The Great Worm Lich

In the whistling wind, the enormous castle-like ships sailed on the sea. On the deck, the boatswain commanded seven to eight sailors to exert themselves to turn the large wooden poles connected to the sails. Several of the sails were adjusted with the help of the pulley block to expertly rely on the southern wind to aid the ship to sail west.

This kind of sailing skill was very clever since the wooden ship could always travel by wind to its targeted destination correctly at any time unless the wind was blowing in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, if the wind was blowing in a different direction, the dynamic energy loss would considerably reduce the speed of the vessel significantly.

Noon had just gone by, and the pale sunshine slowly slanted westward. After having his lunch in one of the most spacious and comfortable cabins of the caravan’s flagship, Zhang Lisheng routinely walked out of the cabin and strolled in the wind.

In the age of the wooden sailing ship, sailing in the sea had a very significant risk, mainly when the weather was terrible. It was hard for a person to understand why somebody would want to take this risk for no reason when he could just safely hide in the cabin.

However, the role played by the young man was initially an eccentric scholar who would rather dissect animals in the barbarian tribe than enjoying a luxurious life in the civilized world, so some of his quirks would appear to be ordinary too.

When Zhang Lisheng was strolling on the deck, the wind direction was continually changing, affecting the course of the wooden ship. Not long after, the ship’s bow began to slowly turn again. Staring deadly right ahead at the wind vane on the mast, the sailor who was not tall but appear to be particularly valiant in the raging wind immediately roared, “Left! Turn left three degrees and hold it there! Now! Now! Now! Haven’t you guys eaten yet? I’ll throw all of you into the ocean to feed the fish if you all continue to fumble slowly like that!”

In the howl of the boatswain, the sailors clenched their teeth and shoved the thick wooden poles out of the grooves with their faces completely flushed. With great difficulty, they pushed the ship’s bow to head east once again.

When the young man heard this howl, he paid attention to the turtle-like speed of the wooden ship. He turned around to look at the exhausted sailors under the mast and could not help but put on a sardonic smile on his face as he murmured, “How sad it is to be born in this barbaric era, but it doesn’t matter; I’ll soon bring ‘civilization’ to the mainland…”

As his up-to-no-good words left his mouth, a familiar voice suddenly interrupted him from behind him, “Sir Lisheng, I didn’t expect you to come out for a walk in a weather like this.”

“Mr. Vitas, there’s a saying in my hometown that says, ‘an after-dinner walk a day keeps the doctor away.’ To those who lack exercises like me, walking after a meal is the only longevity practice that we can do; of course, I must adhere to it. Then again, I didn’t expect to run into you.”

“Oh? There are quite a lot of sayings in your hometown,” The middle-aged merchant whose ship-shaped hat that was almost blown away by the wind grabbed his hat brim and strode up to Zhang Lisheng. Looking at the clouds in the distance that were continuously blown away by the strong wind but would keep regrouping again, he unwittingly said with anxiety, “I didn’t leave my cabin for the sake of longevity but because Mr. Birch sent someone to summon me to the steering cabin.

“The navigator is looking for you suddenly?” Zhang Lisheng asked in vigilance, “Is it because the weather is not so good?”

“Yeah… Oh, no! No! No! No! It’s not that it’s not good, but there may be some lurking danger,” Vitas forced a smile on his face, as though he felt that he had made a slip of the tongue. Shaking his head, he no longer wasted his time making casual talk with the young man, “I’ll leave first. Don’t worry, sir. Everything is alright.”

Then, he strode towards the steering cabin at the ship’s bow.

“How can a trade wind that has such chaotic wind direction be alright?” Looking at the back of the middle-aged merchant who was no longer pretentious nor behaving in an affected manner, as he left hastily, Zhang Lisheng heard the boatswain at his northwest direction who began to shout loudly as he gave the order to adjust the sails again. With a curl of his mouth, he muttered to himself.

Later, he ignored the sailors, who became more and more nervous as they hastily shuttled on the deck like a headless fly, before walking to the side of the ship and looking down.

The sea waves under the ship were blown by the strong wind. They slowly rippled, but they were not billowing. Such a situation differed from the roaring waves that would usually come before an ordinary storm arrived. It appeared to be less dangerous, but it gave off a bloodcurdling feeling that it was gradually accumulating before an outbreak burst out.

However, to the Wizard Li’s god, who mastered the power of manipulating water, the sea that would always be his’ home court’ was not something he would fear. Leaning his body over the deck and casually waving his hand, the billowy sea surface in a 1000-meter radius around him was immediately smoothened by him and turned into a mirror that could clearly reflect his face.

“This is power! God’s power! Perhaps it’s not as strange and peculiar as how I could command big bugs before I transformed last time, and perhaps it was not as awe-inspiring as when I transformed into an ancient wild beast, but this is the real invincible power… however, I better not show this power of mine unless it’s my last resort. After all, I’ve just started my path as a god, so I’d be easily stamped to death if I were too proud,” Muttering to himself, the young man retracted his divine power and whispered to remind himself through the reflection of the water. Then, he turned around and strolled for a while on the deck before returning to the cabin.

After digesting the resurrection seed of the gods and inheriting the legacy of the ancient gods, the witchcraft secret cultivation method no longer meant anything to Zhang Lisheng. In the future, his power could be continuously improved by just extracting the power of faith through the indescribable ‘channel’ that could transcend all obstacles produced out of nothing between him and his believers.

This kind of extraction did not require a god’s initiative. As long as the number of believers was sufficient, everything would naturally carry itself out. From a quantitative point of view, the young man now had far more believers than he needed.

With the usual devout attitude of the Wizard Li tribesmen towards the god, managing to gather 50,000 to 60,000 believers could already ensure Zhang Lisheng to possess a divine power that would not dissipate. The limit of strength he could extract was limited to 150,000 t0 180,000 believers, so the rest of the extra benefits would all be rendered minimal.

Other than believers, this was the reason the duration of one becoming a god was also one of the two most important yardsticks for measuring their power. Without tempering time, a god would not be able to bloom infinitely. Without enough believers, the god, on the other hand, would only be able to remain rooted at the starting point of the path of god’s advancement.

As for mortal creatures like the spiritual monster or the demigod that had not stepped out of the crucial step, even if they could use their innate talent, or some other bizarre methods, to enhance their strength using the power of faith, they would not be qualified to possess, in some actual sense, their own ‘believers,’ let alone the rest.

Since Zhang Lisheng became a god for a more extended period, he slowly mastered these principles. He was quite satisfied with the awe-inspiring power that he learned, but Zhang Lisheng was frustrated over the sluggish method of the level in which he used to his god’s power.

Fortunately, the excess power of faith that the Wizard Li provided was all stored in the totem poles without an ounce of waste. Burning this power of faith was enough to allow the young man to raise his divine power by a hundredfold, and if he was cautious, he was not afraid of making enemies with those other powerful existences. Instead, it was the feeling of being idle with nothing to do that frustrated him the most.

With nothing that he could do, Zhang Lisheng could only lie in bed and close his eyes to kill his time by letting his mind run wild. After not knowing how long, the cabin suddenly shook violently, forming an angle of 50 to 60 degrees with the sea surface as it swung back and forth.

In the era when the sailing ship was the primary means of transport at sea, the wooden bed in the cabin represented that he was a guest with a very distinguished status instead of a hammock. However, when a violent storm struck, such respect seemed redundant. Even though the planks in the cabin that appeared to have withstood a violent earthquake remained fixed on the floor without rolling, it still threw the young man out of bed.

“What a powerful wave…” Zhang Lisheng, who was well-versed in a martial art, did not stabilize his body using his strange powers, but instead, he stably landed on the ground with a gentle tumble in the air. Like having a magnet under his sole, he walked to the round window on the cabin wall and looked out as he blurted out.

It should be evening now, but the sky over the sea was dyed in a strange faint red color. It was clear that the sun was about to set soon, but the rolling clouds were still flashing with gentle brilliance.

No rain fell from the sky that was covered densely with clouds. Countess clouds were twisted and gathered together, blown by a gust of wind, forming a variety of shapes that resembled countless monsters baring their teeth in the air like they were about to smash and rip everything below into pieces.

Other than blowing onto the dark clouds, the typhoon also set off billowy waves in the sea. Every inch of the sea that Zhang Lisheng could see was billowing with tempestuous waves. The waves were at least three to four meters high from the sea surface like it was trying to smash the ships into powder as they crashed into the vessel.

Zhang Lisheng had encountered many storms and currents when he led the Wizard Li expeditionary army to travel across the sea to conquer the Hellfire Archipelago. He would always use the power of his green dragon’s incarnation in the most critical moment to allow the fleet to safely deviate from the storm. However, the storm that he could see now, be it its scope or the kind of suppressiveness that it gave off, differed entirely from the bad weather that he had encountered before.

“This is so f*cked up! If I wasn’t here, then these mainlanders would definitely die…” Zhang Lisheng muttered with a grave expression in the cabin that was tumbling around like a roller coaster. He saw that the rain finally crashed down from the clouds together with the shuttling silver snakes, as several tornadoes running through the sea slowly emerged amid the distant flashes of lightning.

The young man was not afraid by the stormy sea, for with his ability to control the water, even if the entire sea overturned, he would still be able to save one wooden ship. However, if the tornado struck them, then he no longer had the confidence to keep the ship without revealing himself. Compared to the iron ship, the wooden vessel was just too fragile, and he would inevitably produce some strange phenomenon if he were to protect it.

However, under this circumstance, Zhang Lisheng did not seem to have many choices. For the sake of the route leading to the Nutao Sea, he could only try his best to save the merchant ship quietly.

The moment he thought about this, he no longer wasted any time. With a deep breath, he reached out his hand to slowly make an urgent action. At once, the amplitude of the swing of the wooden ship he was on calmed down a lot.

Sensing that his power to manipulate the water was stronger than he had expected in the storm, Zhang Lisheng could not help but feel relieved. His heavy feeling just now became somewhat optimistic, and at this moment, he suddenly saw a billowy waves gushed up from the sea, a merchant ship in the distance flew up into the air and collided together with another adjacent ship when it fell back to the sea slantingly.