Heaven Gives an Opportunity

Whoosh!

The stench rode the Wasteland's dry gale, ravaging the thoroughly cracked earth. The surviving soil was rapidly turning to sand.

Li Ziran covered his mouth and crawled along the ground, raising his head to look at the colossal creature in the distance. Under the necromancer's control, the fully formed Corpse Dragon swung its enormous claws, tearing open the sandy soil.

Now, this place could truly be considered the Wasteland. Apart from the occasional trace of water elemental aura drifting by, there was no sign of the swamp left.

It had been half an hour since he escaped the underground space.

Li Ziran swept his gaze around. The Crocodile Warriors that had occupied the entire lake had long been captured clean, and aside from a few scattered Fishmen swimming about, there were no other creatures.

What baffled him most was that the Fire Elephant controlling the entire camp had vanished without a trace.

All these bizarre signs forced Li Ziran to stay vigilant. He had no idea where he was now, much less where he should run.

He could not even figure out where Medusa was. According to Annie, Medusa lived in the lake, but the lake was gone now.

Whoosh!

Another foul-smelling gust swept past his ears, nearly making him faint.

The Corpse Dragon was endlessly releasing its stench, seemingly deliberately sending the strange odor into the deep pit it had painstakingly dug.

Li Ziran sprayed a clarity potion over his clothes and wrapped them tightly over his mouth. This kept the stench from choking him unconscious as he clung flat to the ground like Voldemort.

He had no idea what had happened aboveground during his time in the underground space, but it now seemed as though he had entered the end of the world.

The Elemental Tide had been churned into utter chaos by the Corpse Dragon, as though it were trapped in a sandstorm.

He had lived in the Wasteland for more than four years. Without exaggeration, he had basically adapted to the Wasteland environment, yet he had never seen weather this dreadful.

The stench released by the Corpse Dragon and the tidal winds of the Wasteland were a match made in heaven. Mixed together, they made this place reek to high heaven.

Awooo!

Suddenly, the Corpse Dragon let out a long howl and began frantically digging at the earth with both claws, sending dust flying ever more fiercely.

The splashing dirt rained down on Li Ziran's face like droplets, and in the blink of an eye, it formed a massive sandstorm.

"Li, hurry and save him!"

At that moment, Annie's anxious cry rang out in Li Ziran's mind, and his mental power locked onto a certain point within the sandstorm.

Amid the sky-filling dust, a slender little figure shot high into the air. After tracing a strange arc, she fell not far from Li Ziran.

In that instant, he saw at least a dozen figures dug out and flung away by the Corpse Dragon.

It was a Medusa.

Li Ziran was impressed. He had not expected this group of Medusa to hide underground, much less that the artillery regiment commander could use the Corpse Dragon's stench to dig them out.

With quick eyes and swift hands, Li Ziran cast the Transformation Spell and directly turned the still-dazed Medusa into a frog. He tied a red cord around her hind legs and hung her from his waist.

Just as he searched for another Medusa, a hissing strange sound came from nearby. An eerie vibration traveled along the ground, giving him a distinct sensation.

Something was approaching.

[Shapeshifting Curse: Frog]

Li Ziran hurriedly turned himself into a frog, shoved himself into the sand, and burrowed straight down. Only his two eyes remained exposed.

The instant he disappeared, three Yellow-skinned Snakes slithered past him. Their slender forked tongues flickered constantly, as though identifying scents in the air.

They seemed unaffected by the Corpse Dragon's stench and moved freely. The three Yellow-skinned Snakes did not go far, instead stopping where Li Ziran had just been. Their tongues kept extending and retracting.

"These guys!"

Li Ziran laughed. Clearly, those constantly flickering tongues had found him. Even with the Transformation Spell concealing him, his scent could not be hidden.

They had locked onto him.

Li Ziran would not sit still and wait for death. While the three Yellow-skinned Snakes hesitated, the power of the Devouring Curse descended upon their heads.

Three silent souls slipped into his mind and transformed into mental power, so easily that Li Ziran himself found it unbelievable.

The [Devouring Curse] could absorb the souls of snakes. Unless they were exceptional mental cultivators, it was difficult to resist Li Ziran's devouring. These three were clearly the lowest-grade species.

But just as Li Ziran rose to turn the three Yellow-skinned Snakes into corpses and take them away, something strange happened. Yellow light swiftly wrapped around the three snakes, and they began growing at a visible speed, transforming into three Snake Women.

The Snake Women were no different from the ones he had just seen in the swamp, but they were nowhere near as handsome as before. Their skin was shriveled and yellowed, making them look like mummies drained of flesh and blood.

Yet their appearance had not changed. Li Ziran was certain that these Snake Women were identical to those who had once surrounded and hunted him.

The strange thing was that their attributes had completely changed. They had once depended on water, yet now they could move freely through the arid desert.

But when he examined them closely, he immediately frowned.

Their withered yellow bellies were swollen. With a light pull, their skin stretched like rubber bands. When he released it, the snakeskin snapped back, yet it did not fit the Snake Women at all.

Their faces were swollen, their waists broad and fat, while their arms and legs were remarkably compact.

Li Ziran directly flipped a Snake Woman upside down. His expression changed, and then he parted the clump of yellow hair on her head. He could not help but laugh.

He understood why the Snake Women could come and go freely in the desert. Someone had copied his craft.

It was merely the simplest skin-swapping surgery, transplanting the skin of a Wasteland Monitor Lizard onto the Snake Women so they could move about in an environment like a sandstorm.

That person clearly needed the Snake Women's keen sense of smell, but there were far too many mistakes in the surgery.

No salt had been used during the skinning to break it down, leaving too much debris mixed in the dermis. No miniature healing potions had been used to nurture the graft during transplantation, the hide itself had not been properly kept alive, and it had not even been trimmed after the transplant was complete.

Li Ziran could pick out a whole heap of flaws. Most importantly, no Transformation Spell had been used at all.

The purpose of the Transformation Spell was not merely to maintain the transfer of equal volumes of hide. More importantly, it used the spell's contraction during transformation to fuse organs from different species, rather than leaving things like this, as though a slender woman had put on an oversized army uniform.

This was a novice. More precisely, not even a novice—just an imitator copying a cat from the shape of a tiger.

But several details caught Li Ziran's attention. The scalp had been cut with a professional surgical knife, while the soles had been stitched using his unique double-interlacing method.

He believed only he knew that technique, yet he had never performed such a low-level operation, nor would he ever make it this crude.

Use the Corpse Dragon to dig out the Medusa hidden underground, then have the modified Snake Women, masters of scent, gather the scattered Medusa.

A fine scheme, but the technique was too poor.

These crudely modified Snake Women had completely lost their original combat strength. At this moment, they were not even a match for a crude Pigman.

Their only use was to find Medusa in the current environment.

Li Ziran tapped with a finger, and the three Snake Women immediately became three frog corpses. He tied red cords around their hind legs and hung them from his right waist.

At this moment, watching the Bipedal Corpse Dragon endlessly digging amid the rolling smoke and dust, he knew his chance to get rich had arrived.

Snatching things from these clumsy Snake Women would be as easy as turning over his hand.

When opportunity appeared, Li Ziran would never let it slip through his fingers.

[Snake Transformation Spell]

A Yellow-skinned Snake unique to the Wasteland was born. Its belly rubbed against the ground as its forked tongue flickered, distinguishing the various chaotic scents.

It had to be said that Li Ziran's control over snake transformation was far less smooth than his frog transformation. At the very least, movement was inconvenient, but this body allowed him to get close to his own kind.

Hiss, hiss!

Snake skin scraped against the ground, the light of the Transformation Spell flashed, and Li Ziran's pouch gradually began to bulge.

Living Medusa hung from his left side, completely mindless Snake Women from his right. He could even use the Devouring Curse to absorb another wave of souls. After only one round, his waist was covered in frogs.

With such results, he was beside himself with joy.

He had never expected that after escaping from underground in such danger, heaven would grant him such a blessing.

At last, his merits had come full circle.

Still, this little bit of hunting was merely a drop in the bucket to the Corpse Dragon. Within the increasingly dense yellow sand, more and more Medusa were being dug out.

Li Ziran was itching with greed. Chances to make such windfall fortunes did not come often, but he was full now.

"Should I take a gamble?"

Li Ziran said in his heart, looking at the full circle of frogs around his waist, his heart itching unbearably.

Bang!

Another Medusa landed five steps directly in front of Li Ziran.

Damn it!

I'm doing it!

He directly untied his belt, dug a pit in the ground, and buried everything in it in one fell swoop.

Surely no one would care about these frogs that posed no threat at all.