Chapter 487: The Hunting Begins
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The first usage of Wizard Li’s artillery that contained characteristics distinctive to the foreign world completely depleted the gunpowder block that could only be produced by half a year of mining by several tens of thousands of tribesmen. Its cost was extremely huge.
However, in Zhang Lisheng’s opinion, it was worthwhile to use the hard labor of several tens of thousands of Wizard Li tribesmen for 200 days in exchange of the annihilation of a group of sea monsters. In his heart, he even felt that this was a new era in the Hellfire Archipelago.
For this reason, in the evening, an indigenous warrior, who temporarily served as a choresman, carried a wooden plate filled with dishes cooked from the sea beast’s meat into the young man’s cabin, the smile on his face still had not disappeared.
“Pundit, your dinner is served.” The warrior looked at Zhang Lisheng’s slightly absent-minded smiling expression and placed the wooden plate in front of him. He bowed down and said admiringly, “This is the tender meat cut off from the sea monster’s head that was killed today. The cook has tried it and this is the most delicious part. Most of the sea monsters are poisoned to their deaths so only two of them can be eaten….”
‘Pundit’ was the fake identity Tugra racked his brain with to come up for Zhang Lisheng. It also meant the sage who brought ‘wisdom’ to the tribe.
As for what ‘wisdom’ was, an ordinary Wizard Li tribesman naturally did not have the courage nor the brain to ask, while those who dared to ask were all native chiefs who knew about the young man’s real identity. Adding on to the fact that the Wizard Li tribe was currently in a period of rapid expansion and transformation, with new things constantly emerging around them, though the lies might not be perfect, it was still feasibly implemented.
The warrior, who sent the dinner, was deceived by the lies because of his low status and this was why he was not too respectful and humble towards Zhang Lisheng.
Of course, Zhang Lisheng would not take the impertinence of the ignorant person to his heart. He chowed down on the food and listened to the warrior rambling on about the preciousness of the sea monster, before asking, “How long do we have to wait to arrive at Scorpion Island?”
“Scorpion Island?” The indigenous warrior showed a blank expression.
“The huge island the Wizard Li tribe is going to conquer this time. Can’t you tell that its shape looks a lot like a green-shelled mountain scorpion?”
“I’ve never seen the sea chart so I don’t know what the shape is like,” the warrior shook his head and replied. “But I heard that the sailors said that if we don’t take any break, the battleships will be able to reach the destination tonight. However, it’s said that the dragon hawk warriors will be sent to the sea for scouting first so I’m afraid we can only dock by tomorrow.”
A year before, the Wizard Li had managed to conquer 17 islands in one fell swoop. At that time, when Zhang Lisheng was calculating that he would be able to produce 15,000 chief warriors, who were successfully transplanted with the Gold Core fragments and produced sorcery, and 1.5 million elite warriors who possessed war partners, he had gratifyingly said that the tribe had finally had the ability to conquer a big island. Thus, it could be seen that his next target was huge.
In fact, in the Hellfire Archipelago that had a total area of 10 million square kilometers composing of several hundreds of islands scattered around the ocean, the ‘giant scorpion’ located in the southeast with its long tail protruding towards the Oasis Mainland was indeed listed among the top three.
Other than the two out of the three giant islands that had a triangular shape in the northern part of the Hellfire Archipelago that were slightly bigger than it, Scorpion Island, that had a tail of more than 3,000 kilometers long, with its largest width at more than 1000 kilometers wide but not more than 50 kilometers wide at its thin area, and an area of more than 900,000 square kilometers, was the most striking and eye-catching island in the incomplete Shrimp World No. 2 satellite map Zhang Lisheng possessed.
After chowing down his dinner rapidly, the young man endured the cold sea breeze and stood on the deck by the sea’s side. He looked at the distant giant island lying quietly in the ocean through the misty night, unable to see the entire island, with an exciting expression that had not appeared for a long time on his face.
“960,000 square kilometers? That’s about the size of two Sichuans placed together. If this island was found in the ancient Chinese era, I suppose it’d have been called as the ‘imperial capital’ already,” he muttered silently in the dark. “But it’s the god’s capital now in my hands. If I engulf it, my Witchcraft’s Gate of Death will definitely be able to make a breakthrough to Rank-11 Wizard, and I’d be able to further understand the mystery of gods…”
“Mr. Lisheng, I rarely see you nervous,” When Zhang Lisheng was lost in his thoughts, he suddenly heard a slight hoarse female voice resonating from behind him. “Looks like the research carried out by the medical scientists in the Department of Defense was right. Going to a war does indeed cause a greater secretion of adrenaline.”
“The study of such topic is to invent drugs to reduce the soldiers’ adrenaline secretion so that they can calm down before the battle.” Zhang Lisheng smiled without turning back. “Also, it’s to further enhance the soldiers’ adrenaline so that they would become crazy war machines that would not be afraid of pain. Am I right, Lieutenant Allison?”
“I don’t know, maybe for both reasons, I guess,” Allison thought for a moment and replied honestly as she strolled up to Zhang Lisheng’s side. The sea breeze caressed he black girl’s hair while her skin hid her entire face in the darkness, leaving behind only a pair of bright eyes. “Mr. Lisheng, you know, you’re a very strange man. I felt that you were a ‘mutant’ mixed among the ordinary civilians when I first saw you…”
“If you’re trying to test me, you can save your effort, Lieutenant Allison,” Zhang Lisheng suddenly shrugged and interrupted the black female officer. “I’m a Chinese martial artist. Even though I don’t have a powerful supernatural power like the Atlanteans, I can still control my emotions well.”
As he was speaking, he suddenly heard a series of loud wind flapping sounds getting nearer from the sky, which was closely followed by a gush of wet salty wind. Countless black shadows flew across the young man’s head and landed on the decks of various warships of the Wizard Li fleet.
“It’s unbelievable that these Wizard Li tribesmen can launch such a large-scale landing operation, but they don’t even have a single landing craft. Do you think these big-bird riding warriors found a harbor that could accommodate such a huge fleet to disembark millions of warriors?” Seizing this opportunity to avoid the awkward topic that Zhang Lisheng mentioned just now, Allison asked with her head raised.
“The terrain in the Hellfire Archipelago is special. It should not be hard for them to find a suitable landing harbor…” Zhang Lisheng replied casually. Actually, his words were not entirely true. In fact, as long as the Wizard Li fleet could find a harbor that could allow several dozens of warships to dock and randomly annihilate a Hellfire tribe near the coast to build their totem pole, he could then gather his divine power to allow all warriors to disembark safely.
The dragon hawk warriors of Wizard Li did not go find a harbor in Scorpion Island that could accommodate thousands of warships and millions of warriors to disembark but instead, they went to find their first ‘prey’ whom they could hunt.
The moment Zhang Lisheng thought of this, a ferocious smile, that had not appeared for a long time, crept upon the young man as he looked at the sea in the middle of the cold wind that was getting stronger. At the same time, the iron ship under his feet slowly moved towards the giant island in the distance, at a very slow speed but silently.
“The fleet has set sail again, Lieutenant Allison. I want to go back to the cabin to calm myself down and prepare for the war,” Zhang Lisheng said in a low voice and turned to walk to his own cabin.
“Good luck, Mr. Lisheng,” Looking at the back of his figure that was striding away, Allison took a deep breath and suddenly replied.
“Thank you.” The young man turned and showed a victory sign with his fingers before disappearing behind the iron door.
In the dark night, the Wizard Li fleet did not light any light and just silently sailed in the sea, reaching a small tattered wooden port at the long tail of the Scorpion Island lying in the Hellfire sea region, with its head at the west and tail at the east.
The port was located in an open natural harbor but had only used one percent of the harbor tribe. There were several dozens of canoe-like wooden fishing boats moored at the port. The boats had masts and the masts were hung with sail that was sewn from animal hides that had its hair removed.
In the flagship’s steering cabin of Wizard Li’s fleet, Bansaru looked at the shore using a night-vision telescope and showed a contemptuous look on his solemn expression as he muttered, “Poor barbarians. I can’t believe that they actually use tree vines and beast’s fur to act as the wooden boat’s mast. It’s your honor to be able to assimilate with our Wizard Li tribesmen using iron and blood.”
The young captain had completely forgotten how he would have been amazed if he saw such fishing boats many years ago before he had seen the sea, and how his tone had completely become similar to the mainlanders that he hated to his core. He raised his arm persistently and shouted in a lowered voice, “With the authority given by Wizard Li’s ultimate faith, the only overlord and the supreme god, I order the first 100 battleships arranged in the foremost formation to dock one after another!”
The conquering battle of Scorpion Island gradually unfolded with this order. The frontmost warships in the Wizard Li fleet sailed towards the unguarded ports, this included the battleship of which the Shrimp World No. 2 explorers were on.
At this thrilling and exciting moment, the 16 explorers had long since woken up. However, in order to not hinder the Wizard Li warriors to prepare for the landing, they could only gather at one corner of the deck.
Even though the outer island’s war of conquest last time had added more than ten types of partners to the Wizard Li tribe, and that nearly half of them had war attributes, there was none that was more powerful than the giant millispiders after they had tested it out in actual combat. For this reason, other than the dragon hawk warriors, no new soldier type was added to the tribe yet. Because of this, most of the mounts of the Wizard Li warriors were still the purple-colored spiders.
Looking at the native warriors wearing heavy metal armor, whose face was covered in bloody red as they held long spears and sabers in their hands, sitting on the back of the giant spiders standing on the deck with their sharp slender eight legs by her side, even Someril, who was usually calm and composed, could not help but had an uncomfortable expression on her face.
She was not afraid but was just feeling a little uncomfortable towards the huge number of giant bugs around her.
However, most Earthlings did not possess such courage of the Atlanteans. Even though they understood that the big bugs in front of them would not harm themselves, the FBI and CIA intelligence officers still could not help but break out in cold sweat, feeling tongue-tied at once.
