the other half wet, dripping with blood. A few minutes later, a monster with a human head and the body of a snake began to emerge from the pile of broken bones bit by bit.

When that monster appeared, its bald head and gaunt, unremarkable facial features looked the same as Zhang Lisheng. However, as time passed by, they grew into something more beautiful. Long fine hair began to grow out of its head as one of its eyes turned black while the other became white.

“It’s coming! It’s finally coming…” Instinctively, he hissed in a low voice with a ferocious grin on his lips, desperately longing for Zhang Lisheng to lose his consciousness.

At this time, Zhang Lisheng, who was about to sleep in bliss, suddenly noticed that countless living creatures on land and in the sea started to show some peculiar changes.

A ferocious beast that looked like a black bear began to grow a pair of wings and flew to the sky. Using its strong paw, it hit a strange bird that had a lion head and a hawk’s body down from the air. When that raptor had its head shattered and was about to fall into the sea, waves suddenly surged up high. A giant whale-like, big fish jumped out of the water and swallowed it, before growing a row of limbs that looked like a centipede on its stomach and crawling up to the shore.

The enormous, strange, and chaotic biological changes naturally attracted the attention of Zhang Lisheng, who was a biologist, causing him to involuntarily focus on observing and becoming more conscious. It also made the human-headed snake monster that was born out of the young man’s flesh and bone to return to its original appearance.

“No, no! W-Who… W-Who is it…” The human-headed snake monster could not accept such a change. Hysterically, it shrieked, “Die… Die…”

As the beast shrieked, the world in Zhang Lisheng’s mind suddenly became dark.

When a thunder broke through the sky and illuminated the world again, everything had become entirely different from before.

The ground was overflowing with the flood, and everything was dying. Hundreds of creatures of various shapes that were bigger than mountains were fighting in the mud, killing and devouring each other as the winners grew in size swiftly.

In the sky, hundreds of meteorites burning with raging fires smashed into the ground amid torrential rain. In this doomsday-like scene, a human-headed beast with the body of a snake leaped up from the land covered by flood. It opened its bloody mouth wide to sink its teeth into the final victor of the giant creatures.

Both monsters in the deathmatch had the power to destroy the world. Zhang Lisheng was not supposed to wake up under their intimidation. However, all of this was, after all, a fantasy in his mind. Since he was a god who had 160 million believers, along with the fact that he was in the land of his faith, he gradually recovered his consciousness after becoming alert.

He could guess that he had most likely encountered an unexpected calamity wherein spirits tried to snatch away his body and of them harbored ill intention. After waking up, Zhang Lisheng soon understood his dangerous situation.

He also learned that the reason he was lucky enough to escape this calamity was that both spirits that were covering their eyes were unwilling to surrender. They continued to compete with each other.