Thinking of this, Zhou Ziwei felt a chill run down his spine. Although he had not yet achieved his goal, he dared not linger here any longer. He hurriedly took a few steps forward, grabbed the bullet pendant that was still floating in mid-air, and then quickly determined his direction before rushing out of the cave.
A soft "whoosh" came from behind. Zhou Ziwei turned around and saw that the giant bat king was chasing after him as fast as a black cloud, hovering tightly above his head, as if it wanted to stick to Zhou Ziwei.
Seeing this, Zhou Ziwei gave a wry smile. Then, a thought struck him, and he suddenly stopped. He waved to the Bat King, who immediately folded its thin wings and swooped down from the sky. It nuzzled its big, furry head in front of Zhou Ziwei, looking like a little dog trying to please him.
Zhou Ziwei smiled and said, "You want to follow me? Hmm... if so, then I'll have to use you as a mount. Can you... let me ride you and fly into the sky?"
Upon hearing this, Bat King seemed to understand, nodding vigorously and hastily. Its enormous, rat-like head even made some rather human-like expressions, making it look utterly terrifying and sending chills down Zhou Ziwei's spine.
How could Batman be so intelligent and human-like?
Looking at this creature, Zhou Ziwei almost doubted whether the human soul that had originally resided in its body had truly vanished. However, he figured that if the human soul did still exist, it probably wouldn't be so friendly to him, since Zhou Ziwei and this ferocious bat king were old enemies with a grudge against each other...
Zhou Ziwei felt the bullet in his hand trembling more violently. Without further ado, he straddled the Bat King lying on the ground, wrapped his arms around its neck, and whispered, "Let's go! Let's fly out..."
The Bat King nodded again, then suddenly spread its wings, and its huge body rose steadily several meters into the air. Then, it flew at high speed towards the outside of the deep bat cave.
This Bat King was a creature born in darkness, and had lived in this cave for many years, so it was extremely familiar with the terrain. When it took flight, its speed was much faster than Zhou Ziwei's.
Although Zhou Ziwei could achieve a speed on flat ground that even the Bat King couldn't match if he pushed his speed to the limit, he had to constantly use his soul power to sense the environment ahead in this dark cave in order to move forward carefully. Naturally, his speed was greatly affected and he couldn't compare to the Bat King.
The bat king, carrying a person, flew out of the cave, which was hundreds of meters deep, in just over ten seconds. Then it began to circle in the valley outside the cave, seemingly still reminiscing about the nest where it had lived for many years.
“Fly up…” Zhou Ziwei gently moved the Bat King’s neck and reached out towards the valley above, towards the spot where he had just parked his car.
Without hesitation after receiving the instruction, the Bat King flapped its wings and carried Zhou Ziwei into the air, rising swiftly and smoothly...
Having such a flying mount is really convenient sometimes... Normally, if Zhou Ziwei didn't use the force field space to fly up from the bottom of the valley back to the road above, it would take him at least half an hour to climb up. But now, with Bat King carrying him, it only took him a dozen seconds to fly up.
As soon as he arrived on the highway, Zhou Ziwei immediately jumped off the back of the Bat King, waved to it to signal it to fly with him on his car, then jumped into the car, started the engine, and sped off towards the county town at top speed.
As they got further and further away from the Bat Cave, Zhou Ziwei's heart sank lower and lower.
He originally thought that once he left the Bat Cave, the bullet that had absorbed two souls would gradually return to normal, but this time it was clearly different.
He had driven the car at least ten kilometers away, but the bullet seemed to be vibrating more and more rapidly, as if he were holding an electric massager, which kept thumping and popping in his palm.
Zhou Ziwei hesitated. This bullet was like a time bomb to him. He had no idea when the two souls inside the bullet would burst it. If that happened, he would have no trump card to rely on against these two souls whose soul power was far stronger than his. However, if he decisively threw the bullet away now, it would probably no longer have a chance to threaten him.
But... wouldn't it be such a waste to just throw away this bullet with such amazing effects?
Damn it, since you're causing trouble in there, I might as well just drain you dry.
Zhou Ziwei realized that he could have absorbed the soul power of the soul within the bullet, but he was worried that using it too much might draw out the soul itself, so he had hardly ever used the soul within the bullet to replenish his own soul power.
But now, sensing the bullet's intense instability, Zhou Ziwei could no longer afford to worry about anything else. After hesitating for a long time, he still couldn't bring himself to throw it away. Since he didn't want to throw it away, he would try to absorb as much soul power as possible from it! He figured that as long as he didn't directly extract the two soul entities, the soul entities inside would gradually weaken due to the loss of a large amount of soul power, and then they should no longer be able to cause trouble!
Thinking of this, Zhou Ziwei decided not to rush on his way. He simply parked the car on the side of the road, then held the bullet pendant in both hands, and used a wisp of his soul power to carefully envelop the entire bullet inside...
"Boom—" Almost at the same time that Zhou Ziwei used his soul power to envelop the bullet, he immediately felt an immense and unparalleled soul power surge out of the bullet like the tide of the Qiantang River. Then it completely merged into the soul power he released, and with his soul perception, it rapidly flowed upstream and directly poured into his sea of souls.
This time, the speed at which soul power was poured in was many times more ferocious than the last time. In just a few seconds, Zhou Ziwei felt his sea of souls, which was about to dry up, rapidly replenished.
However, before Zhou Ziwei could even rejoice, his expression suddenly changed drastically. He discovered that the soul power he had extracted directly from the bullet was not pure soul power at all, but rather filled with countless resentments, malevolence, and all sorts of strange and bizarre memory fragments… Zhou Ziwei actually saw images of humans living in cities, then the bus crashing off a cliff, becoming a host for his soul, and ultimately becoming a blood bat – all chaotic memories…
What's going on? Aren't these memories the memories of those ghost bats? How... how come these memories are in this bullet? I don't think I absorbed any of the ghost bats' residing souls into this bullet...
Zhou Ziwei was stunned for a moment before realizing that it was possible that the soul he had absorbed with the bullet had devoured all the souls residing in those ghost bats. However, that soul lacked the ability to purify soul power, which allowed all the chaotic memories, resentment, and malevolence to mix into it. Now, when he was absorbing soul power from the bullet, he had absorbed all of this impure and mixed soul power.
Sensing something was wrong, Zhou Ziwei quickly withdrew the soul power encased in the bullet and stopped absorbing soul power from it.
However, in just a short while, the soul power within his body had almost completely filled his sea of souls. If calculated, Zhou Ziwei would find that the capacity of his sea of souls seemed to have increased considerably. Now, nearly seven thousand units of soul power had poured into it, yet it still hadn't been able to fill the sea of souls.
However, Zhou Ziwei had no time to pay attention to these things at the moment. The chaotic thoughts and fierce resentment from different souls had filled his soul power everywhere, and stirred up huge waves, turning the originally peaceful sea of souls into a lively scene like a landslide and tsunami.
Zhou Ziwei knew that if he couldn't solve this problem quickly, he would probably go insane before long.
Therefore, he dared not delay for the slightest. He immediately began to retract all the soul power scattered throughout his body and seal it all into his soul power. Then, he shut down all his consciousness and entered a state of suspended animation, just like when he first devoured that old ghost. He began to chant the six-syllable mantra again and again in his sea of souls to continuously purify and remove the impure resentment and malevolence from his soul power.
This time, however, the trouble was obviously many times greater than the last time. Last time, he had only devoured the soul of an old ghost, but now he had indirectly devoured the fierce souls of countless ghost bats. The difficulty between the two was naturally not on the same level.
Fortunately, Zhou Ziwei is now many times stronger than he was back then.
In short, now that things have come to this, Zhou Ziwei can only place all his hopes on the Six-Syllable Mantra. After all, this Six-Syllable Mantra is his biggest trump card...
Time passed second by second, and in the blink of an eye, the sky in the east gradually turned white. A cargo truck swayed and drove from the other end of the winding road. Inside the truck, two sleepy-eyed truck drivers were yawning and arguing incessantly.
"See... I told you this road was bad, driving at night is dangerous! It's unbelievable, now we have two flat tires, I don't even know if we can make it to Tengchong..."
"Stop talking nonsense! You were the one who wanted to travel through the night last night, but now that something's happened, it's all your fault for being prescient... Wait... there seems to be a car up ahead... Why... why is this car parked here so early in the morning..."
The driver exclaimed in surprise, then stopped his car next to the black Audi, craning his neck to look inside. He saw a person leaning against the backrest, seemingly asleep.
The two truck drivers looked at each other, and their eyes lit up at the same time.
These two guys were never honest people to begin with. They were always swindling, cheating, and stealing. They had just bought a large quantity of stolen goods at a low price in Baoshan and came to Tengchong specifically to sell them.
Seeing that the car by the roadside looked nice, and that the person inside was asleep, the two of them immediately had wicked thoughts.
They chuckled wickedly and got out of their cars. One of them blocked the Audi's path, while the other went to the Audi and pounded on the window. After knocking for a while, there was no response from the person inside. This only fueled the two truck drivers' excitement… They thought to themselves, "This guy's too stupid! He actually dares to sleep here! Isn't he just luring us into robbing him?"
Volume 2, The Assassin's Nightmare, Chapter 309: Liquefied Soul Power
The two truck drivers, who had ulterior motives, exchanged a knowing smile and whispered among themselves when they saw that the person inside the Audi seemed to be asleep.
"So, how about it? Are you in or not?"
"Of course we'll do it... Although it doesn't look like it's very lucrative, it would be a waste not to take advantage of a business that's been delivered to our door."
"Since that's the case... let's stick to the old rules! I'll smash the window, and you knock the guy unconscious... remember to be quick, and don't let him see what we look like, to avoid trouble!"
After speaking, the two men turned around and went back to their truck in a tacit understanding. Each of them grabbed a handy tool. One of them took a large wrench, and the other grabbed a crowbar. They then walked up to the Audi with cold smiles, stood on either side of it, exchanged a secret signal, and then simultaneously raised their weapons high...
However, before the man on the left could smash the window of the black Audi with the wrench, a sudden, violent gust of wind appeared overhead, as if a category 12 typhoon had struck.
Both truck drivers were startled. Forgetting about smashing the Audi's window, they hurriedly looked up and saw a dark, cloud-like mass appearing above them.
Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that it was actually an enormous, gigantic flying creature.
"Ah...a monster!" The two truck drivers had never seen anything like it before and exclaimed in surprise. Seeing the monster rushing down, they instinctively swung their tools and smashed them hard at the dark figure.
Then, the two men had only swung their weapons halfway when they heard a "clang" as they were struck by the giant creature's claws. Their hands were immediately bruised and bleeding, and their weapons seemed to have sprouted wings, flying more than ten meters away.
The two truck drivers were so frightened that their souls nearly left their bodies. They screamed "Oh my god!" and turned to run. However, how could their two legs outrun the creature's enormous wings? They had only run five steps when they each felt a tightness on their backs, and then their bodies were rapidly lifted into the air. Although their legs were still frantically moving back and forth, they could no longer touch the ground.
The two poor guys experienced the thrill of flying, and then, with two long screams, they were thrown directly off a bottomless cliff...
After dealing with the two people who intended to harm Zhou Ziwei, the giant bat king quickly flew back to its original spot, circled the cargo truck twice, and seemed to find the truck unpleasant to be around. So it quickly flew down, stretched out a pair of huge claws, grabbed the guardrail on the top of the truck, and flapped its wings forcefully... but a cracking sound was heard, and the guardrail broke in response, while the cargo-laden truck only swayed slightly.
The Bat King flapped its wings in annoyance, tilted its large, furry head as if pondering for a moment, then flew to the back of the truck, pressed its two claws firmly against the truck's rear panel, and then its huge bat wings began to vibrate rapidly at an abnormal frequency, instantly generating a powerful propulsion that propelled the truck forward in a shaky manner.
The two truck drivers, in their haste to get out, had clearly forgotten to engage the handbrake. Therefore, Bat-King barely needed to exert any effort to push the truck forward, faster and faster. Soon they reached a bend in the road. Bat-King, instead of taking the steering wheel, increased his strength and pushed even harder. And so… the fully loaded truck crashed through the roadside guardrail, roared off the road, and hurtled down a steep, roughly sixty-degree slope…
After dealing with the large truck, the giant Bat King circled the black Audi once more, then, in a rather human-like manner, slapped its two enormous claws together as if to brush off the dust. Then, hearing the faint sound of a vehicle approaching again in the distance, the Bat King's large ears twitched slightly. Immediately, it flapped its wings and swiftly flew into the dense forest beside the road, disappearing in the blink of an eye...
Within the vast sea of souls, clusters of soul power glowing red surged ceaselessly, interspersed with faint traces of black, gray, and other mixed-color energy bodies. The churning of this soul power seemed to be caused by the restlessness and agitation of those mixed-color energy bodies.
However, within this seemingly small yet infinitely vast space, one could faintly see one red ring-shaped ripple after another constantly flashing and rippling. The first red ring-shaped ripple would naturally remove and decompose the impure energy bodies within the red soul power. As time passed, the red ocean gradually calmed down.
However, as the red ripples washed over it again and again, the red soul energy within this red ocean seemed to be decreasing rapidly. Slowly, the red ocean, which had seemed to be completely filled, shrank to less than half its original size. And this shrinkage continued to occur as the red ring-shaped ripples continued to wash over it.
Zhou Ziwei's consciousness fluctuated. He couldn't understand why his soul power had been so severely diminished under the purification effect of the Six-Syllable Mantra. In his perception, although this soul power was somewhat impure, it was still mostly pure soul power. As for negative energies such as resentment and hostility, they only accounted for less than one percent. How could his soul power have shrunk by more than half after this purification? Moreover, the purification was not yet completely finished. In other words, if he continued to use the Six-Syllable Mantra to purify, the soul power would shrink even further. So... it seemed that after he completely purified all the soul power, there wouldn't be much soul power left!
In this case, it really is a case of losing more than you gain...
Thinking back to when he had just absorbed that large amount of impure and chaotic soul power, his consciousness was repeatedly torn apart by the resentment and malevolence that permeated the sea of souls, almost plunging him into complete chaos. Zhou Ziwei still felt lingering fear when he thought about it. If it weren't for his strong willpower and the fact that the Six-Syllable Mantra had long been integrated with his soul consciousness into a wondrous state after so much training, even if his consciousness was scattered, he wouldn't need to consciously think about anything. The six strange syllables would naturally spew out from his soul consciousness. As the red ring-shaped ripples formed by the Six-Syllable Mantra continuously cleansed and purified the impure negative energy in the sea of souls, Zhou Ziwei's consciousness gradually condensed, and he slowly regained some control over his soul power.
The longer the time, the more confident Zhou Ziwei became. Now, completely eliminating the negative energy in his soul power was no longer a problem; it was just a matter of time. However, looking at the soul power in his sea of souls, which was shrinking and shrinking, Zhou Ziwei felt like crying.
He had originally thought he could replenish his strength by absorbing the soul power from the bullet, but now it seemed that such replenishment was not only dangerous, but also risky. If all the soul power he had absorbed was purified in the end, wouldn't all his suffering that night have been for nothing?
However, thinking about these things now is useless. Since there is still impure negative energy in the sea of souls, it must be completely eliminated. There must be no trace of it left in the sea of souls. Even if it means purifying all the soul power he absorbed this time, he must not be lenient.
Having made up his mind, Zhou Ziwei naturally had nothing to hesitate about. He simply contracted his soul consciousness in the sea of souls once again, no longer considering the problem of the reduction of soul power. He simply focused on one thought instead of ten thousand thoughts, like an old monk in deep meditation, and did not think about anything except reciting the six-syllable mantra over and over again.
Zhou Ziwei was unaware that by doing so, he had inadvertently found the most effective method. Reciting the Six-Syllable Mantra with this method of concentrating all his soul consciousness was far more effective than the previous purification method. He had only purified about half of the mixed negative energy in his sea of souls, which had taken almost a whole night. At that rate, he would probably have had to recite the Six-Syllable Mantra for another whole day to completely remove the negative energy from his sea of souls.
However, after focusing his soul consciousness in a daze this time, in just over ten minutes, the sea of soul gradually became clear, and there was no longer any impure energy.
Is it finally clean?
Seemingly realizing that the recitation of the Six-Syllable Mantra had no effect whatsoever, Zhou Ziwei awoke from his deep meditative state. He dispersed his condensed soul consciousness and scanned the vast sea of his soul. Zhou Ziwei sighed helplessly in his heart.
Sure enough… He had absorbed nearly six or seven thousand units of soul power from that bullet in one go, almost filling his current sea of souls. But now, after being completely purified, less than a quarter of its volume remained… Sigh… It seems it's best not to absorb any more soul power from those bullets in the future. Otherwise, it would not only be very dangerous, but also a waste of effort. After absorbing six or seven thousand units of soul power, it looks like less than two thousand remained after purification… Hmm, it doesn't seem to be two thousand… Something seems… something is not quite right.
Zhou Ziwei could usually calculate his current soul power reserves with a simple sweep of his soul consciousness in the sea of souls, but this time, he seemed unable to be certain at all.
Although judging from the volume of the remaining soul power, he should have less than two thousand soul power left.
However, under the perception of his soul consciousness, he had a faint feeling of abundance, as if... as if he still had six or seven thousand units of soul power stored up.
This strange feeling left Zhou Ziwei completely bewildered. Could it be that his sea of souls had expanded again without him even realizing it?
Zhou Ziwei inexplicably scanned the space again with his soul consciousness, only to find that after all this commotion, the upper limit of his soul sea had indeed expanded somewhat, but the extent of the expansion was not very significant. In other words, if the original upper limit of his soul sea was seven thousand, it had now expanded to a maximum of seven thousand three or four hundred. Although this increase was not small, it was clearly unrelated to the strange feeling of his soul power being both insufficient and abundant.
Where exactly did the problem lie? Zhou Ziwei's soul consciousness inexplicably searched throughout the entire Sea of Souls, finally returning to the center of the Sea of Souls, the place where his soul consciousness had just condensed. Only then did his consciousness suddenly jolt...
He had been so focused on searching the area around the Sea of Souls that he forgot to look at its center. Little did he know that the key to the problem lay precisely in the center of the Sea of Souls.
Originally... in this sea of souls, his soul power existed in the form of a mist, but now, probably just as his soul consciousness was deeply condensing, four drops of dark red liquid, resembling blood beads, inexplicably appeared in the center of the sea of souls.
When Zhou Ziwei scanned the four drops of blood-like liquid with his soul consciousness, he was surprised to find that these six drops of blood were clearly a highly condensed soul power.
Liquid soul power? Zhou Ziwei wasn't entirely unfamiliar with this. In fact, when he used the bullet to collect the solidified soul body for the second time, he clearly saw that the soul body, which resembled white mist, was forcibly refined into several drops of liquid water droplets under the powerful suction of the bullet before being finally collected into the bullet. Presumably, those water droplet-like things were highly condensed liquid soul power!
Zhou Ziwei was surprised to find such soul power within his own soul power. He roughly scanned and estimated it with his soul consciousness, and was then horrified to discover that this tiny drop of liquid soul power was almost equivalent to a thousand remnant soul energy. Four drops of liquid soul power were equivalent to about four thousand soul power condensed in the center of this sea of souls...
No wonder he felt his soul power was abundant even though he only saw less than a quarter of the soul sea's capacity... The liquid and gaseous soul power combined amounted to a full six thousand units. Zhou Ziwei had never possessed so much soul power at once before... It would be strange if he didn't feel an abundance...
Taking a deep breath... Zhou Ziwei slowly awoke from his deep meditation and realized that it was already quite bright outside. Fortunately, it was only a little past eight in the morning, and there weren't many vehicles on the mountain road. Zhou Ziwei rubbed his dry cheeks, then stretched and felt the blood in his body become somewhat stagnant from sitting there for so long, making his hands and feet feel a little unresponsive.
Zhou Ziwei quickly opened the car door, got out, and stretched his arms and legs before quickly returning to his original state.
He stretched out his hand and found that the bullet pendant was still tightly held in his palm. He didn't know if it was because the two souls trapped in the bullet had greatly lost their soul power after the crazy absorption last night. Anyway, the bullet was no longer jumping around like it had been last night, and Zhou Ziwei finally breathed a sigh of relief.
This bullet held extraordinary significance for him, and he would never have been willing to throw it away unless absolutely necessary.
And now it seems... his method is quite effective. Although absorbing soul power from this bullet is rather troublesome, and it requires constant refining in the sea of souls using the Six-Syllable Mantra to stabilize the absorbed soul power, it seems that during the deep refining of that soul power, there is also a kind of condensation and liquefaction ability, which is quite powerful.
Zhou Ziwei was initially worried that he wouldn't know when he could increase the capacity of his Sea of Souls to over ten thousand, but now it seems... if he could condense all the soul power he absorbed into his Sea of Souls into liquid, then storing ten thousand, or even one hundred thousand or one million, of soul power wouldn't be a problem at all. Perhaps it will truly be called the Sea of Souls when his Sea of Souls is completely filled with countless liquid soul power!
After warming up, Zhou Ziwei turned and returned to his car. He had just started the engine, intending to head towards Tengchong, when he suddenly remembered the Bat King that had flown out of the bat cave with him last night. He looked around, but couldn't find the Bat King. Zhou Ziwei shook his head, thinking, "Could it have gotten impatient and flown away on its own?" But that was fine too. That huge creature was truly terrifying in size. If he brought it back to the city like this and people saw it, they'd definitely think it was a monster… well, strictly speaking, that guy really was a monster…
Let him go! It just proves we weren't meant to be!