The Great Worm Lich

The girls did not know how important an opportunity and luck were in this supernatural battle with unpredictable spells and erratic power.

When they saw Zhang Lisheng who had transformed into a ferocious giant walked up to them, Sheila’s face still had a lingering fearful expression on it, as though she had just watched a soul-stirring magical short film, “How terrifying and exciting at the same time. That shortie can actually drive a three-meter tall rag doll like a Steel Warrior! Not only that, he can even change his body to become like a doll too! How strange and horrifying!”

“Sheila, there are more terrible and scarier things out there in the depths of the jungle! If you’ve changed your mind, you still have time to return to the gathering place to have your lunch there!” Zhang Lisheng jumped onto Ghostface’s back and picked up his clothes before going behind a large tree as he replied.

“You want me to leave now? I’ll only do that if God comes! Oh Lisheng, actually, you look a different kind of sexy when you’re covered with scales. You don’t have to change back to your normal form at all.”

“Sheila, if you don’t want to go back, just shut up!” Zhang Lisheng, who had dressed up and returned to his normal state, walked out of the big tree and jumped onto the wizard gu to sit behind it. Then, he commanded Ghostface to continue moving forward along the invisible silk in the jungle.

Their speed was twice as slow as when he traveled alone. “Trish, you better dye your hair to another color when you return to New York. As a biologist, I’d like to remind you that the legendary Aryan Special that has many legends in European mythology is not a good ‘tag’ in this age of demons and ghosts.”

The red-haired girl shook her head and said, “I’m not scared, Lisheng! God will protect me!”

“My dear, even though our Father is omnipotent, there are just too many believers praying for his power already! For this reason, let us not bother him with another problem that just dyeing your hair alone can solve. Let Sheila and I accompany you to the hair salon when we return to New York, okay?” When Tina who sat by the side heard her best friend’s words, she quickly persuaded.

“Yeah Trish, don’t let us worry about it, okay?” Sheila also said solemnly.

Trish became silent for a while before nodding silently. Then, together with her two sisters whom the wizard gu’s silk thread also stuck onto its back, they began to watch the magnificent scenery of the jungle in the foreign world’s Shrimp B1 Island.

There were dense and varied mottled giant woods; all kinds of fierce beasts and weird insects with long thick animal hair and hard shells; strange and magnificent mountainous landscape.

Without blinking, the three girls watched countless of the strange scene they could not even imagine in their dreams. Without warning, a vast ring-shaped indigenous city that stretched out as far as the eyes could see entered their views.

“Look, Trish, Sheila! This place is like a re-emergence of Maya…” Tina pointed at the aborigine’s city and shouted loudly. However, her excitement soon disappeared as the four-faced spider below her began to leap down from the spider thread on the tree that disappeared without a trace.

To her horror, she realized that thousands of aborigines riding on purple-colored giant spiders while being illuminated under the sun chillingly surrounding the aborigine city began to encircle them. Right away, horror dawned on the girl and her two best friends at the same time. Sticking close to her boyfriend’s back nervously, she said, “Baby, please don’t tell me that this is not the aborigine tribe that believes in you.”

In the eyes of ordinary people, quantity was often more shocking than quality.

“Don’t worry Tina, they are all my devotees. This is my tribe, Tudenan!” Zhang Lisheng stood up from the wizard gu that had already landed on the ground and pointed at the endless number of tree houses in front.

At the same time when he stood up, all the Hellfire warriors in their sight began to leap down from their partners and kneeled on the ground under their status in the tribe.

The chief warrior kissed the soil Ghostface had stepped on and was the first to pray, “Great Raider, you’re the living faith of Tudenan, you’re…”

Then, countless of aborigines began to join in and fill the air with their voice.

Even though Trish did not understand what these indigenous midgets were saying, when she saw the fanatic faces of the devotees that were increasing in number and sensed the sullen atmosphere of a pristine religion that made one felt suppressed, terrified, yet scared at the same time sent an inexplicable trepidation into her heart, she whispered right away, “Zhang Lisheng, I’ll definitely enter Hell after knowing you.”

“Have a little scientific spirit, would you, Trish? Look at those aborigines. You should be more intelligent than them, right? There’s no such thing as Heaven or Hell. Those are basically a fairy tale somebody made up, like me!” Zhang Lisheng smiled indifferently and replied without turning around.

When the young man spoke, the agile wizard gu had already reached the Tudenan’s totem pole. When Tina saw the wooden pillars carved in front of them with various strange patterns, it shocked her. The group of pulleys connected by a series of purple thick ropes that were pulling giant wooden frameworks filled with catches rising from the underground cave along the wooden slide rails astonished her; she could not help but gape.

When his girlfriend was in the midst of bafflement, Zhang Lisheng commanded the wizard gu to retract the spider thread fixing the girls down on their spots. “Tina, Trish, and Sheila, we’ve reached our destination, so let us go down now.”

Feeling that her body had become at ease again, Tina returned to her senses and stood up on the back of the wizard gu. Astonished, she remarked, “Hey, baby! These aborigines… The civilization of these aborigines has far exceeded my expectations! No wonder you’d come up with the idea of allowing them to build a ship to fish. Oh yeah, how are those ships now? Have they finished building it already?”

“Of course! If you want to look, I can bring the three of you there now!” Zhang Lisheng commanded Ghostface through his heart to shrink and safely placed the three girls onto the ground. Then, he told the Tudenan headman, who had just rushed over and kneeled by his feet, “I can’t believe I’ll come back only a day after I left, Tugra. Well, I had no choice. My few companions here insisted on coming to the tribe for a visit, so I can only agree to them. Go and order the pulley transporting the catch to stop! We’re going to the underground Golden River!”

“Yes, Great Raider!” Tugra kneeled on the ground and answered, before standing up to carry out the order.

Sheila, who was on the other side, asked curiously, “Lisheng, I’ve always forgotten to ask you this, but how did you learn to speak these indigenous people’s language and to be so fluent on top of that?”

“Oh, I was lucky enough to have been casted by a spell called the Eternal Comprehension Spell. As long as I stay at a certain culture for a period of time, no matter what language it is, I’d be able to master it fluently.”

“The hell? There’s actually such an amazing spell? You’re really lucky!”

“We Chinese people would prefer to call such an encounter as fate!” Zhang Lisheng casually replied and accompanied the girls to watch around as they chattered. Then, by the time the railcar heading straight down to the underground river had cleared off, the four of them began to walk downwards into the natural cave.

The cave was dark, and even though the aborigines tending to them had already lit up some torches, the light was still far from bright enough.

While they were walking, Tina, who started to feel terrified, pulled Zhang Lisheng’s clothes and said, “This place is a little horrifying. If you had not told me earlier, it would have never crossed my mind that there was actually a big fishery down here, but, those fishes are really weird. To think that their eyes can actually degrade to such a thorough manner.”

“They have been thriving in the dark underground river for thousands of years, so they have not used the eyes for generations. Of course, serious organ degradation would happen in such a scenario. However, even though these eyeless fishes are weird, from the perspective of an Earthling, there’s something underground that is even more interesting. ”

“What is that?” The girl asked curiously.

“I will not tell you now. Let us test your eyesight, shall we?” Zhang Lisheng, who had already reached the end of the underground cave, said and walked onto the bank of the underground river.

Tina followed her boyfriend out of the cave curiously and the bustling scene appearing in front of her could not help but surprise her again.

Hundreds of shipyards;

Thousands of fisheries;

Thousands of fishing boats sailing in brightly lit rivers;

There were also a few weird machines that were obviously driven hydraulically standing on the shores.

All of these had completely deviated from the image of the barbaric primitive the girl had on the indigenous people on the Shrimp B1 Island.

“Oh, all that I can say is that this is beyond my imagination, baby!” Tina remarked as she shook her head. “Compared to the fact that you’ve let this group of aborigines building shipyards, fisheries, and hydraulic machines, those eyeless fishes are indeed nothing.”

“You’ve guessed wrongly, Tina! The interesting thing is not on the shore, but in the river.”

“In the river…” Tina was stunned for a moment. Then, she walked towards the shore and looked down to the bottom of the river. The firelight of the torches illuminate the river in front of her eyes till it had a tinge of orange glow. Other than the slightly strong brilliance, everything seemed normal.

“Is there anything in the river?” Sheila and Trish who walked onto the shore together with their best friend extended their heads curiously to probe the river. Similarly, their effort was rendered futile as they muttered in a whisper.

As the three girls were wondering, a fishing boat fully illuminated with firelight suddenly pulled up a streak of a vague golden line from the river course during its return voyage, sending a slight ‘thump’ to their hearts.

A few seconds later, Tina, who had heard a hint from her boyfriend inadvertently before, finally had a dawn of realization.

“A flowing golden river… It’s a flowing golden river…” The girl stared at the boundless river and muttered with bafflement, “So this is not a myth after all…”

“Indeed, it’s not a myth. Tina, I’ve found a flowing golden river on the Shrimp B1 Island, and if I were to describe it using our Chinese proverbs, I’ve had it tightly gripped in my hand now.”

“This is indeed a huge profit, but it’s because this amount is too big then it’s enough to make the gold on Earth to transform from the strongest hard currency into something that has a similar price to brass! We must be careful…” A few seconds later, Tina calmed down and said.

“I don’t think it’s so serious, dear! There are already over ten discovered foreign worlds that are open or semi-open to the public, and they have been developed for almost two years now. However, the international gold price is still stable. Judging from the terrain pictures of the various foreign worlds circulating around, it seemed like the other worlds don’t have any obvious golden veins. Not only that, it’s said that in the civilizations of the other foreign worlds, gold is also a hard currency!” Upon hearing her best friend’s words, Sheila raised her objections in a solemn expression.