Chapter 612: A Surprising Incident

How could an idol that maintained its life through the beliefs of others believe in other existences? After falling to the feet of Zhang Lisheng, the vitality of the barbarian ancestor idol no longer dissipate, but its original consciousness gradually blurred due to a formless prohibition of the law.

The young man sensitively felt the disappearance of the idol’s soul, so he hurriedly gave this special new believer the identity of the priesthood to share his beliefs and to prevent his will from being erased.

Unfortunately, the power of faith given by the god and the power of self-absorbing belief were two different concepts. The horrified and humiliated look on the face of that ragged strips of cloth still inevitably slowly disappeared, as its entire person became sluggish.

“I’ve spent so much effort, so I’m not gonna settle for just one puppet-like antique creation…” Zhang Lisheng had an angry expression as he muttered to himself. After frowning and contemplating for a few seconds, his eyes suddenly lit up. He took out the leather belt of yellow, red, and blue from his waist and unfolded it to reveal a picture of vast rivers and mountains depicted on a scale.

After that, the young man waved the painting at that kneeling giant idol in front of him. Immediately, the icon shrank to the size of dust and fell into the picture. Suddenly, brilliance flashed across that leather painting and caused the drawing to become vivid and three-dimensional.

At the same time, the Wizard Li God suddenly felt that his understanding of the mastery of his power became inexplicably profound without warning.

This unexpected harvest made him stunned for a long time. The anger on his face slowly turned into ecstasy as he threw his head back, laughing incoherently, “Hahahaha… What a blind chance! I’ve obtained the first intelligent creature in my divine country now. The Leather World that has an internal environment so harsh that only a few of the most enduring insects and lichen plants can survive now suddenly has made a leap of progress where an intelligent creature can live now. If it’s not for the existence of this ancestor idol, a strange existence that is neither human, ghost, nor god, it would have been a complete fantasy! Awesome! This is really awesome! There are at least tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of idols in the entire Hardstone Plateau, even if I can force only half of them into submission, I can already greatly improve my divine country. This is really an unexpected wealth…”

In just a short period of one morning, the thousands of Wizard Li scouts first saw the god that they believed in transformed the horrible, barbaric idol into a living creature. He then forced the so-called ancestor idol, a god that was not really a go in the mainland since the ancient time, to kneel in front of him before taking out a strange scale drawing from his waist to absorb the yielding idol into it before finally laughing maniacally and talking in an incomprehensible language. At once, they looked at each other in shock and quickly lowered their heads and bowed.

After they spent a short period with the Wizard Li God, it had confirmed that the rumors secretly spread around in every corner of the Green Leaf Mainland that they had long heard before. Although this newly born god, who was about to complete his mission of imposing theocracy ruling on the mainland, was infinitely awe-inspiring, its temperament was almost the same as that of ordinary humans. He did not like to pretend to be profound and deep.

However, a god was still a god. Even if he laughed or enraged, he did not allow his believers to interrupt him either. It was smarter for them to be respectful without saying a word.

After Zhang Lisheng laughed heartily for a while, he gradually calmed down and used his hand to rub the Leather World to feel it a little. Suddenly, with a shake of his one hand, that ancestor idol began to enlarge and appear again beside him.

Right now, the idol looked very different from before. The animal skin wrapped around its body was cracked, revealing its grayish skin and skinny bony chest and limbs. The look of anger and despair on its face was also gone, replaced by an irreplaceable joy and delight.

“Believer, do you still feel like you will dissipate?” Carefully studying the unusual barbarian idol in front of him, Zhang Lisheng could already sense that its soul was exceptionally stable now, but he still asked regardless.

“No, God. This sky and heaven don’t l-like me, but b-but I can still persist, for one day and one night,” The ancestor idol replied intermittently in a stiff manner.

“Oh, then this means that the Leather World has already improved your way of being. No, I should say it has already shielded the Gaia World from harming you. No, wait a minute, it’s not like that either… The more I learn about this world, the more I realize that there are more things that I don’t understand, either.” The young man muttered and no longer pondered over it before asking again, “Although it’s only a short period of several minutes, I still want to ask you, how’s your life in the Leather World?”

“The light strong and hot… The ground, barren… insects… as far as eyes could see. The sky and heaven… I like…” The ancestor idol answered with great difficulty.

“Looks like my divine kingdom has a bad environment, but you can adapt to it completely and like it on top of that. Indeed, no matter how bad the living environment is, it’s still several hundreds or even thousands times better than not being able to move at all in the wilderness,” Zhang Lisheng nodded noncommittally and raised his third question, “Do you still remember your name?”

“T-Tuya, Tuyaban,” The ancestor idol hesitated a little before replying.

“Very well, this name and your appearance should surprise your former believers. I can’t wait to see their expressions.” Zhang Lisheng responded with a laugh as he once again retrieved the idol back to the Leather World. Turning around, he strode up to the soil platform and began to command his soil creation to return to Tusala Citadel, surrounded by Wizard Li scouts.

After entering the city, the first thing he did was to go to see the hundreds of captured northern border barbarians. After several twists and turns along with Tuyaban’s help, he managed to obtain several dozens of Hardstone believers and his first Hardstone priest.

Now that he had the policy of spreading beliefs and the first breakthrough, all of the northern border barbarians of only 20 million people due to the terrible living conditions of the Hardstone Plateau successfully became a part of Zhang Lisheng’s colony.

With the siege of the great army, he took the opportunity to awaken the ancestors’ idols before forcing and tempting them to resort to worshipping himself. The young man first swiftly swept the largest barbarian tribes in the Hardstone Plateau day and night before using the northern border barbarians to form a troop to force and tempt the small tribes to surrender. Soon, he managed to conquer the entire plateau.

After harvesting the beliefs of more than 15 million northern barbarians and more than 61,000 barbaric ancestor idols, the Wizard Li faith was spread across the Hardstone Plateau, leaving only the Atandin Peninsula and the Songee Desert out of the entire Green Leaf Mainland that was yet to become his.

Now that his last conquest was just right in front of his eyes, Zhang Lisheng suddenly stopped the pace of conquest and planned to deal with a triviality first—to see the legendary alchemist Tandari who helped to create the ‘artillery infantry squad’ for Dignity King.

According to the degree of civilization of the Shrimp World No. 2, the Yasen artillery infantry and the artillery used in this unit were simply impossible to produce naturally, just like the biological warships and god-bestowed shell used by the Hellfire barbarians.

Since the Hellfire tribesmen had Zhang Lisheng, a god, who used the earth culture and a small amount of Atlantis technology to guide the progress of civilization, behind them, then from this inference, just a tiny mortal alchemist couldn’t create a cross-era artillery unit for the Yassen King.

After all, the ‘artillery infantry squad’ could completely overpower the same number of fully armed Wizard Li warriors wearing god-bestowed shells. If it had not been for the cost of the infantry armor and artillery to be too expensive that the mainland coalition forces could not equip it on a large-scale basis, then the result of the battle on Gaoden Hill might have ended in significant losses for both sides.

It wasn’t effortless for others to understand this, but Zhang Lisheng could naturally piece these puzzles together. For this reason, shortly after the battle of the Gaoden Hill that determined the fate of the Green Leaf Mainland ended, he suddenly rushed to Tandari’s workshop located on the island near the mainland to try to explore this legendary alchemist’s card.

Unfortunately, as though he seemed to have expected a visit from the Wizard Li God, Tandari had long disappeared without a trace.

With nothing else that he could do, Zhang Lisheng, who had not given up yet, could only give out an order to his Holy See to search for this alchemist who did not want to meet him.

After that, after several months of vain searching, the young man finally received Tuan’s news when he had conquered the hinterland of the mainland and prepared to fight against the Hardstone Plateau. The secret agents of the Holy See had found the place where Tandari was located.

Coincidentally, at the same time as Zhang Lisheng received this news, he had just seen the process of summoning the ancestors’ idol projections by the elders of the Geguda Tribe and seen through the key to conquering the northern border barbarians.

After some consideration, Zhang Lisheng’s idea was to go to the ruins of the Hardstone Plateau’s Geguda Tribe to look for the barbarian idol to verify his hypothesis before capturing Tandari. However, the peculiar ability of the barbarian ancestor idols that could perfect his Leather World and enhance his understanding of the divine power had fully attracted his attention.

For a time, the Wizard Li God no longer had the desire to care about any legendary alchemist. Fearing that he would act rashly and alert the enemy if he sent his believers to round up that Tandari who had some unknown secrets and maybe some existence behind him, he decided to put this matter aside first.

Now that Zhang Lisheng had finished his conquest of the Hardstone Plateau, it was natural that he wanted to take the time to go meet the mysterious founder of the ‘artillery infantry squad.’ However, to his surprise, before he made his journey, an unexpected person suddenly went to visit him…

The Tandari’s peninsula was vast, and although it was called a peninsula, it was actually a collective name. It included two plains of more than 500,000 square kilometers and a basin with a diameter of a thousand miles. Only the two sides of the peninsula had a coastal area.

The vast area and exceptional geographical environment had led to a climate that was continually changing. However, because of its fertile land, even the atmosphere of the harshest area was a paradise compared to the adjacent Hardstone Plateau.

In a vast animal hide tent on high ground at the north end of the Hardstone Plateau, Zhang Lisheng, who had already boarded the airship, sat on a long animal blanket and looked at a young man dressed in dirty linen clothes like a wandering merchant living in reduced circumstances kneeling respectfully in front of him and asked, “Knight Yeegan—no, I should call you King Sagan now. Why are you in a hurry to see me?”