Immortal body. Spiritual resonance.
In an instant, Li Zhan was transformed into a superhuman. Overwhelmed, he clung to Wang Yan's leg without a shred of dignity and sobbed, "Boss, I messed up the Arthur Tribe, yet you still gave me these abilities! I… I… I don't even know how to repay you. Don't worry—I'll do whatever it takes to make the Arthur Tribe the strongest tribe there is…"
Perhaps the main reason Wang Yan kept Li Zhan around was that this man, willing to abandon all shame for a better life, provided a sort of down-to-earth company for him.
After all, every other person from Earth had a particular specialty and a certain amount of personal pride, so while they temporarily worked under Wang Yan, he struggled to feel a real connection with them.
On Earth, Wang Yan himself had been just another small fish at the bottom of society.
Yes, a sense of identity.
But Wang Yan would never admit it was because Li Zhan's slovenly attitude made him "comfortable" enough to keep around. Wang Yan was, after all, a wise leader of this planet—there was no need for him to keep a shameless flatterer by his side!
"You jump, I jump!"
"Oh, f*ck me! My God! Oh! Oh! Oh!"
"You big cock English, strong like horse!"
"Right Said Fred? Dimple Red!"
These jumbled phrases echoed within the Arthur Tribe.
From time to time, tribe members blurted out random English lines. Combined with the gestures and postures they'd copied from movies, the entire scene looked like an asylum for the linguistically confused.
Li Zhan really was trying to fix the chaos he'd created here. From their surprisingly decent accents, maybe the Arthur Tribe genuinely had a knack for English—or perhaps it was a characteristic of their entire brown-skinned race.
Someday, Wang Yan might test another tribe to see if the same was true.
But if it really was a matter of their physical speech apparatus (i.e., their "tongue"), Wang Yan's dream of establishing Mandarin as the universal language might be doomed. In that case, his world might end up adopting a multilingual civilization.
After pocketing the diamonds Li Zhan had collected, Wang Yan left without looking back.
He couldn't bear to linger—everything in the Arthur Tribe felt tainted. In the blink of an eye, someone might whip out a "prop" from an adult film.
Such an eyesore!
Wang Yan cursed the day Li Zhan discovered those movies.
Having seen how Li Zhan had turned the Arthur Tribe upside down, Wang Yan felt even more uneasy about the wily old Liu Wanjun. Eager to check up on him, Wang Yan activated the mark he'd placed on the ex-mercenary.
What he found defied all expectations.
The White Tribe showed none of the scandalous behavior Wang Yan had anticipated.
Instead, under Old Man Liu Wanjun's leadership, a hunting party of around forty or fifty members was moving soundlessly through the forest.
They all wore rough camouflage made of leaves, including green straw hats. Some held crudely sharpened javelins, some carried primitive bows, and others gripped lengths of vine weighted with stones, along with a few armed with stone spears.
Their faces were smeared with mud. Like chameleons in natural camouflage, they advanced cautiously through the thick undergrowth.
Without the godlike perspective of Wang Yan's aerial view, he would never have noticed them.
They moved in tight formation, with point men, flank cover, and silent hand signals—traversing the forest with impressive speed.
About one mile ahead of them was another of the tribe's hunting parties, numbering a bit over twenty. Armed only with stone spears and axes, these hunters were busy trying to bring down an antelope-like creature (for lack of a better name, Wang Yan simply called it an antelope).
From the mercenary's perspective, that smaller hunting team appeared to be the target of the ambush. A force this large wouldn't be going to so much trouble just to steal an antelope—there had to be more to it.
Watching from his vantage point, Wang Yan felt a growing sense of dread. This was an entirely different approach than Li Zhan's: violent, militaristic, and systematic.
The distance of one mile vanished quickly.
Focused on their quarry, the smaller hunting party had no idea danger was closing in. They soon brought down the antelope, celebrating their prize with exuberant cries.
Suddenly, a sharp whistle broke the calm.
From the forest depths, over twenty wooden javelins rained down, spearing through bodies with a whoosh. Two unfortunate souls were even pinned to the ground where they stood.
A shower of flung stones and a volley of crude arrows followed in rapid succession—more lethal long-range attacks.
It was brutal and bloody.
Hit by such a sudden assault, the hunting party was thrown into chaos. They screamed and tried to flee, but it was too late. The old mercenary's well-trained "jungle commandos" quickly cut off any escape.
In a single, swift maneuver, a five-person squad charged out in precise tactical formation, surrounding the wounded hunting party.
Ultimately, only four survivors managed to escape. The rest were either killed or captured, leaving the attackers with over a dozen prisoners and the antelope itself as spoils of war.
Celebrating their victorious ambush, they began marching their prisoners—and their kill—back to the tribe.
"Damn, that old man's ruthless!" Wang Yan muttered, swallowing hard as he continued to watch through his mental connection. "He's set on taking the path of war… He's going for a violent unification of this continent!"
From one short ambush, Wang Yan grasped the gruesome reality of war. Even though he'd spoken of spreading the "Light God's glory" throughout the continent back in the Caesar Tribe, he had actually relied on peaceful development.
Unlike him, Old Man Liu Wanjun had bypassed resource management and construction altogether—choosing direct conquest and warfare from the start!
And this is not just some random game he's playing.
"Yup, 'Chaos Continent' is right," Wang Yan thought bitterly, recalling how Xie Yufei had named it. "With Old Man Liu rampaging like this, that continent's future will definitely be chaotic."
In the end, Wang Yan didn't stop Liu Wanjun's violent approach.
It wasn't because he was cold-hearted; it was because, the moment Liu Wanjun led his troops into battle, Wang Yan felt the World Tree's projection in his mind surge with new vitality—its branches thickening visibly.
Although he hadn't gained any new abilities, that was clear proof the World Tree recognized "war" as a valid part of civilization's growth.
Reflecting on Earth's own development, war has always walked hand in hand with civilization, often acting as a catalyst or accelerator for progress.
The history of humanity is, in large part, a history of war. You could say conflict has propelled civilization's advancement.
So why should Wang Yan interfere with the old man's conduct of warfare?
As for resources…
Wang Yan had intended to provide Liu Wanjun with supplies, but after witnessing his successful ambush, he dismissed that plan entirely.
Would a born warrior really lack resources?
That was a joke.
He was out there stealing antelopes, for crying out loud! No, a man like that would find his own way.