As he fainted, the guy was still cursing his boss in his mind... These people are beyond the control of the state; they're all superhumans... Damn it... If cars can fly, that's high-tech, but... these people can all fly too... God... Can anyone tell me if this is still Earth?
Volume 3, King of the City, Chapter 652: Sleeping in the Same Bed
In the end, the president had no choice but to completely abandon the kidnapping plan for Zhou Ziwei's family. As for the last target, Chu Qiutang, the president did not even consider her and simply ignored her.
After all, in the president's view, Zhou Ziwei and Zhuihun were the key figures in this incident, while Chu Qiutang was simply a minor character. Zhou Ziwei had a legitimate wife at home and a very capable mistress. No matter how you looked at it, Chu Qiutang was an insignificant little character. The president even thought that even if he had the opportunity to kidnap Chu Qiutang herself, Zhou Ziwei might not be willing to make any concessions for her, let alone the guy who actually kidnapped her... that would be a complete waste of time!
If the President knew that Zhou Ziwei immediately sent people to Chu Qiutang's house to protect Chu Qiutang's family after discovering that there were people of unknown origin at his home... he would definitely not think that way.
However, the manpower that Zhou Ziwei hastily transferred is not enough to ensure everything is in order, so if the president really wants to target Chu Qiutang's family, he has a real chance of succeeding.
Unfortunately, the president judged others by his own standards, believing that a woman who was just playing around would not be taken seriously by Zhou Ziwei, so he did not even consider it.
In reality, Zhou Ziwei is a very sentimental person. If Chu Qiutang's family really falls into the hands of the president, Zhou Ziwei will never stand by and watch them be killed. He will make some concessions no matter what.
Of course... if the President really did such a thing, even if Zhou Ziwei backed down at the time, he would inevitably make the President pay a considerable price afterward. So... it's really hard to say whether this is a blessing or a curse...
Zhou Ziwei felt no shame for his opportunistic behavior. He had long disliked the arrogant and conceited attitude of the Americans, and now that he had the opportunity to teach them a lesson, he felt perfectly justified in doing so.
Although Zhou Ziwei's two trips to the United States were filled with bloodshed, he was forced into it by the US military each time.
Zhou Ziwei originally had no intention of causing trouble here; he only wanted to follow the Dragon Group members to complete the mission and retrieve the three water sprite seeds he had brought back from the pilot plane.
However, what followed was that Zhou Ziwei and his group were relentlessly pursued by the M army, who used air force and missiles, and eventually even deployed the army, navy, and air force to intercept them. How could Zhou Ziwei not fight back with all his might?
Zhou Ziwei was pushed to the limit by them. Moreover, if Zhou Ziwei hadn't made preparations in advance and let Xiao Xin control those thirteen nuclear weapons, making the M army hesitant to act, then Zhou Ziwei and Zhuihun might have died in that military base.
So Zhou Ziwei was quite happy to have the opportunity to extort these American devils.
Of course... to take care of Zhuihun's feelings, Zhou Ziwei had also sought Zhuihun's opinion. After all, Zhuihun was also a citizen of the United States. If he was unhappy about the harm he had done to his country, Zhou Ziwei would also feel embarrassed.
However, the result was unexpected. Zhuihun had little sense of belonging to this country. In fact, Zhuihun's ancestors were slaves captured by the people of the United States, and his ancestral home was a small town in Spain.
Although Zhuihun was born and raised in the United States and can be considered a true American citizen, under the influence of his parents, he always identified himself as Spanish and never regarded the United States as his true homeland.
Therefore, when Zhou Ziwei was able to thoroughly thrash the American, Zhuihun not only didn't feel awkward, but seemed even more excited than Zhou Ziwei himself.
After nearly ten days of preparation, the Chinese delegation finally arrived in Washington, the capital of the United States. This time, the Chinese delegation was truly impressive, with more than a dozen heads of state, led by the Vice Premier, several prominent business leaders, and some people involved in project cooperation and development, totaling nearly two hundred people, all of whom came to Washington.
The politically significant Walston Hotel is still under repair, so the delegation had to stay in a business hotel for the time being... Of course, the hotel expenses were all reimbursed by the M country government.
With things having come to this point, the president had no choice but to abandon any other ideas and accept his fate. He then rallied his spirits and began negotiating cooperation matters with the Chinese representatives.
Prior to this, Zhou Ziwei had already reached a preliminary consensus with the president and drafted a preliminary general direction. In any case, no matter what form the cooperation project took, no matter how much trouble was caused, the goal was to make the US side bleed a lot.
Compared to the series of treasonous treaties signed during the Qing Dynasty in China, the only difference is the lack of a specific clause regarding ceding territory and paying indemnities. Although there is no specific clause, the actual benefits are similar. In the next phase, a sizable Chinatown will be built in each of the twelve major cities of the United States. Chinese people opening shops and establishing factories in the Chinatown will enjoy tax-free treatment. Just this alone makes the benefits that Chinese people receive in the United States incalculable. If calculated in detail, this is far more than the territory ceded and indemnities paid by the United States to China.
In addition, China and the United States will also conduct a series of official and non-governmental exchange activities. In short, the goal is to get the Americans to send money to the Chinese in various ways this time.
In any case, if the money from the US doesn't come in properly, Zhou Ziwei won't let those thirteen nuclear weapons go unpunished.
The negotiations lasted for more than three months without ending. Zhou Ziwei naturally had no interest in engaging in verbal sparring with them. More than a month after the negotiations began, Zhou Ziwei and his group of four could no longer tolerate the atmosphere of the negotiations, so they simply took a plane and left Washington, returning to China with the dozen or so family members of the agents rescued from the military base.
Although Zhou Ziwei himself was not in the United States, his deterrent power was not diminished. Whenever Zhou Ziwei received news that the Americans were arguing with them over trivial matters, he would immediately have Xiao Xin do something, such as making those thirteen nuclear weapons spin around on the launch pad.
This tactic is surprisingly effective; as soon as the nuclear weapons are deployed, the negotiations on the other side make significant progress.
The return of Zhou Ziwei and his group was so unexpected that the old leader personally went to the airport to welcome them, which made Zhou Ziwei feel flattered.
However, given his current status and position in the country, coupled with the benefits he secured for his country this time, he deserves this treatment. To be honest, the old leader was quite disapproving of Zhou Ziwei's methods of obtaining benefits, which were almost like those of a kidnapper, but he was quite comfortable with the benefits obtained through such despicable means.
This left Zhou Ziwei speechless. "You get to play the good guy all by yourself, while I'm the bad guy, and all the benefits go to you? Can't you be a little less shameless?"
During Zhou Ziwei's absence, the bidding process for the desertification control project finally came to a conclusion. Zhou Ziwei had specifically instructed that it didn't matter who got the project, as long as Huang Lianshu's Yunzhong International didn't get the opportunity.
The fire lotus used to control the desert was originally a seed brought back by Zhou Ziwei from the pilot plane. Zhou Ziwei naturally had a great deal of control over the application of these seeds. Since Zhou Ziwei had already made the request, the old leader and others would naturally not ignore it. So... the bidding for this desert control project was just a formality. In fact, the project had already been decided by a big shot in Beijing and awarded to Huang Lianshu's Yunzhong International.
But when the time came, things took an inexplicable turn. As a result, Huang Lianshu didn't get a single penny, and the project ended up in a subsidiary of the Zhou Group.
In this way, Huang Lianshu immediately lost the last straw he could grasp. The decline of Yunzhong International has entered its final countdown... Once the deadlines for Huang Lianshu's two separate financing rounds at the Macau finance company are reached, Huang Lianshu will lose everything and have no more glory to his name.
Inside the Zhou family compound, Wang Xuewei, Liu Xiaofei, and a group of other women surrounded Emily as if they were watching a doll, asking her all sorts of questions. Although they didn't know that Emily was actually created by Zhou Ziwei, they had heard Emily say that she was originally a ghost who had been dead for more than ten years, and that Zhou Ziwei had used a magical method to bring her back to life.
This amazed and intrigued the group of beauties, who had no idea that Zhou Ziwei was so capable... and then they couldn't help but start having some different thoughts.
For example... Wang Xuewei wondered if Zhou Ziwei could help her bring her deceased mother back to life.
Liu Xiaofei also considered the possibility of asking Zhou Ziwei to help revive her maternal grandmother, paternal grandmother, and paternal grandfather.
Among the beauties, Luan Yuqing was the most conflicted. She didn't know whether she should bring her ex-boyfriend back to life if she could ask Zhou Ziwei to help her revive someone...
In fact, Luan Yuqing really had nothing to worry about. After all, she was different from Wang Xuewei and Liu Xiaofei. Whether their relationships were legal or illegal, they all considered themselves Zhou Ziwei's women. But Luan Yuqing, as his personal assistant, had never had any ambiguous relationship with Zhou Ziwei.
In fact, since Luan Yuqing came to Dangyang with Zhou Ziwei, as time went by, she had gradually begun to forget her ex-boyfriend.
This doesn't necessarily mean that Luan Yuqing is promiscuous. After all, people's persistence always fades with the passage of time. Zhou Ziwei had once impersonated Luan Yuqing's ex-boyfriend, which made Luan Yuqing have a complicated and unresolved feeling towards Zhou Ziwei from the very beginning.
Luan Yuqing had also considered being like Liu Xiaofei, even if it meant being Zhou Ziwei's secret mistress. As long as Zhou Ziwei truly cherished her, she would rather not have any official status.
However, it seems that there are quite a few women who want to be Zhou Ziwei's mistress. Besides Chu Qiutang, whom Zhou Ziwei brought back from the United States, there are two other beautiful snakes who have followed him from China. These two sisters seem to have a plan to stick with Zhou Ziwei. The day after they learned that Zhou Ziwei had returned, they came to his door together.
Zhou Ziwei had casually abandoned them in Zhongdu, assuming the two sisters had long since disappeared. He never expected them to reappear on their own initiative. Zhou Ziwei was even planning to rely on them to lead the way to take down the Black God's lair, so he was quite pleased to see them come to him.
What frustrated Zhou Ziwei was that... after these two beautiful snake women arrived at the Zhou family's residence, they actually joined the gossipy women in researching the topic of resurrection and rebirth.
When Zhou Ziwei discovered the beautiful women's thoughts, he was immediately startled. At the same time, he secretly blamed Emily for talking nonsense and spreading the story of resurrection. If everyone believed that he, Zhou Ziwei, could really bring people who had been dead for many years back to life and came to him one after another, then... his future days would probably be quite miserable.
So Zhou Ziwei had no choice but to explain to them that he couldn't really bring the dead back to life at will. One very important point was that while bringing the dead back to life wasn't absolutely possible, the soul of the deceased had to be properly protected and undamaged before there was any possibility of resurrection.
Another point is that... the price to resurrect a person is quite high. At least Zhou Ziwei stated that he might not be able to resurrect a second person for several years.
The implication was that these beauties should give up on the idea as soon as possible and stop thinking about it. Otherwise, it would be useless to keep thinking about it, as Zhou Ziwei would never be able to use the last half of his soul power to create a second human.
Moreover, these women have very rich imaginations and their hearts are easily overflowing with love. I'm afraid that they won't just ask Zhou Ziwei to bring their deceased relatives back to life; they might even ask him to bring back the kittens and puppies they raised in their childhood out of sheer boredom. It's not impossible that they'll ask him to bring them back to life as well...
After explaining the main points of the matter in a few words, Zhou Ziwei immediately fled and went to greet his parents from his previous life.
Poor Mr. and Mrs. Yang had already somewhat accepted the lie about reincarnation, believing that their precious son had been reborn after his death, so it was most reasonable for him to be five or six years old now.
But now... when a young man who was over 1.8 meters tall and had a good figure and appearance suddenly ran over and said that he was the two old men's son in their previous life, the former Yang Hongtao, the two old men were immediately dumbfounded.
Where did this grown son come from? It seems their son has only been dead for five or six years, while this kid is already more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old... Helpless, Zhou Ziwei had no choice but to have another heart-to-heart talk with his parents, telling them about his childhood. They talked for several hours before his parents finally reluctantly accepted the appearance of this adopted son.
As for Yu Xiaoru, she was much more receptive than the old lady. Moreover, she had already been intimate with Zhou Ziwei, so she could easily distinguish between the real and fake Zhou Ziwei.
Now that things had come to this, Zhou Ziwei no longer intended to hide his true identity from his female confidantes. He immediately gathered all the women together and recounted his past life as Yang Hongtao, how he was framed and killed by Huang Lianshu, how his soul remained immortal after death, becoming an ornament on the chest of the former Zhou Ziwei, and how, through a series of coincidences, he encountered an assassin who killed the former Zhou Ziwei. In this way, he was reborn in the body of the former Zhou Ziwei, living on in place of the original Zhou Ziwei...
Upon hearing Zhou Ziwei's words, the most surprised were undoubtedly Yu Xiaoru and Wang Xuewei. Yu Xiaoru had not expected that Zhou Ziwei had not been reincarnated after his death, but had instead come to possess another body. Before this, Zhou Ziwei had visited them in Zhongdu more than once.
Wang Xuewei was astonished to discover that her husband had been replaced without her noticing. Although he looked the same on the outside, who could know that while his body remained the same, his soul was completely different? No wonder she used to despise and loathe this nominal husband, but now she loved him to death. It turned out that while his outward appearance remained the same, his inner self had been completely changed; he was a bizarre composite.
Regardless of their astonishment, one thing pleased Zhou Ziwei greatly: no one felt any aversion towards him after hearing that he was a reincarnated soul. They could still comfortably snuggle in his arms and act coquettishly. In fact, when they learned that Zhou Ziwei had endured so much hardship to achieve his current strength and status, they couldn't help but feel a surge of maternal love, almost spoiling this man who had lived two lives like an emperor.
For the first time ever, Zhou Ziwei even got to experience the wonderful feeling of sleeping in the same bed and under the same blankets with several beautiful women.
In fact, Zhou Ziwei was quite formidable in that aspect of his manhood, and no woman could possibly serve him well on her own. This time, his dream came true, leaving Zhou Ziwei grinning from ear to ear for several days.
Volume 3, King of the City, Chapter 653: The Car Chase
The research on flying cars has been put on the right track, and the first batch of prototype cars has even been modified. Now all of Zhou's high-end cars have the ability to fly, and the speed is quite fast, with a top speed of 1,500 kilometers per hour, which is even faster than most airplanes.
However, this part of the research is still highly classified. When the Zhou family members occasionally feel the urge, they can only drive to a completely deserted location late at night to have a proper test flight.
Moreover, such test flights are conducted with great restraint to prevent this advanced technology from being revealed prematurely.
However, no matter how careful they were, the fact that the Zhou family owned a flying car was still leaked through the four assassins and intelligence agents from the United States during the last kidnapping incident.
By now, although it's not yet common knowledge, it has at least spread among the high-level officials of major countries.
As cities around the world develop, some developed countries have already begun research on flying cars. After all, urban traffic conditions have become increasingly worse with the development of social productivity. In some large cities, there are already problems with cars, and it is even necessary to restrict some vehicles to only be on the road at certain times to alleviate traffic congestion.
To solve this situation, widening the roads is not very realistic. After all, a city has already been fully built up, and widening the roads now would be almost equivalent to tearing down and rebuilding the entire city.
Even if the road really needs to be widened, it should be done gradually. When some buildings are old and need to be demolished and rebuilt in the future, the width of the road can be gradually increased by modifying the construction design drawings.
If we were to widen all the roads in the city using this method, who knows how many decades it would take...
Flying cars are clearly a good way to alleviate traffic problems. If we can really develop affordable, practical, and reasonably priced family flying cars, then we can naturally divide the sky above the city into several layers of virtual flight routes. At that time, the roads will suddenly become several or even more than ten layers. Even if there are two or three times more cars in the city, there will be no more traffic jams.
In fact, some countries have been conducting research in this area for a long time and have achieved certain results.
However, the samples produced by the research are clearly not up to standard, with a low safety factor and frequent breakdowns.
If it's a regular car, breaking down on the road is no big deal; at most, it will only delay you a little.
But if this flying car breaks down in mid-air... that would be a huge disaster. Not only would the people on board be in danger, but if the car crashes while flying over a city, who knows how many people it could kill...
Another point is that the flying cars they are currently developing are basically based on aerospace technology research, which has led to the astonishingly high cost of their flying car prototypes, which is definitely more expensive than a medium-sized aircraft.
Even if the safety issues are resolved and this thing can be mass-produced, how many people can actually afford it? In the end, won't it just become a status symbol for the wealthy and powerful to flaunt their wealth and alleviate urban traffic congestion? If only three to five people in a city can afford such a flying car, it will naturally become a rare commodity. Once this flying car takes off and flies through the air in a flash, it will attract the attention of countless pedestrians and drivers on the road. Amidst the surprise and envy, who knows how many car accidents will occur... Therefore, such flying cars will not only fail to alleviate urban traffic congestion, but will instead become a source of car accidents.
As for the speed of this flying car... if it wants to maintain the shape of a traditional car, it will obviously have a serious impact on this. After all, the shape of an airplane is designed based on the principles of aerodynamics to be the most suitable shape for flight, while the shape of a car is obviously not. Its square shape significantly limits the speed of flight.
If it retains its original shape, this flying car can only reach a speed of 300 to 400 kilometers per hour, which is even slower than some high-end sports cars on land.
And look at the flying car that the Zhou family researched—it can reach speeds of 1,500 meters per hour! Although this data has not been circulated, the scene of Liu Xiaofei driving away was captured on video by the Americans. After this precious video data was sent back, it was not difficult for experts to determine the car's speed through analysis.
Judging from the footage alone, the car's top speed reached 1,220 kilometers per hour, which was clearly not its maximum speed.
What's even more astonishing is... that car's instantaneous acceleration reached 600 kilometers per hour—what an incredible number!
The car went from a complete standstill to 600 kilometers per hour in an instant, which not only demonstrated the excellence of its power system, but also... the terrifying physical abilities of the driver.
If the video hadn't clearly shown that the person sitting in the car was a delicate and beautiful woman, Liu Xiaofei, the renowned president of the Zhou Group, they would have thought she was a bio-special forces soldier who had undergone mutation training...
It's important to understand that the pressure from such instantaneous acceleration is terrifying. For an ordinary person, just this one moment could cause severe damage to their internal organs, or even lead to vomiting blood and death.
Liu Xiaofei, however, endured it with a nonchalant air, which shows how strong her physical fitness is.
After reaching this conclusion, the president's aides told him, somewhat amused and exasperated, that even if Liu Xiaofei had been driving an ordinary car and had been ambushed by the four assassins, they might not have been able to kidnap her, let alone have possessed such a magical flying car.
In terms of physical fitness alone, Liu Xiaofei is far superior to those four assassins. Even if her specific fighting skills are slightly inferior, she still has a significant advantage. So, if a fight really breaks out, those four assassins have a good chance of killing Liu Xiaofei on the spot, but kidnapping her unharmed is completely impossible.
Would they really dare to harm Liu Xiaofei? In fact, if they did dare to do so... then Zhou Ziwei might completely disregard the national situation, social harmony, and the lives of innocent people... He would directly order Xiao Xin to launch those thirteen nuclear weapons immediately and first massacre twelve major cities in the United States!
Zhou Ziwei has never been the kind of person who would sacrifice himself for the greater good. In his heart, the lives and deaths of hundreds of millions of people in the entire United States are probably not as important as a single hair on Liu Xiaofei's head. If that guy really dares to hurt Liu Xiaofei, Zhou Ziwei would not mind another country paying the price for Liu Xiaofei's death.
The president's hatred for Zhou Ziwei is like a raging flood. Because this shameful act of treason is still ongoing and China and the United States have not yet reached a complete and comprehensive cooperation agreement, the president is still needed to play the role of the traitor and bear the infamy of today's events.
Once this matter is completely settled and brought to a close, and Zhou Ziwei relinquishes control of the thirteen nuclear weapons as agreed, then... it will be time for this once-powerful president to be slunk off the stage.