After hearing Masao Mita's report, Zhou Ziwei nodded with satisfaction and gave a few more instructions, telling Masao Mita to focus on this matter in the near future and to make sure that Yunzhong International was taken over no matter what. He wanted Huang Lianshu to be ruined and disgraced.
The acquisition of this company couldn't be done in a day or two. Zhou Ziwei wasn't in a hurry to completely crush Yunzhong International right away. He just paid attention to it for a while and then put it aside for the time being.
A group of more than a dozen people boarded a medium-sized military transport plane and flew directly to Dangyang that afternoon.
Because Yang's parents and Yu Xiaoru, who were not military personnel, were on the plane, the members of the Dragon Group were relatively well-behaved. They remained silent and rested with their eyes closed. However, one girl with a pale face looked uneasy. She kept glancing around and sometimes leaned out of the plane window to look out. Her already pale face became increasingly bloodless.
"What's wrong... witch, did you sense something?" Sensing the girl's unease, Bullet's expression immediately turned grim, and he quickly asked her loudly.
Hearing the call of the bullet, Zhou Ziwei, nicknamed "Witch," remembered the person's information. Almost every member of the Dragon Group had their own nickname, just like pinball or bullet. In the words of the famous martial arts novelist Gu Long, "A person's name may be wrong, but a person's nickname will never be wrong."
The information states that this girl, nicknamed "Witch," comes from an ethnic minority in Yunnan and learned a strange divination technique from the elders of her tribe from a young age.
This divination technique is extremely accurate; almost every time a divination yields a result, it will be correct nine times out of ten.
Of course... this kind of divination is not prophecy. It cannot clearly see what will happen in the future, nor can it accurately predict the past. However... if it is just a divination for a certain mission or the direction to be traveled, there is almost no possibility of error.
It's unrealistic to expect specific information from divination when it comes to a task, but this witch was quite confident in predicting good and bad fortune.
Otherwise, how could someone like the witch, who has almost no personal combat ability, have entered the country's secret military group, the Dragon Group?
And the facts have proven that the witch's importance in the Dragon Group is irreplaceable. In the nineteen missions that the Dragon Group has taken on in the past three years, although the witch only performed divination three times, she almost fell into the enemy's trap and was trapped in a death trap in all three of them. If the witch had not sensed the danger in advance and performed a formal divination, and used the divination results to avoid disaster, then the Dragon Group might have been wiped out three times by now.
The reason the witch only performed divination three times out of nineteen missions was because this divination technique was extremely harmful to the human body. After each divination, the witch seemed to have been seriously ill, and her body was so weak that she looked like she might die at any moment.
The subsequent divination would also cause permanent damage to the witch's body, and even seriously affect the length of her life.
Therefore, unless there is an absolute necessity, a witch will not easily resort to divination.
Fortunately, even without using divination, the witch could sense the approaching danger and even clearly perceive the degree of danger.
And it was through this non-divination intuition of the witch that she saved the entire team's lives more than once.
The witch's divination skills come at a great cost every time they are used, and once used, it is impossible to perform a second divination for at least several days.
Therefore, a witch will only perform a divination at the cost of shortening her lifespan if she senses that an extremely serious danger is about to befall them. If she only senses that some danger may be coming, she will simply tell everyone to be extra careful.
Seeing the witch's restless appearance, Bullet's face immediately turned ugly.
Since this wasn't their first collaboration, the members of the Dragon Group naturally had a tacit understanding with each other.
As soon as the bullet saw the witch's uneasy expression, it could roughly guess the extent of the danger that was about to occur.
If Bullet's guess is correct, the danger that the Dragon Group is about to face is quite significant, but it hasn't reached the point where a single misstep would mean certain death. That's why the witch seems so helpless and hesitant now.
The danger is considerable. If she doesn't conduct a relatively detailed divination at this time, she won't be able to find out where the danger comes from, or how to take the initiative to prevent this crisis in advance.
But this time the danger isn't the kind that's extremely critical, and their group hasn't even officially started the mission yet... So what if the witch uses her divination powers here now, and then they encounter an even greater danger and desperate situation, but the witch no longer has the ability to divine? Then... wouldn't they die a terrible death?
However, if they didn't use their divination abilities... Bullet was quite worried about whether their group could escape this trip, which didn't seem very pleasant. After all, they were high in the sky, and if any danger suddenly appeared there, wouldn't that be a terrible thing? Even the smallest accident could be enough to kill everyone on the plane.
"What should we do? Witch... How serious is the danger this time?" Bullet pondered blankly for a moment, unable to make up his mind, so he had no choice but to ask the witch for her opinion. After all, those terrifying premonitions of danger all came from the witch herself, and she was the one who had the most say in making any decisions.
“Very dangerous… extremely dangerous…” Upon hearing this, the witch’s expression became even more solemn. She tilted her head and thought for a few seconds before saying, “But I have a feeling from my instincts… we shouldn’t die this time.”
"Oh...that's good..." Upon hearing this, Bullet breathed a sigh of relief. No matter what, as long as she could survive, what did she have to worry about? As for the dangers and hardships she might suffer, she didn't care much. After all, they were the Republic's most elite special forces team, and they were almost mythical legends in the Republic.
This legendary team grew slowly through countless bloody battles and arduous training. So once Zidan was certain that no one would die in this danger, she no longer needed to worry about anything else.
However, while bullets might be irrelevant, Zhou Ziwei could not afford to be. Besides him and all twelve other members of the Dragon Group, there were also Zhou Ziwei's parents from his previous life and Yu Xiaoru, the woman from this life, on the plane.
Yu Xiaoru and her group are not Dragon Group members who need to go through life-and-death trials and slowly grow from blood and fire; they are just ordinary people who cannot withstand any fright or danger.
So after a slight hesitation, Zhou Ziwei immediately jumped up and walked to the witch, saying with a stern face, "I hope you can perform a divination immediately. Since you are certain that we will encounter danger, then I need to know where the danger comes from. Otherwise... this is on an airplane. If something happens to this plane, everyone here will surely die."
The witch was slightly taken aback upon hearing this, and then her expression became hesitant.
She was well aware that relying solely on her own intuition about good or bad fortune could sometimes be inaccurate, and these inaccuracies could sometimes turn into the most dangerous contingencies...
For example, if she predicts that someone will trip and fall, it's not a big deal in the witch's eyes, so it might not seem very dangerous to her.
However, if this person is walking on a cliff face... then if he falls at that time, it could very well lead to his death.
This illustrates the significant differences that arise from varying levels of danger perception and specific environmental conditions.
If... such a difference were to occur at this moment, then... the not-so-strong sense of danger that the witch felt could indeed send the people on the plane directly to their deaths.
Volume 3, King of the City, Chapter 499: Danger is Right Beside You
When Zidan heard Zhou Ziwei say that the witch should perform divination immediately, his expression changed, and he hurriedly said, "No... If the witch performs divination now, she won't be able to perform a second divination for at least five days, and we have to set off on our mission within three days. So we must be careful with this opportunity. If the danger this time isn't too serious, and we encounter any more danger during the mission, we won't have another chance to perform divination."
Zhou Ziwei pondered for a moment, then said to the witch, "I want to know why you cannot perform a second divination in the short term?"
The witch glanced at Zhou Ziwei with a hint of surprise, then said, "It's a lack of life force... Every time I perform a divination, I need to consume a lot of life force. This is a very mysterious thing. You don't understand divination, so you won't understand. Actually, it's not that I can't perform a second divination within five days, but the main problem is that if I use divination continuously, my life force can't recover to a safe level, and I'll easily die from excessive loss of life force!"
“I understand…” Zhou Ziwei nodded affirmatively and said, “I can see that your life force is very weak right now. This must be the result of using divination for a long time! If… I have a way to help you replenish your life force, then can you perform a divination right now?”
"You have a way to replenish my life force? How is that possible!" The witch looked at Zhou Ziwei's tender little face and couldn't help but shake her head, saying, "Deputy team leader, I know you're a capable person, but you may be good at fighting and proficient in computers, but you can't possibly understand the secrets of us fortune tellers. There are no geniuses in this world, and even if there were, it wouldn't be you. You're so young... Even if you started learning all kinds of knowledge from the womb, how much could you have mastered by now? Alright... stop joking. Although I haven't performed a divination, with my keen intuition as a fortune teller, I can sense that even if we encounter some danger this time, it should just be a close call. Let's listen to the team leader and not waste this divination opportunity."
Zhou Ziwei knew that he couldn't convince her with words alone, so he stopped talking nonsense and immediately stretched out a small, delicate hand and gently pressed it to the witch's mouth.
"Hey... what are you doing!" The witch didn't expect Zhou Ziwei to touch her like this. The divination technique she learned could only be effective if she remained a pure virgin. Once a man deflowered her, all her abilities would immediately disappear like water.
Therefore, witches never have any intimate interactions with men, and absolutely do not allow any man to have any designs on them. Over time, witches develop a distorted mentality, which is to develop a deep-seated aversion to men.
Fortunately, Zhou Ziwei still looks like a five or six-year-old child, so it's hard for people to treat him like a man. Otherwise, if it were any other member of the Dragon Group who touched her like that, she would probably have gone berserk by now.
However, just as the witch hesitated whether to push Zhou Ziwei away, she suddenly felt a round object being forcibly stuffed into her mouth. She was furious and was about to spit it out when she felt it roll down her throat like a slippery grape and swallow it whole.
"Ah...you...what did you feed me?" The witch was shocked and pushed Zhou Ziwei's small hand away. Just as she was about to ask him in a hurry, she suddenly felt a strange energy flow rising from her stomach, then climbing up through some meridians in her body, and finally pouring directly into her brain.
"Huh... what... what is this thing? How could this be... how could this happen?"
The witch felt as if she had just eaten a legendary ginseng fruit. The energy from that fruit poured into her mind, replenishing almost half of her life force, which had been severely depleted over the years due to frequent divination.
The sudden replenishment of so much vitality gave the witch a feeling of being reborn, and the fatigue that always felt like she hadn't slept well for days and nights immediately disappeared.
She seemed to have returned to her teenage years, back to a state where she had never practiced divination.
She could sense that, given her current condition, even if she immediately performed three or four divinations in a row, it shouldn't put too much strain on her body, and at least it wouldn't be worse than her original physical condition.
"It's amazing... It seems like my life force has really been replenished... Tell me, what is that thing!" The witch grabbed Zhou Ziwei's hand with great surprise, looking at his face with curiosity. It seemed that she wouldn't let go unless Zhou Ziwei told her.
At this moment, she had completely forgotten that Zhou Ziwei was a man; in short, she no longer felt any disgust towards him.
Zhou Ziwei gave a wry smile and said, "As for what that thing is... I'll tell you later. Now that you've replenished your life force, could you do a divination right away? I think our situation is still quite dangerous!"
Although Zhou Ziwei didn't know any divination techniques, he possessed powerful soul energy, so he had a vague premonition of danger. However, this premonition only became stronger when danger was about to strike, unlike the witch who possessed divination skills who had such a strong perception of danger.
Just now, Zhou Ziwei also vaguely sensed a dangerous aura, and this dangerous aura was getting stronger and stronger, but he had no idea what this danger was or where it came from.
This feeling made him very uncomfortable. He knew there was danger but couldn't take any precautions in advance, which is why he took out a soul bead and fed it to the witch at this moment.
"Alright..." Hearing Zhou Ziwei say this, the witch knew that now was not the time to ask for the reason. She quickly sat back down in her seat, unfolded the table in front of her and placed it flat. Then she took out a small cloth bag from her body, carefully opened the bag, and took out several shell-like objects from it.
These shell-like objects are each only the size of a baby's palm, with a bluish hue and some wood grain visible on them, making them look as if they were carved from some kind of wood.
Each piece of wooden shell is engraved with different patterns. The patterns are drawn in a very abstract way, and it is difficult to make out what they are. If you look closely, you will find that some of them look like ghost faces, and some look like ancient hieroglyphs. They are simple and mysterious.
The witch held the wooden shells in her hands, like a devout believer offering sacrifices to their god, her expression solemn and serious.
Then the witch slowly closed her eyes, her lips parted slightly, and she began to mutter incantations, but no sound came out.
A moment later, the witch suddenly opened her eyes, tossed her hands lightly, and then a series of "clinking" sounds rang out as several wooden seashells fell onto the table.
It's a seashell carved from wood, but when it lands on a wooden table, it makes a crisp sound, which is truly amazing. If you didn't see it with your own eyes, just hearing the sound would make you feel like pearls rolling into a jade plate.
The witch gently stroked the wooden seashells on the table with her slender, snow-white hands, and said solemnly, "Danger is all around us, coming from the northwest... right there—"
As she spoke, the witch pointed towards the cockpit.
"Danger is right next to us? Could it be..." Zhou Ziwei was slightly taken aback upon hearing this, then immediately jumped up and flew towards the cockpit.
"I'll go with you!" Seeing that the witch had already divined the source of the danger, Bullet quickly turned his wheelchair and followed Zhou Ziwei.
With a loud "bang," Zhou Ziwei arrived at the cockpit and, without any intention of communicating or asking questions, immediately kicked the thick metal door.
Zhou Ziwei was already quite strong, and last time he absorbed a great deal of earth energy deep underground, integrating it into every cell of his body. At this moment, even without using any superpowers, his physical strength alone had reached a terrifying level. With just this one kick, a loud "boom" was immediately produced, and the entire plane shook violently several times, as if it was about to be kicked to pieces.
The metal door, which was locked from the cockpit, collapsed inward with a loud crash. Not only were the lock and hinges broken, but a large hole was also kicked through the metal door where Zhou Ziwei had struck it.
The commotion caused by Zhou Ziwei and his group had already alerted everyone in the cabin. Except for Yang's parents, everyone stood up and craned their necks to look over. For a moment, they were still confused about what had happened, but everyone had witnessed Zhou Ziwei's feat of kicking the cabin door open.
When Paotong saw that Zhou Ziwei had actually kicked through the metal door, he was so shocked that his eyes widened and his mouth could have fit two eggs. After a while, he exclaimed exaggeratedly, "Wow... that's amazing... is he really a six-year-old child? My God... this kid is too monstrous! Uh... Long Wu, it seems that he is much stronger than you!"
Long Wu didn't answer Pao Tong's question, but the look of utter shock and admiration in his eyes clearly showed his complete agreement with Pao Tong's words. It was only at this moment that Long Wu truly understood how vast the gap was between himself and Zhou Ziwei. Let alone martial arts techniques, if Zhou Ziwei wanted to defeat him, he wouldn't need to use any techniques at all. Just one kick like that... even if he wasn't kicked to death, he would probably be unable to take care of himself for the rest of his life.
As the saying goes, brute force can overcome any technique. Martial arts skills are only one aspect; when a person's strength reaches an unparalleled level, what need is there for technique? Only strength is the ultimate path to supremacy.
Power... When will I ever possess power as terrifying as my teacher's? And... my teacher is only six years old now, so as he grows older, what terrifying level of power will he eventually reach?
Looking at the metal door that had been kicked beyond recognition, Long Wu felt his blood surge. Never before had he felt such an insatiable thirst for power.
Regardless of how many people were frightened and how many eyes were shattered by Zhou Ziwei's earth-shattering kick, Zhou Ziwei felt the danger growing stronger and stronger, so he naturally dared not be negligent in the slightest. After kicking through the metal door, he rushed into the cockpit like a bolt of lightning.
A muffled "thump" sounded in the cockpit. Just as Zhou Ziwei rushed in, he saw a skylight suddenly open above the cockpit, and the two pilots sitting in the cockpit suddenly jumped up from their seats and flew out of the skylight.
As expected, those two drivers were the ones with the problem!
Zhou Ziwei saw that the plane was still flying in the sky, but the two pilots had used the escape system to leave the plane midway. Obviously... there was a terrible conspiracy involved. They wanted to cause an air crash and kill everyone on the plane.
When Zhou Ziwei saw the two pilots escape through the sunroof, his instinct was to fire a butterfly dart to stop them, or at the very least, kill them on the spot.
However, thinking that the plane would immediately go out of control, and if something really happened to the plane, the entire Dragon Group, and most importantly, Yang's parents and Yu Xiaoru, would surely be doomed, Zhou Ziwei didn't have time to care about the two pilots who had fled midway. Instead, he rushed to the front of the cockpit like lightning.
Soul power surged out like a tide, quickly scanning the entire fuselage of the plane. Soon, Zhou Ziwei discovered that there were indeed two time bombs installed on the bottom of the transport plane, and the display screen on the time bombs showed that there were only five seconds left before they exploded.
With only five seconds, Zhou Ziwei simply didn't have time to run under the plane to disarm the bomb. And since the plane was still in flight, even if Zhou Ziwei wanted to go under the plane, he couldn't... Of course, if he didn't reveal his full strength and used wind energy to fly... he could fly out through the sunroof and then go around to the bottom of the plane, but with only five seconds, even if he was willing to do that, he might not have enough time.
"Go—" Zhou Ziwei didn't have time to think much before he immediately reached out and flung out the two butterfly darts he had been holding in his hand.
The two butterflies didn't fly out of the skylight and then circle downwards, as that would have been too time-consuming. Although, given the speed of the butterfly darts, they should have been able to circle around and remove the two time bombs within five seconds.
However, there was too little time left. If the two time bombs exploded immediately upon landing, the plane would still suffer severe damage.
If, by some chance, the plane's fuel tank were to explode, then...
So Zhou Ziwei flicked his wrist and threw the two butterfly darts directly towards his feet. With a "whoosh," the slightly trembling butterfly darts, like two beams of light, broke through the fuselage of the plane and went down.
Upon reaching the bottom of the aircraft, they cut open the two time bombs hidden in an inspection port, along with the metal plate on the aircraft fuselage that the bombs were attached to.
With a "whoosh," the metal plate carrying two time bombs detached from the fuselage and flew in a parabolic arc towards the ground.
"Boom—" Just three seconds after the two time bombs detached from the aircraft, they finally exploded, forming a huge fireball in mid-air.