Heart Transplant

The teleportation array's glow was not dazzling, yet at this moment, it seized Li Ziran's attention.

After marveling at Karen's extraordinary grand maneuver, Li Ziran clearly understood his current predicament.

That cluster of light, compressed to the utmost by deathly energy, was clearly the final essence condensed by the Swamp Dragon.

Such a compressed remnant left behind by a dead dragon could not be measured in gold coins at all.

Once Karen gained control of it, Li Ziran would naturally have no way out.

An opportunity!

Obtaining that essence was the best chance to seize the initiative and escape.

The instant the teleportation light flared up, he no longer dared hesitate. He swiftly returned to human form, spread his legs, and raced madly toward the underground warehouse.

Karen had clearly realized this as well. Borrowing the lingering might of the Corpse Dragon's destruction, he directly transported himself to the entrance of the underground space.

The rock patterns along both sides of the passage flashed past Li Ziran's eyes. The light flickered between bright and dim, like a tunnel through time.

The tunnel that had sent Li Ziran fleeing in panic now became the target he pursued with all his might.

Perhaps it was coincidence, or perhaps it was inevitable. At the intersection of the tunnels, the two ran into each other.

Karen looked at Li Ziran, and Li Ziran looked at Karen. These two men who had once raised cups and traded drinks at the tavern no longer wore the slightest smile.

[Transformation Spell]

[Transformation Spell]

Almost instantly, the brilliance of the Transformation Spells tore through the underground passage's dimness and struck each other with precision.

Hiss!

Croak!

Li Ziran became a slender black-spotted snake, while Karen became a frog.

Joy surged through Li Ziran's heart. Snakes were the absolute nemesis of frogs, and the scents on his tongue precisely locked onto the other's position.

All he needed to do was open his jaws and swallow him. Then everything would be over.

His body scraped across the ground as he opened his mouth and lunged forward to devour him. Though such an attack was primitive, eliminating this most dangerous person was the highest priority.

Li Ziran was fast, but Karen was even faster.

He sprang up at once. The instant he leaped into the air, his two eyes locked onto Li Ziran.

Fire elements gathered madly. A blazing fireball instantly illuminated the entire space, and by the time Li Ziran came to his senses, the fireball had streaked through the darkness like a meteor.

His tail!

That was Karen's target.

Li Ziran instinctively twisted aside, but that movement was enough to put him at a disadvantage. Three fireballs born of fire elements completely sealed off every route of retreat.

He could either be blasted apart by the fireballs or choose to attack. Yet attacking was decisively not the best choice—but he had no other option.

Li Ziran coiled his body, launching himself upward like a springboard. But the instant he left the ground, a dark Stench Bomb slammed directly into his lower abdomen.

The powerful impact hurled him against the stone wall, tearing open his lower abdomen.

Blood dripped down, drop by drop. At that moment, the frog hidden in the darkness leaped into the blood.

With Li Ziran's blood as aid, Karen was wrapped in a green membrane and transformed into human form at a visible speed. The instant he took shape, he clamped down on Li Ziran's vital seven-inch point.

He completely pinned Li Ziran down, yet did not cut him open to remove his snake gallbladder and take his life. Instead, with a beautiful whip-like swing, he used Li Ziran as a belt and tied him directly around his waist, then raced toward the underground space.

Karen seemed not to regard Li Ziran as an opponent at all.

Li Ziran could breathe, but the pain in his lower abdomen nearly knocked him unconscious. Especially his neck—it was tightly crushed by his own tail. Every time he tried to struggle, he nearly blacked out.

He had forgotten that Karen was also proficient in necromancy.

That had been an oversight.

Of course, even without the Stench Bomb, Li Ziran did not think he could have dealt with Karen.

This man was seasoned and steady, and he could even catch Li Ziran's thoughts.

Still hanging from his waist, Li Ziran finally emerged from the dark tunnel. At the teleportation array constructed of machinery, he finally saw that captivating, crystalline light.

It was completely heart-shaped. Yellow and black were cleanly divided in a three-to-seven ratio, and a limpid dividing line wriggled constantly. Each wriggle released a thread of clear elemental power.

A magical heart—the Elemental Heart.

The elemental essence of a dragon, compressed to the absolute limit after death.

Li Ziran stared quietly. It drew in his eyes like a priceless treasure.

At this moment, he had even forgotten that he was a snake, still dangling from Karen's waist.

He desperately wanted to draw closer to that miraculous organ. Nothing attracted a Witch Doctor's attention more than a special organ.

Karen was even more excited. His hands trembled as they reached toward the Elemental Heart, as though the slightest carelessness would shatter it.

The heart was less than a foot away from Li Ziran. Even a magical idiot like him could sense the enormous water and earth elements colliding together. It felt as though, once they exploded, they could instantly form a vast swamp.

He had seen some magical organs, but never elemental power so abundant, so condensed to such an extreme.

Somewhere in the dark, he seemed to sense a swamp stretching for thousands of miles being compressed alive into something the size of a palm.

At this moment, only the two of them remained in the vast space.

Karen slowly placed the dragon heart behind the teleportation array, then drew the wand from his waist.

The familiar ripple of a Transformation Spell emerged. It was Frog Transformation, the spell Li Ziran knew best.

His mind could sense that the entire dragon heart was changing form under the Transformation Spell, gradually shrinking into a frog's heart.

While the heart was transforming, Karen did not point his wand at himself. Instead, he pointed it at the surrounding empty space. Amid a string of obscure incantations, a body broke through the soil and stood up.

It was a human. There was not a trace of light in its hollow eyes, yet it carried a terrifying aura of the dead.

It was a Corpse Witch, a special type of undead creature.

The instant the Corpse Witch appeared, it pointed the wand in its hand at Karen.

In an instant, a green membrane enveloped Karen's body, turning him into a frog.

This bizarre change left Li Ziran baffled. Could there be an even more terrifying existence?

With a tap of the Corpse Witch's staff, a skeletal frame began growing from underground like vines. In the blink of an eye, it formed a rack, and Karen's body was hung upon it.

It began methodically taking out its surgical kit. Soon, scalpels, surgical scissors, suture knives, and all kinds of silver needles appeared, neatly arranged on the canvas beside it.

The familiar scene was as though Li Ziran himself were performing surgery.

The Corpse Witch carefully sliced open Karen's abdomen. The layers of skin were divided in order, and the flesh within split apart with neat precision.

It applied healing medicine and began following the fine blood vessels in search of the heart.

Li Ziran suddenly understood.

The Corpse Witch was Karen.

He could not help admiring Karen's astonishing talent. He had actually thought of such a marvelous method to help himself complete an organ transplant.

This method had almost no drawbacks. One only needed to master some necromancy to perform magical organ transplants on oneself.

Every Organ Witch Doctor dreamed of possessing a body full of miraculous magical organs. Unfortunately, not a single Witch Doctor could perform witchcraft upon himself.

At that moment, it was as though a great road leading straight to the heavens had opened in Li Ziran's mind. The problem that had troubled him for so long seemed to have been solved just like that.

He, too, could possess magical organs.

But now was not the time to be happy. As Karen's surgery progressed, his life hung by a thread.

Yet Li Ziran soon realized that this was bound to be a failed surgery.

The Witch Doctor's scalpel directly severed the artery supplying blood to the heart. Though he used the Resurrection Spell to keep the heart itself beating, he had not applied a coagulant to the incision, nor had he prepared the specific Volcanic Potion.

As everyone knew, living beings existed within the Elemental Tide, but the Elemental Tide did not contain elements alone. It also contained parasites of every kind of element.

Elemental Bugs.

These things could not be seen with the naked eye, yet they were everywhere. They would draw near the flesh and blood of living creatures and decompose it with elements without restraint.

They were equivalent to the interference caused by traditional bacteria.

The high heat of Volcanic Potion could effectively destroy Elemental Bugs. It was also an essential disinfection step for transplanting the core organs of the body.

Otherwise, once Elemental Bugs infected the wound, symptoms of septic decay would basically appear.

This was common knowledge for every surgeon. That was why surgery needed to be performed in a sterile ward, not in such a harsh environment littered with corpses and fresh from a battle of destruction.

Karen had stolen all his thoughts, yet overlooked the most basic details.

Li Ziran could understand why, because those things were not in his thoughts at all. They were habits.

If someone claimed that a novice could become a master surgeon in just a few days, that would be nothing but a joke.

Karen might seize thoughts and become a necromancer, a fire mage, an alchemist, or perhaps even a Witch Doctor.

But a Witch Doctor like Li Ziran was one of a kind. What he relied upon was not this world's traditional witchcraft, but surgical techniques that did not belong to this world at all.

Therefore, Karen was doomed to fail.

Even though Karen, transformed into a Corpse Witch, began carefully placing the dragon heart into the frog's body—more cautious than ever, painstakingly connecting every nerve between the body and heart and linking every blood vessel.

Yet just as he believed the magical heart would soon, like an engine, madly draw in elemental power and produce dragon blood, the dragon heart remained still as a stone.

Meanwhile, deprived of blood, Karen's body gradually turned pale and began trembling irregularly.

At last, the Corpse Witch panicked.

It grabbed Li Ziran from the ground, clamped tightly around his throat, and asked in an icy voice, "Speak! What exactly is going on? Hurry, save him!"

A strange undead power seeped in through his throat. Li Ziran gave a bleak laugh. He could not explain it.

Because there was far too much to explain.

"Why didn't you come to me?" Li Ziran asked.

"What?" Karen was confused by the question.

"If you only wanted to transplant a heart, why didn't you let me wield the scalpel?" Li Ziran asked calmly. Karen did not notice that Li Ziran's tail was pressed against the frog's chest.

"Would you? Help me?" Karen asked darkly. "Tell him what's going on. I guarantee you'll live."

Unfortunately, he would not get an answer.

Black radiance enveloped Li Ziran, and the light of transformation collided out of control.

The Corpse Witch suddenly panicked. Only now did it notice what Li Ziran had done.

Mental power formed into a snake-shaped magic array, but the Transformation Spell's glow dissipated the instant it touched Li Ziran.

The Transformation Spell had failed.

Just then, an oily green light membrane had already wrapped around it. Its body shrank at a visible rate, and in the blink of an eye, it became a frog black to the bone.

[Transformation Spell]

Li Ziran looked at the frog still trying to hop on the ground and gave a chuckle.

A Corpse Witch was an undead creature. It had no magical glands, so it could not cast Fireball Spell.

As for necromancy, Li Ziran raised his wand and brought it down like a club.

Bang!

The effect was perfect.

Looking at the black frog that had completely passed out, Li Ziran sighed gloomily.

"Ah, what a pity. You had the potential to be a high-level VIP. What a shame!"