The Great Worm Lich

The emergency room was small, and there was only a hospital bed. However, there were brand new ECG monitors and ventilators that seemed expensive.

A young lady in a white coat was taking emergency treatment records by the bed, just like how it was done at major hospitals. Looking at the two of them as they rushed in, she immediately asked with her clear voice, “Are the both of you Zhang Daowu’s family members?”

“Nurse, I’m his relative, and this is his son. How’s Daowu doing?”

Although the young lady was secretly shocked that the patient had such a young son, she still answered professionally, “I’m the doctor, the patient is in a critical condition and needs to receive a surgery immediately. We’ve wasted too much time, we must get the authorization now.”

While the female doctor was talking to the middle-aged man, Zhang Lisheng looked at his old, pale father absent-mindedly who was dying on the bed. Though there was much sadness that rose from his heart, there was much joy too.

Speaking of Zhang Daowu, he held a very special position in Guawo Village although he was neither part of a cadre, nor a respectable old man. Every one in Guawo Village respected him even though he had a cold character and did not communicate with the villagers. Even the old secretary who held the same position in the mountain village for more than thirty years dared not offend him easily.

Rumor had it that Zhang Daowu was more than eighty years old, while some of them said he was more than a century old. Nonetheless, nothing could be verified due to the previous wars and riots.

The only thing people knew was that the Red Whirlwind Cultural Revolution swept the entire country and even the remote Guawo Village. Everyone in the five-men task force led by Zhang Daowu that was going to be approved by the county were all dead.

Although the death of these people seemed like a ridiculous coincidence, it was the Western Sichuan ground after all. Since then, none of the revolutionary masses and cadres would find trouble with Zhang Daowu.

However, to his son, Zhang Daowu was not the mysterious wizard that everyone thought he was, but instead a ruthless tyrant. Ever since Zhang Lisheng could remember from when he was still a young boy that could barely speak, he had been forced to memorize tongue-twisting incantations. He would have to starve or even get his flesh poked by needles if he failed to memorize them.

When he grew old enough and had just learned how to hold a pencil, he would have to trace along the lines to copy complicated images and ancient writings from ancient books for up to a hundred times every night. He would be beaten with a wooden stick if he made the slightest mistake.

As he grew older and hit puberty after reaching twelve years of age, he was forced by his father to feed the venomous worm three times a day. Each time he fed the worm, he would lose blood, and if not administered properly, he would be caned. As the years went by, he was thirty to forty catties lighter than people of his age, and more than ten centimeters shorter.

As these past events flashed before his eyes one by one, Zhang Lisheng realized that he had never experienced the joy and warmth of a family throughout the short sixteen years of his life, not even for a second.

It was the most liberating moment of his life as he looked down at his dying father and figured that his father could no longer torture him any longer!

While Zhang Lisheng was thinking about the past, the old man on the hospital bed opened his eyes out of nowhere and shot a deadly stare at his only son. He revealed an expression that was the combination of ecstasy and determination as his lips began to chant silently.

Others had no idea what Zhang Daowu who had suddenly woken up was doing, but Zhang Lisheng, who was looking at him, knew that his father was chanting an incantation.

‘Can the incantation that’s used to control venomous worms rescue lives?’

Zhang Lisheng was stunned as the ridiculous thought flashed through his mind. Later on, a mysterious murmur began to play in his ears while his head erupted into chaos.

It seemed like ages, but in reality, it only happened within tens of seconds. After telling Tao Lielin about the patient’s critical condition in the emergency room, the young female doctor was going to let the patient’s son authorize the surgery agreement. She then realized that the young man’s body was shaking as he stood there staring blankly at his father who was dying on the bed. He seemed to have lost his mind.

‘The patient’s at risk,’ the thought flashed by the female doctor’s mind by instinct. As she speculated, she looked at the patient’s face and it looked very stiff. His lips were twitching unconsciously, clearly the clinical symptoms of heart failure.

“The patient’s heartbeat is 35, body temperature 34. Primary organ failure has emerged, I’m injecting an anistreplase heart emergency shot directly into his heart artery…” Although the female doctor looked nervous, she did not waste any seconds as she performed first aid very professionally. While she was at it, she recorded the treatment steps loud and clear with the voice recorder pen on her white coat.

Unfortunately, it was fate that the female doctor could not save Zhang Daowu’s life that was on the brink of death. The wave that was moving on the ECG monitor became flat after she arduously performed defibrillation a couple of times using the pacemaker on her own. The beeping sound that represented the patient’s heartbeat had turned into a cold, long beep.

The final effort was announced ineffective. The female doctor took a moment of silence as she looked at Zhang Daowu’s wide-opened eyes that were filled with hatred and regret—he died without peace. As she looked helplessly at the watch on her wrist, she said in a deep voice, “14:36, the patient has died. Cause of death is bleeding in most of the organs, leading to rapid organ failure. The end.”

She then walked slowly in front of Zhang Lisheng who was stunned and said with an apologetic tone, “I’m sorry, but I’ve tried my best…”

As she spoke, the female doctor suddenly could not suppress the anger in her heart anymore as she looked at the patient’s son who had just lost his father. She walked out of the emergency room in big steps and shouted at the emergency room director in front of many patients, “The patient who got hit by a car has passed away. He has a child! A sixteen or seventeen-year-old young man has now lost his father.

“The patient could have some chance to live if we didn’t have to wait for the damn surgery agreement to be signed. No nurses, assistant physicians, or even a care worker was arranged. I, a new doctor who had just obtained my professional doctor’s license, was taking care of the entire emergency room.

“I can’t believe this is a standard emergency hospital that serves four hundred thousand people. Do you know that all of you are destroying human lives like weeds? Destroying human lives like weeds!”

The emergency room was silent. The emergency room director only managed to react after a while and shouted angrily, “Dr. Marie, can you not say things that are so irresponsible? What do you mean by destroying human lives like weeds? I’ve said earlier that the patient’s family member will sign the document as soon as they arrived. As soon as it was signed, we can carry on with the surgery, nobody asked you to save him all by yourself.

“You’re the one who is destroying human lives like weeds!

“Do you think we’re in Beijing, Shanghai, or the United States of America? This is a standard emergency center. Stop dreaming, this is Qu County of Western Sichuan. In this county, we have limited doctors and nurses, so we’re experiencing hardships here.

“It wasn’t me who requested you to be here. It’s you, a student from the United States of America, who took the initiative and requested to become an intern at a hospital in this poor area. Since you insisted to be an intern at a poor area, you’ve been put into our hospital in the end.

“To tell you the truth, if it’s not for the high-end ventilators and ECG monitors that were donated by the Central China Medical Charity Federation, our county hospital wouldn’t have accepted you at all.

“Ever since you came, you’ve been telling us ‘we should do this, we should do that…’ This doesn’t meet the requirements, that isn’t in compliance. I’m done with you since the very beginning! Our county hospital isn’t the one from the really poor areas. You have so many opinions, I doubt you’ll have so much to say if you’ve been assigned to a hospital in the village.

“If what you said today really started a dispute among the doctor and patients and affect our emergency rooms definition, I’ll really become mad at you. I’ll give Director Li a call now and see who wants to serve you. That person will serve you then…”

The outside of the emergency room was noisy due to the death of Zhang Daowu. Zhang Lisheng, one of the most important people in the incident that happened in the emergency room, had yet to move nor speak.

Tao Lielin who came with him patted his shoulder and said softly with sympathy, “Mountain Worm, your father is gone now. Cry if you feel like it, don’t hide your feelings inside of you. You’ll fall ill if you do that.”

Zhang Lisheng then fell weakly onto the ground out of nowhere.

Seeing Zhang Lisheng suddenly fall onto the ground, Tao Lielin ran out of the emergency room and called out to the doctors. The emergency doctors of the Qu County People’s Hospital rushed into the room as fast as they could and attended to Zhang Lisheng clumsily.

Although Zhang Lisheng did not have any physical strength in him at the moment and felt like his exterior senses were being taken away, his mind was tremendously clear.

The incantations that he was forced to memorize, the runes that he sketched by memory, and the incantation that he chanted flashed by clearly in his mind. They were floating before his eyes and compressed as well as mixed together continuously. They then vanished slowly, and all that was left was a single passage of incantation.

As soon as the passage of incantation was formed, Zhang Lisheng suddenly felt an itch across his entire body. A magical energy formed in his flesh, and a green, bean-sized sarcoma bulged on the roof of his mouth.

Soon after, the energy in his flesh came and vanished. The sarcoma bulged and disappeared, then the same process repeated itself.

When the energy appeared in Zhang Lisheng’s flesh and the sarcoma grew on the roof of his mouth, countless snakes and worms became out of control in the jungles around the mountains within the hundred mile radius surrounding Qu County. Some of them crawled onto the narrow roads in the villages in batches, some made the people on the streets scream out of fear, while some were smashed into piles of meat by vehicles.

Without knowing how long had passed, the magical energy in his flesh and the sarcoma on the roof of his mouth had finally subsided and stopped disappearing. Zhang Lisheng opened his eyes slowly.

The mottled walls in the single ward were filled with the smell of disinfectant, exclusive to a hospital. Marie asked with deep concern when she saw Zhang Lashing open his eyes as he lay on the hospital bed, “What’s your name?”

“Full name Zhang Lisheng, nickname Mountain Worm.” Zhang Lisheng’s answer came off in a husky voice.

Marie showed four fingers again and asked, “How many are these?”

“Four.”

“That’s great, you’re conscious. There’s no big issue with you.”

“Zhang Lisheng, erm, Mr. Zhang Lisheng. You’re already sixteen, which is the minimum age to hold a Chinese license. You can be addressed as ‘mister’ now. As a man, you need to be strong and accept the reality…”

“My father is dead, I know that. Don’t worry,” Zhang Lisheng said numbly.