Corpse-Collecting Little Witch Doctor

Wasteland

Gray Earth Territory

Square center

Thick gray ironwood gallows stood tall

Thirteen slender hemp ropes hung down like ice spikes

At the ends of the ropes hung thirteen heads of various appearances

Two dark green eyeballs bulged, tongues poked through throats, and both legs kicked rigidly.

When the seasonal wind carried by the Elemental Tide blew, these newly formed corpses gently swayed, as if trying to extract a sliver of beneficial elements from it and turn into undead to resist this unfair world.

Yet... finally, they stopped.

Sunlight slanted down, casting thirteen slender shadows.

Inside the shadows, a young man in his early twenties was busy spreading a canvas beneath the corpses.

His name was Li Ziran, an Organ Witch Doctor, and he was currently purchasing a batch of corpses.

He held a magic wand in one hand and dipped his thumb in the turbid solution of a bottle with the other, writing tadpole-like symbols on the canvas. As the tadpole runes continued to spread, beads of sweat gradually formed on Li Ziran's forehead.

He shook his arm, which had grown sore from long exertion, and plunged back into writing the tadpole runes.

This was his mandatory daily work. As a Witch Doctor Apprentice, he had to rely on the power of a magic array to carry these corpses on his person.

As the last Tadpole Script was dotted on, the entire magic array finally emitted a faint, pale-green halo.

The halo was hazy and ethereal, like candle-light in winter, likely to extinguish at any moment.

However, this trace of faint halo was enough for Li Ziran's use. Ensuring the halo stabilized, Li Ziran immediately called out to a one-eyed Wolf nearby (Wolfman).

"Lord Barbaro, let them down!"

As his voice fell, the pulleys on the gallows were heard creaking and rolling, and the corpses gradually dropped from midair.

Li Ziran's dark black pupils stared motionlessly at the corpses. The moment the corpses touched the green light, he swiftly pulled the magic wand from his waist and tapped it against the foremost Pigman corpse.

Poof!

The green light on the canvas instantly formed bubbles, wrapping around these corpses like tadpole eggs.

The mucous membrane twitched continuously with the corpses, and after about half a quarter of an hour, the half-meter-tall Pigman had already turned into a palm-sized emerald-green frog.

[Shapeshifting Curse: Frog]

Li Ziran's proud and unique witchcraft. Watching the Transformation Spell gradually take shape, a smile finally appeared on his sweat-filled face.

"Good luck!"

Compared to past days, today was considered exceptionally smooth.

He hauled up the successfully transformed corpse, took out a piece of red rope, tied it to the frog's hind legs, made a knot, and hung it from his belt.

Li Ziran's movements were very skilled. In the blink of an eye, his waist was hung full of thirteen frogs with their heads facing downward.

As the collection of the thirteen corpses finished, the Wolf who had been waiting nearby for a long time urged him impatiently:

"Thirteen corpses, two silver coins!" An unimaginably huge palm stretched out in front of Li Ziran.

"Understood!"

Li Ziran untied his shirt collar. Inside his lining pocket were seven silver coins and dozens of copper coins. He weighed two of them, and after a brief hesitation, he took out another one, combining them into three to place into Barbaro's huge palm.

"Oh, one extra?" Barbaro smiled strangely, putting the silver coin to his mouth and blowing on it, making it ring crisply.

A silver coin was not a small amount. On the Red Soil Continent, where copper coins served as the base currency, a silver coin was enough for an ordinary family to live comfortably for a month.

Especially in the Wasteland, where survival was even harder, the value of a silver coin would be infinitely magnified.

"Lord Barbaro has accompanied me here for two hours, this is the reward you deserve!"

Of course, Li Ziran was not that kindhearted. It was much harder for him to earn a silver coin, but he knew when it was time to make some investments.

Though Barbaro was just the most ordinary Wolf bandit of the Gray Wolf Territory, his status was unusual.

He followed One-Eyed Bart, the most tyrannical lord in the northeast corner of the Agate Great Wasteland.

As a transit station in the northwest of the Wasteland, countless slave caravans transited here every day.

Moreover, One-Eyed Bart enforced capital punishment for crimes in any territory. Hangings were held here every three days, and with good luck, a hundred living beings might lose their lives here in a single day.

According to Li Ziran's understanding, over a thousand people could die in the Gray Wolf Territory every year.

This was terrifying, yet it was precisely One-Eyed Bart's methods that forged the unique survival environment of the Gray Wolf Territory.

Safety!

This was the factor slave merchants liked best. Slaughter did not cause this place to shrink; on the contrary, more and more caravans stayed here.

Li Ziran liked Bart, of course not because of his tyranny, but because of the corpses here.

He was an Organ Witch Doctor, and even more so, a merchant.

He collected corpses from the powers of the Wasteland, harvested the more valuable organs from them, and then sold them to Necromancers whose corpses were never enough.

A single corpse earned twelve copper coins. Following the 100:1 copper-to-silver exchange rate, those thirteen corpses right now could help him earn one and a half silver coins after organ removal.

This was still completely stripping away harvests outside of the organs.

Having mastered the Frog Transformation, Li Ziran did not need to hire a caravan, as his waist could hang one hundred and twenty-six frogs at a time.

Making a run to the Necromancer's territory, he could steadily earn fifteen silver coins, and he could complete a business deal within three days.

To put it bluntly, this counted as a relatively profitable industry in the Wasteland. With this ability, he could steadily survive in the Wasteland, and even have spare money to enhance his Witch Doctor accumulations.

The only regret was that he had no fixed source of corpse inventory.

The reason he handed over a large half of his income to Barbaro was precisely because of the other's status in the Gray Wolf Territory.

Execution Overseer.

The Gray Wolf Tribe had absolute say over corpses.

"Kid, you're very sensible, aren't you?" Barbaro's expression was stern, a stream of fiery red airflow faintly surging on his body, an oppressive aura pressing over invisibly.

Battle Qi!

An ability unique to orcs; they could use their own bloodline to capture special energy from the Elemental Tide, and then continuously temper and elevate it by utilizing the collision of different elements inside the Elemental Tide.

Orc Battle Qi was a special ability capable of rivaling magic.

However, according to Li Ziran's understanding, this should be the lowest-grade Fury Battle Qi of the orc race.

He captured some fire elements, yet still didn't know how to use the Elemental Tide for tempering; it was all show and no substance.

But Li Ziran still took a step back, his complexion feigning a fishbelly-like pale appearance.

Such a disguise was very necessary.

Regardless of what kind of small figure it was, they would always be inexplicably happy when receiving other people's respect.

Happiness was often the lubricant for the next business deal.

"Sir, you... I..." Li Ziran's voice was as if trembling, disguised just right. "I have no ulterior motives, I just want to acquire some more corpses from you."

"Hehe, I knew what you meant, kid!" Barbaro was very satisfied, his palm tucked in his pocket unconsciously rubbing that silver coin. "This silver coin..." he chuckled gloomily after hesitation, "can't cover all the corpses here for me. Li Ziran, you've got to pull out something good!"

How could Li Ziran not understand the other's meaning? He hurriedly nodded. "Naturally, there is some every month!"

"I'm not talking about silver coins!" Barbaro chuckled, a pair of sinister, slanted eyes appraising Li Ziran as if about to see through Li Ziran's liver, lungs, spleen, and stomach. The vertical brow on his forehead kept furrowing, looking like a large Chinese character for 'mountain'. Just when Li Ziran didn't know his intent, the other suddenly pressed close to Li Ziran's ear and asked, "Do you take slaves?"

Slaves?

Li Ziran's heart skipped a beat. He did it, yet he couldn't admit it.

The slave trade was a taboo in the Wasteland, and meddling in this kind of business cost heads.

It wasn't that slaves didn't make money; on the contrary, this was top-tier smuggling business that could rival military arms.

The reason it was a taboo was precisely because it made money, and vast amounts of money at that.

This money could only be made by those major lords; as for small retail traders like them, getting tainted with even a bit turned them into slaves at the very lightest.

The major merchant groups in the Wasteland had long reached an alliance: anyone who reported those operating slaves could redeem a reward of one gold coin from any territory.

One gold coin was equivalent to one hundred silver coins, equal to six hundred Pigman corpses right now.

"No, I only do legitimate business." Li Ziran answered very firmly and very swiftly; he would not hesitate on this matter.

Barbaro acted as if he had long known Li Ziran's answer, smiling faintly. "Don't be afraid, I won't report you. On the contrary, I will even take care of you. To tell you the truth, I picked up a woman. She is very valuable, but cannot be openly bought and sold. Li Ziran, if you can help me with this favor, the corpses of the Gray Wolf Territory for the next two years will belong to you alone."

Seeming to feel that this point hadn't been fully persuasive, he added another sentence: "Right now, the Gray Wolf Territory is going to war against that bunch of Pigmen in the Thorn Gang. That tribe has at least five hundred Pigmen. If all of these turn into corpses, I don't need to tell you how much you can earn!"

Five hundred corpses, six thousand copper coins.

This was equivalent to half a month's income, and this sum of money could make his Transformation Spell advance just a tiny bit further.

Moreover, helping Barbaro was equivalent to securing the Gray Wolf Territory as a corpse base, and in the future there would be a continuous stream of corpses.

This could not be equated by a few copper coins.

Yet in the end, he still felt that meddling in the slave trade was far too risky, and refused. "Mr. Barbaro, I really only do legitimate business!"

"Oh, really?" Barbaro's smile suddenly froze. "Mr. Li Ziran, last month the Gray Bell leader just obtained a human female slave, the month before last the Thorn Gang got a batch of reflective armor, three months ago I heard someone secretly smuggled a mermaid out of the Wasteland, and four months ago..."

The other spoke very slowly, but the more Li Ziran listened, the more wrong it felt.

These were all businesses he had handled secretly; any single transaction at random was enough for him to drink a potful in the Wasteland.

To be able to know the details so clearly, this Wolf before his eyes was definitely not an ordinary character.

He glanced at this Wolf who was a full head taller than him, and asked in a deep voice, "Who are you? What do you want?"

"Don't be afraid!" Barbaro's palm unfolded, his four fingers slightly curved like a blooming lotus, his thumb and index finger continuously tapping against each other, forming a string of special signal ciphers.

This bit of tapping without the slightest regularity was precisely Morse code that only Li Ziran alone understood.

What it represented meant: [Senior Slave Broker]

This string of gestures clearly told Li Ziran that the other party could barely be trusted, and the other party held a batch of high-end goods in their hands.

"Mr. Barbaro, what kind of business do you want to do?" Li Ziran instantly put away his just-now righteousness and awe-inspiring air, gaining a trace of vulgar mercantilism as he tentatively asked.

He was very clear on how much profit a batch of high-end business could bring him.

A strange, cunning smile of a conspiracy achieved finally crossed Barbaro's long-grim face. He cautiously glanced around, then suddenly bent down and pried apart the wooden boards beneath the execution platform, revealing a huge dark chamber below.

The dark chamber was lined with thick, coarse weeds. In the corner of the weeds, a girl wearing a sheepskin skirt was curled up, her slender, smooth, bare calves exposed amidst the sparse weeds.

What attracted Li Ziran was not those two bright and alluring calves, but rather that beautiful head.

The blonde hair that should have looked like an ordinary girl's was now completely ink-green. At the tips of her hair, it vaguely looked like spring flower buds waiting to bloom, but upon closer inspection, one could see those were not flowers, but a triangular, cone-shaped snake head about to take form.

"Medusa?"

This was clearly an underage Medusa girl.

The moment Li Ziran cried out, Barbaro smiled and nodded. "That's right, a thirteen-year-old Medusa girl. I want her eyes, which can completely petrify everything. After I'm done, I'll sell her!"