Corpse-Collecting Apprentice

Wasteland

Gray Earth Territory

Square center

Thick gray ironwood gallows stood tall.

Thirteen slender hemp ropes hung down like ice picks.

At the end of the hemp ropes, thirteen heads of varying appearances suspended.

Two dark green eyeballs bulged out, tongues pierced through throats, and both legs kicked taut.

As the monsoon carried by the Elemental Tide blew, these newly formed corpses gently swayed, as if seeking to draw a sliver of beneficial elements from it to turn into undead and resist this unfair world.

Yet... ultimately, it still stopped.

Sunlight slanted, drawing thirteen slender shadows.

Inside the shadows, a twenty-something young man busily spread a canvas beneath the corpses.

He was called 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 the other into the turbid solution within a thumb bottle, writing tadpole-like symbols on the canvas. As the tadpole runes continuously spread out, sweat gradually welled up on Li Ziran's forehead.

He shook his long-strained, sore arm and threw himself back into the writing of tadpole runes.

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

With the final tadpole script dotted on, the entire array finally glowed with a faint emerald halo.

The halo was hazy and ethereal, like winter candlelight, ready 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 (wolf-headed man) off to the side.

"Lord Barbaro, lower them!"

The voice dropped, and the pulleys on the gallows were seen creaking and rolling as the corpses gradually dangled down from mid-air.

Li Ziran's dark pupils stared unblinkingly at the corpses. The moment the corpses touched the green light, he swiftly drew his magic wand from his waist and poked it at the foremost Pigman corpse.

Puff!

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

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

[Shapeshifting Curse: Frog]

This was Li Ziran's proud and unique witchcraft. Watching the transformation spell gradually take shape, a trace of a smile finally appeared on his sweat-stained face.

"Not bad luck!"

Compared to past days, today could be considered particularly smooth.

He hoisted up the successfully transformed corpse, took out a red rope one by one, tied it to the frog's hind legs, tied a knot, and hung it on his belt.

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

As the collection of the thirteen corpses finished, the Wolf who had been waiting for impatiently off to the side began to urge him:

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

"Understood!"

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

"Oh, an extra one?" Barbaro the Wolf laughed weirdly, blowing on the silver coin beside his mouth as it clinked crisply.

A single silver coin was not small. On the Red Soil Continent where copper coins formed the base currency, one 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 single silver coin would be infinitely magnified.

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

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

Although Barbaro was merely the most ordinary Wolf bandit in 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.

And One-Eyed Bart dealt capital punishment to crimes in any territory. Executions by hanging were carried out here every three days; with good luck, a hundred lives might perish 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 caravans loved most. Here, things would not dwindle due to slaughter; on the contrary, more and more caravans would stay here.

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

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

He collected corpses from the Wasteland factions, harvested the relatively valuable organs from them, and then sold them to those Necromancers whose corpses were never enough.

A single corpse could earn twelve copper coins. Following the one-hundred-to-one exchange rate between copper and silver, these thirteen corpses could help him earn one and a half silver coins after having their organs removed.

This was entirely excluding the harvest apart from the organs.

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

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

To put it bluntly, this counted as a fairly lucrative trade in the Wasteland. With this ability, he could steadily survive in the Wasteland and even have spare money to elevate his Witch Doctor accumulations.

The only flaw was that he lacked a fixed source of corpse supplies.

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

Execution Overseer.

He held absolute authority over the Gray Wolf Tribe's corpses.

"Kid, you're quite sensible, eh?" Barbaro wore a stern expression. A pale-red aura faintly welled up on his body, and an oppressive momentum silently pressed over.

Battle Qi!

An ability unique to the orcs, they could utilize 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 within the Elemental Tide.

Beast Race Battle Qi was a special ability that could rival magic.

However, based on Li Ziran's understanding, this should be the Beast Race's lowest-grade Fury Battle Qi.

He had captured some Fire Elements, yet he still did not know how to utilize the Elemental Tide to temper them, possessing merely an impressive facade.

Yet Li Ziran still stepped back, his complexion feigning a fish-belly-like paleness.

Such camouflage was very necessary.

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

Happiness was often the lubricant for the next business transaction.

"My lord, you... I..." Li Ziran's voice seemed to tremble, disguised to absolute perfection. "I don't have any schemes, I just want to acquire a few more corpses from you."

"Hehe, I knew what you meant, kid!" Barbaro was very satisfied. The palm hidden within his pocket unconsciously stroked that silver coin. "This silver coin..." After a moment of hesitation, he laughed gloomily, "Can't lock down all the corpses in my place. Li Ziran, you need to cough up something good!"

How could Li Ziran not understand the other's meaning? He nodded hurriedly. "There are naturally some every single month!"

"I am not talking about silver coins!" Barbaro chuckled, a pair of sinister, slanting eyes sizing up Li Ziran as if trying to pierce through Li Ziran's heart, liver, spleen, and lungs. The vertical brow on his forehead kept furrowing, resembling a large Chinese character for mountain. Just when Li Ziran was unaware of his intent, the other suddenly leaned close to Li Ziran's ear and asked, "Do you take slaves?"

Slaves?

Li Ziran's heart skipped a beat. He did this, yet he could never admit it.

The slave trade was a taboo in the Wasteland; dabbling in this kind of business lost one's head.

It was not that slaves were unprofitable; on the contrary, this was a top-tier smuggling trade that could rival arms.

The reason it was a taboo was precisely because it was profitable, and for massive amounts of money at that.

This money could only be earned by those great lords. As for small retail traders like them, getting tainted by even a bit of it meant the lightest consequence was being transformed into slaves themselves.

The major merchant groups in the Wasteland had long since reached an alliance, stipulating that anyone who reported those dealing in 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 at present.

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

Barbaro seemed to have anticipated Li Ziran's reply long ago, 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 traded out in the open. Li Ziran, if you can help me with this favor, the corpses of the Gray Wolf Territory will be yours alone for the next two years."

Seeming to feel that this point lacked sufficient persuasiveness, he added another sentence: "Right now, the Gray Wolf Territory is going to go 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 push his Transformation Spell a little further forward.

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

This simply could not be equated to a few copper coins.

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

"Oh, really?" Barbaro's smile suddenly froze. "Mr. Li Ziran, last month, the Gray Bell (Gray Bear) chieftain just obtained a human female slave. The month before last, the Thorn Gang acquired a batch of reflective armor. Three months ago, I heard someone secretly smuggled a mermaid away from 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 secretly handled. Any random single order was enough to get him into deep trouble in the Wasteland.

Being able to know the details so thoroughly, this Wolf before his eyes was definitely not an ordinary character.

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

"Don't be afraid!" Barbaro opened his palm, his four fingers slightly curved like a blooming lotus, while his thumb and index finger continuously tapped against each other, forming a special signal cipher.

This bit of rhythmic, patternless tapping was precisely the Morse code that only Li Ziran understood.

The meaning it represented was: [Senior Slave Broker]

This string of gestures clearly told Li Ziran that the other party was barely trustworthy, and that the other party held a batch of high-end goods in his hands.

"Mr. Barbaro, what business do you want to do?" Li Ziran instantly put away his righteous demeanor from just moments before, adding a trace of mercantile shrewdness as he tentatively asked.

He knew very well how much profit a batch of high-end business could bring him.

A trace of a sinister smile of a successful conspiracy appeared on Barbaro's stern face, which had been cold for a long time. He looked carefully and suddenly bent down, prying open the wooden board beneath the execution platform to reveal a huge secret room below.

The secret room was paved with thick, mixed fur grass, and in the corner of the grass, a young girl in a sheepskin skirt was curled up, her slender, bare, tender calves exposed among the sparse weeds.

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

The blonde hair that should have resembled that of an ordinary young girl was now entirely dark green. At the tips of the hair, it vaguely looked like spring flower buds just waiting to open, but upon closer inspection, one could tell those were not flowers, but a triangular, conical snake head about to take shape.

"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 that pair of eyes of hers that can completely petrify everything, and after I'm done, I'm selling her!"