Since there's no need to consider whether the corpse has any disabilities or what illness it suffered from before it died, the soul-chasing process has far more options.
So Zhuihun spent about half an hour carefully comparing each of the female corpses of suitable age, and finally selected the body of a girl who looked to be only sixteen or seventeen years old and who appeared to have died in a car accident.
The girl's body wasn't too badly damaged; her chest was just caved in, suggesting that some of her internal organs were probably ruptured. This gave Zhuihun quite a headache. Although he had witnessed Zhou Ziwei's amazing ability to regenerate severed limbs, whether this ability could also repair ruptured internal organs was still a question. But Zhuihun couldn't very well take out his own intestines, cut them off, and then force Zhou Ziwei to repair them for him to see!
However, the girl's appearance was so similar to that of her daughter when she was alive that Zhuihun couldn't help but be moved when he saw the female corpse. So he hesitated for more than half an hour before finally making up his mind.
Ultimately, the main concern was that the woman's internal organs were so severely damaged that if Zhou Ziwei didn't have the ability to repair them, he probably wouldn't be able to revive her from the corpse at all!
As expected, Zhou Ziwei showed no hesitation after learning that Zhuihun had chosen such a corpse. He nodded, confirmed it again, and then told Zhuihun to immediately carry the female corpse and leave.
After all, this is the hospital morgue, and the relatives of the deceased may come at any time. Zhou Ziwei wants to resurrect the daughter who is chasing the soul, which will probably take a little time. If he stays here, he may be disturbed by others. So it is better to leave here and find a quiet place to do it.
Although the wounds on the girl's corpse were not very noticeable, they could not be fully repaired without the absorption of external substances. So, before leaving, Zhou Ziwei unceremoniously broke off an arm from the corpse and took it with him.
Although Zhou Ziwei wouldn't indiscriminately harm innocent people, he felt no guilt whatsoever about how he treated these corpses, completely disregarding them.
Zhuihun had just witnessed Zhou Ziwei reattaching his severed finger. He knew that although Zhou Ziwei could regenerate limbs, the severed limb needed flesh and blood to absorb nutrients for it to grow. He couldn't truly create something from nothing. So when he saw Zhou Ziwei break off a dead man's arm and put it on, he felt even more at ease.
There weren't many obvious wounds on the girl's body, so it shouldn't require much flesh and blood to fully repair it; a severed arm would suffice.
As usual, the two men swaggered out of the morgue, each carrying their spoils from the trip. The red-nosed old man guarding the door was dumbfounded. He felt that the two men looked very familiar, but he couldn't remember when he had seen them before, let alone when they had gone in.
After a moment of stunned silence, the old man remembered his duty and knew he couldn't allow the two to take away someone else's body. He quickly shouted at them to stop, and reached for the alarm button. But before he could press it, he suddenly felt the little boy give him a very "gentle" look. Then his mind went blank, and when he came to, everyone was gone. He couldn't even remember what had happened...
The two people, along with a corpse and a dead man's arm, once again stepped onto the flying boat made of countless strange black metals and flew hundreds of kilometers in one breath. Finally, they chose a desolate, uninhabited mountain and landed there.
"Crack crack crack..." With a strange sound, the magical artifact that was just like a flying boat transformed into a huge drill in the blink of an eye. It then carved out a cave more than ten meters deep in a steep rock face, which served as a temporary operating room for Zhou Ziwei.
The entrance to this cave is a narrow door, only one meter wide, but the inside is extremely spacious. Once it is dug out, as long as Soul Chaser guards the entrance, even if a thousand troops come together, no one will be able to break into this cave.
Using magical artifacts for excavation is so much easier. If ordinary people were to dig such a large cave, which is completely carved out of the rock, even if they used a lot of explosives and various excavation tools, it would probably take them eight to ten days to dig it to this size.
However, Zhui Hun himself used his Hundred Transformations technique to excavate, and it took him less than ten minutes to complete the entire excavation. In the end, he even specially carved a stone platform in the shape of an operating table in the center of the stone chamber.
Zhou Ziwei was very satisfied with the efficiency. The thought of such a powerful figure becoming his personal henchman for the next three years filled him with secret joy. Moreover, Zhou Ziwei was very confident that once he got Zhuihun hooked, he wouldn't just be stuck as a henchman for three years; he probably wouldn't be able to escape for thirty years. Of course... all of this had one prerequisite: Zhou Ziwei had to be able to create an independent soul within a human body, and... this independent soul had to be very similar to Zhuihun's daughter, so similar that Zhuihun wouldn't be able to detect any flaws.
Otherwise... if Zhuihun were to find out that the person he created wasn't his daughter at all, then... the consequences would be truly unimaginable...
When Zhou Ziwei recited the Six-Syllable Mantra in the sanatorium last time, he didn't absorb many souls. Therefore, after learning that he had unintentionally absorbed the soul of the daughter of the King of Assassins, Zhou Ziwei searched through the newly acquired soul memories. Since he hadn't categorized these soul memories before, he quickly found what he was looking for.
After absorbing a large amount of soul energy from the outside world, Zhou Ziwei would usually do a rough sorting of the accompanying soul memories. After all, although Zhou Ziwei's sea of souls was extremely vast, it was impossible for it to contain the soul memories of tens of thousands of people. Therefore, after each new gain, Zhou Ziwei had to take this step to completely discard the useless soul memories.
Only some practical memories remain.
Fortunately, Zhou Ziwei had just absorbed those soul energies and hadn't had time to process them yet. Otherwise... if he had already dispelled or scattered the memory left by Zhuihun's daughter's soul, then everything would be over. Zhou Ziwei would have no better options than to wait for Zhuihun to fight him to the death.
As Zhou Ziwei's strength increased, the soul memories he could obtain after absorbing the energy of a soul became more complete, and he would no longer only get some messy and fragmented memories as he did at the beginning.
However, the "completeness" mentioned here is only relative to the past; even if it is completely complete, it cannot be the same as a living person.
This experiment is definitely a major milestone for Zhou Ziwei in his soul ability. If it succeeds today, it will mean that Zhou Ziwei can really create a living person.
Although creating a life from an existing corpse is incomparable to the legendary gods who could create humans out of thin air, Zhou Ziwei still had enough to be proud of with this extraordinary ability.
In the hospital morgue, Zhou Ziwei had already conducted a rigorous examination of the corpse that Zhuihun had chosen. However, to be on the safe side, he conducted a thorough inspection once more, gaining a clear understanding of the fatal wounds on the body. Only in this way could Zhou Ziwei heal the body's serious injuries as quickly as possible after an independent soul emerged from the corpse. Otherwise... there was no guarantee that the person would die again as soon as she was revived, which would be a tragedy for Zhou Ziwei.
After repeatedly examining the female corpse and using his soul power to see through it almost from head to toe, Zhou Ziwei finally made preparations. He then gestured to Zhuihun, instructing him to guard the door, and began his great attempt to create a new life.
A wisp of pure liquid soul power shot out from between Zhou Ziwei's eyebrows, flowing straight into the female corpse's body, and then condensed at a point in the female corpse's head.
Although this was only the first attempt to create a human being, Zhou Ziwei's past experience had taught him that the more advanced the animal or machine, the more difficult it would be to generate an independent soul within it.
Despite having over a million units of soul power stored up, Zhou Ziwei had no idea how much it would take to create a human. In fact, it wasn't impossible for him to exhaust all his stored soul power.
Under normal circumstances, Zhou Ziwei would likely wait until his soul power reserves broke through the ten million mark, allowing his soul power to be upgraded in quality, before trying to see if he had the ability to create humans. However, this time, by chance, he had provoked the King of Assassins, Zhui Hun, and Zhou Ziwei had no choice but to fight desperately. Either he would fight Zhui Hun to the death, or he would desperately try to see if he could create a high-level independent soul in a human body.
Volume 3, King of the City, Chapter 602: Sea of Souls
Zhou Ziwei was well aware that raising his soul power to over ten million would be an extremely difficult task. After all, the world was only so big, and if there were no wars or plagues, how many souls would he have to absorb to accumulate ten million soul power?
Moreover, Zhou Ziwei's soul power was still being consumed. Even though Zhou Ziwei usually avoided using his soul power whenever possible using natural energy, this consumption was still unavoidable.
In many cases, the income is even insufficient to cover the expenses, and it is quite normal for the soul power to decrease as soon as it is put to use.
Another problem that gave Zhou Ziwei a headache was that... he was now much more efficient at absorbing soul power using the Six-Syllable Mantra. Although he didn't know exactly how large the area the Six-Syllable Mantra could cover, a conservative estimate would be at least a dozen kilometers in radius.
However, the larger the range of the Six-Syllable Mantra, the more uncontrollable it becomes. So far, Zhou Ziwei has offended two masters twice because of the Six-Syllable Mantra. Who knows if he will offend a third or fourth master in the future?
It's important to understand that both the burlap monster we encountered last time and the King of Assassins, Soul Chaser, this time, were major troubles. If Zhou Ziwei's strength had been even slightly weaker, he might have been in danger of dying.
If such farcical incidents continue to occur, then Zhou Ziwei will never have a moment's peace. Dealing with these unintentionally offended people every day will drive him crazy.
Therefore, Zhou Ziwei became even more eager to cultivate the spiritual martial arts techniques. After all, although the spiritual energy cultivated by those techniques was different from his soul power, it could be used in many ways. And most importantly... that kind of spiritual energy would be replenished on its own after it was consumed, which made Zhou Ziwei extremely envious.
Although Zhou Ziwei had previously obtained a cultivation method for spiritual energy from Ono Yuko, that woman followed the path of a lustful woman. To succeed in cultivating spiritual energy, one had to indulge in lust every day, doing whatever was most lewd.
Zhou Ziwei had no intention of turning himself into the world's number one stud just to practice this. Besides, Ono Yuko had gone through all that trouble, doing all sorts of shameless things, even going so far as to become an AV actress. But despite all that, the little bit of spiritual energy she had cultivated was truly pitiful in Zhou Ziwei's eyes.
Therefore, Zhou Ziwei had serious doubts about the spiritual energy cultivation method that Ono Yuko regarded as a treasure.
Now Zhou Ziwei finally has the opportunity to acquire a high-level cultivation technique. This Soul Chaser is the undisputed king of assassins in the assassin world, and his vast spiritual energy, which seems to never be exhausted, is even more astonishing. It goes without saying that if cultivation techniques for spiritual energy were to be divided into high and low grades, then the technique that Soul Chaser practices would definitely be the top-tier one.
Someone like Zhuihun would probably treasure his cultivation techniques and wouldn't easily reveal them to others, so it wouldn't be easy for anyone to become his disciple.
However... now that Zhou Ziwei has "resurrected" Zhuihun's daughter, it's likely that Zhuihun will eventually teach her this top-tier spiritual cultivation method.
However... the "daughter" of the Soul Chaser that Zhou Ziwei resurrected was actually a body controlled by an independent soul entity with a master-slave relationship with Zhou Ziwei. They had an irresistible ability to communicate with each other through their souls. Therefore, as long as the Soul Chaser passed on the cultivation technique to his daughter, Zhou Ziwei would naturally know everything.
Although it might seem a bit unethical to do this, Zhou Ziwei couldn't care less about that now.
Zhou Ziwei had originally considered asking Zhuihun directly for the reward of reviving his daughter using the cultivation techniques he had practiced, but after thinking about it, he felt it was really inappropriate.
If Zhou Ziwei were to use his daughter's life as leverage to make a demand of Zhuihun, Zhuihun would likely agree. However, once Zhou Ziwei actually resurrects his daughter, who knows if he would still be grateful and repay him with a genuine cultivation technique? What if… this guy comes up with a counterfeit technique to fool Zhou Ziwei? Wouldn't Zhou Ziwei be in trouble then? Moreover, now that Zhou Ziwei has considered this possibility, even if Zhuihun does offer a genuine original technique, would Zhou Ziwei dare to practice it with peace of mind?
Since Zhuihun only had one daughter, and he had carefully preserved her soul even after so many years of her death, it was clear how much he loved her. Therefore, it wouldn't be long before he taught her all his unparalleled skills. Even if he was inherently harsh and suspicious, the techniques he taught his daughter would certainly be genuine, and Zhou Ziwei could learn the correct methods from them. Therefore, there was no need for him to risk directly asking Zhuihun for them.
A vast amount of soul power, like an uninterrupted stream, shot out from between Zhou Ziwei's eyebrows and then condensed at a point in the female corpse's brain.
More and more soul power converged at one point, gradually forming a chaotic vortex.
This vortex was only a tiny speck, smaller than a grain of millet, but strangely, the continuous flow of soul power injected into this tiny speck was completely swallowed up by the vortex, as if it were a mud ox entering the sea, without any sign of overflowing.
As he sensed the ever-growing depth and boundlessness emerging from that tiny vortex, Zhou Ziwei suddenly understood that his creation of an independent soul entity using his soul power was essentially equivalent to creating an artificial sea of souls.
The independent souls created within the bodies of those little Kun pets were created in the same way, and the same principle applies to the independent souls created within objects that were originally inanimate.
However, those seas of souls created from small insects or other inanimate objects are too rudimentary and crude to be called seas of souls; they can barely be called pools of souls.
One is like a vast, boundless ocean, while the other is merely a small pool of water. The difference between the two is naturally enormous. Therefore, Zhou Ziwei can create several small Kun pets without even blinking an eye, and can create many in an instant. However, creating a true sea of souls within a person's mind is still an unimaginably difficult problem.
Creating Shin-chan last time cost Zhou Ziwei a staggering 120,000 units of soul power—the most he'd ever used in a single instance. At the time, Zhou Ziwei estimated that the complexity of that tiny chip was comparable to a human brain, so the enormous amount of soul power consumed wasn't unexpected. And if Zhou Ziwei's estimation was correct, then creating a genuine artificial sea of souls within a real human body shouldn't require significantly more soul power than creating Shin-chan.
But the result... after all 100,000 units of soul power were poured in, the small, constantly spinning vortex remained like a bottomless pit, without any reaction whatsoever.
Although Zhou Ziwei was somewhat disappointed, it wasn't entirely unexpected, so he managed to remain calm and continue to pour out his soul power, desperately trying to fill that bottomless pit...
Even with two hundred thousand units of soul power fully invested, the small vortex still surged like an insatiable wolf, and Zhou Ziwei's expression turned slightly grim...
The power of 300,000 souls sank completely into the vortex, making the small vortex even deeper and more boundless, seemingly without any other reaction. Beads of cold sweat had already seeped from Zhou Ziwei's forehead... Meanwhile, the Soul Chaser, who was responsible for guarding the entrance of the cave, was already speechless with shock.
Such powerful, pure, and abundant spiritual energy...
Although Zhou Ziwei could distinguish the difference between the spiritual power cultivated by these spiritual warriors and his unique soul power, the spiritual warriors could not tell the difference between the two at all.
For example, when Zhuihun sensed the soul power constantly surging from between Zhou Ziwei's eyebrows, he assumed that this should also be a type of spiritual power cultivated by spiritual martial artists. However, he felt that Zhou Ziwei's "spiritual power" was more condensed and abundant than that of ordinary spiritual martial artists.
Zhuihun had indeed sparred with Zhou Ziwei, but since the two had never truly fought head-on, he still couldn't accurately assess Zhou Ziwei's strength. Moreover, whether it was the aerial chase or the underground escape, Zhou Ziwei displayed a peculiar energy that Zhuihun found extremely strange.
In short, he still thought that Zhou Ziwei should not be a spiritual martial artist, but rather a physical martial artist.
Although physical warriors should not have the ability to fly, those who can fly are generally spiritual warriors.
However… among spiritual warriors, there has never been anyone who could fly without the power of a spiritual weapon, so he could only categorize Zhou Ziwei as an unconventional physical warrior. However, to Zhuihun's utter surprise, Zhou Ziwei displayed such profound spiritual power when resurrecting his daughter.
At first, Zhuihun was only slightly surprised, but he didn't pay much attention to it. After all, there were geniuses who cultivated both physical and spiritual martial arts in the past. However, most of these geniuses were neither good enough for high-level nor low-level skills. At the beginning, they could show that they were much stronger than those who only cultivated one lineage. But the later they went, the more their shortcomings would become apparent.
When Zhuihun discovered that Zhou Ziwei was actually a practitioner of both physical and spiritual martial arts, he felt sorry for Zhou Ziwei. He wondered which foolish master had led such a promising talent astray. Wasn't this misleading a young man?
However, at this moment, Zhou Ziwei was reviving his daughter, so Zhuihun naturally couldn't say anything and just watched silently from the side.
But then he gradually realized that the spiritual power released by Zhou Ziwei was exceptionally condensed, and the characteristics he displayed were quite different from others.
While secretly puzzled, Zhuihun thought more highly of Zhou Ziwei. He began to believe that if Zhou Ziwei abandoned the physical martial arts lineage as soon as possible and focused on spiritual martial arts, he would definitely shine in the near future. It was not impossible for him to surpass him, the King of Assassins, one day.
However, as time passed, when Zhuihun realized that Zhou Ziwei's "spiritual power" continuously shooting out from between his eyebrows showed no signs of weakening even after so long, Zhuihun was finally completely shocked.
Although Zhuihun hadn't actually tried it, he was very clear about one thing: if he were to relentlessly unleash his spiritual power like Zhou Ziwei, he probably wouldn't be able to last this long.
However, although Zhou Ziwei's forehead was covered in cold sweat, his spiritual energy output had not fluctuated at all from beginning to end.
This alone is already incredibly difficult.
It is important to know that the stability of spiritual energy output is directly related to a spiritual warrior's control over spiritual energy, and the degree of control over spiritual energy directly determines the flexibility of manipulating spiritual weapons.
Therefore... Zhou Ziwei's performance at this moment was simply shameful to Zhuihun, because at the very least... Zhuihun certainly couldn't guarantee that he could maintain the same output frequency for such a long time. Such stable spiritual power output ability was simply outrageously strong. If this were used to control a spiritual weapon, how effortlessly it would be...
Little did Zhuihun know that although this was Zhou Ziwei's first time creating a human, he had previously created many independent souls for non-living entities and even small insects... And regardless of the life form, the creation of an independent soul required absolute stability in the output of soul power, without any deviation, otherwise the entire effort would be wasted. Therefore, over time, it was impossible for Zhou Ziwei not to have profound control over soul power...
Unbeknownst to him, Zhuihun's attitude towards Zhou Ziwei had begun to shift from that of an elder towards an outstanding junior to that of a strong person of equal strength.
As Zhou Ziwei continuously unleashed a full 400,000 units of soul power at the female corpse, Zhuihun began to look at Zhou Ziwei with a slightly admiring gaze.
At this point, Zhou Ziwei was already secretly complaining.
Four hundred thousand units of soul power… God be my witness, what an incredibly powerful force that is… How could creating a sea of souls out of thin air consume so much… Generally speaking… doesn’t an ordinary person’s sea of souls only contain a dozen or twenty units of soul power? How could creating a sea of souls from a corpse require such a huge amount of energy? This is just too disproportionate!
Over 400,000... This consumption is almost equivalent to half of Zhou Ziwei's stored energy. How much effort would it take to accumulate 400,000 spiritual power... Now, for this unlucky kid, he has to lose it all at once, which really makes Zhou Ziwei feel somewhat unwilling...
However, no matter how much Zhou Ziwei regretted it or how unwilling he was, there was nothing he could do. After all, he had already sacrificed more than 400,000 units of soul power. If he gave up now, all of these 400,000 units of soul power would be wasted and would all turn into a chaotic mass of energy that would scatter in all directions.
No matter how much Zhou Ziwei chanted the Six-Syllable Mantra, it was useless.
So, in order not to let these 400,000+ units of soul power go to waste, Zhou Ziwei had no choice but to grit his teeth and persevere, hoping... hoping that he could successfully condense an independent soul entity before his soul power was completely exhausted! In any case, as long as he could successfully create a person, it would fulfill a dream that Zhou Ziwei had had since he acquired this special ability!
Five hundred thousand units of soul power were consumed, and the onlooker, Soul Chaser, began to go from a dazed state to numbness, while Zhou Ziwei went from being covered in sweat to being calm and composed.
I only have a little over a million units of soul power. I've already used up half a million, so I only have less than six hundred thousand left. I might as well give it my all and try. As long as I can succeed, I'll be willing to throw all of these million units of soul power into it.
Even if he doesn't succeed, he should be able to roughly guess the amount of energy required to successfully condense an artificial human soul! So if there's another opportunity like this next time... Zhou Ziwei will definitely succeed in one fell swoop.
Creating humankind... What a great and sacred mission that is! This is an honor that has always been reserved for powerful beings like God, Buddha, and Nuwa, the creators of the universe.
Now that Zhou Ziwei has the opportunity to participate in this large-scale experiment, he has no choice but to grit his teeth and persevere...