For example, there's the Blood Shadow's eerie, generationally inherited method, and the method that allows the newly inherited body to quickly regain the strength of its previous life after the blood shadow completes the handover between generations...
The Blood Shadow's inheritance method is truly too bizarre, so bizarre that it leaves people speechless.
What Zhou Ziwei found even more unimaginable was that... in the seventeen generations of the Blood Shadow lineage, there was actually one generation that was a wolf.
No wonder there are such violent elements in the soul power of this Blood Shadow. However, if it weren't for that wolf, the Blood Shadow's inheritance method probably wouldn't have appeared.
From the memories of the Blood Shadow's soul, Zhou Ziwei learned that the first Blood Shadow was just an ordinary Genin in Japan. Ninjas are divided into Genin, Chunin, Jonin, and Dainin.
A genin is indeed much stronger than an ordinary person, but among ninjas, he is just a bottom-tier, low-ranking character.
However, the first generation of Blood Shadow was born with exceptionally strong spiritual power and had also learned a unique soul technique that originated from Tibetan Buddhism and spread to the island nation. This allowed him to cultivate his soul power to be far superior to that of ordinary people, which made his mastery of the illusion technique in ninjutsu extremely remarkable.
Later, he was seriously injured in a battle with other ninja schools. When he was dying, he encountered a hungry wolf in the forest. The two fought fiercely for a long time until they both collapsed from exhaustion. In the end, the wolf bit his throat and sucked his blood dry.
Unexpectedly, because Blood Shadow's soul was already more solid than that of an ordinary person due to the training of soul skills, even though his body was devoid of life, that wisp of soul was unwilling to leave his body easily, so it flowed into the wolf's body along with the blood.
And so, the man and the wolf once again engaged in a struggle for control of the body within the hungry wolf's body.
Although the Blood Shadow's soul was far stronger than the Wolf's soul, it was fighting on foreign soil, which put it at a disadvantage from the start. Furthermore, as a human soul trying to suddenly control a beast's body, there were natural conflicts and obstacles, which caused its battle with the Wolf's soul to once again fall into a stalemate with no clear winner.
The two souls fought for three days and three nights, until finally both the human and wolf souls were severely damaged. Continuing the fight would only result in their souls being scattered. Under this crisis of survival, the two souls had no choice but to compromise and ultimately choose to merge with each other...
The merged souls became a wolf spirit with human intelligence, and this wolf-shaped creature even possessed amazing ninjutsu. Although it only mastered some common ninjutsu in the ninja world, this gave the wolf strength comparable to tigers and leopards, and it soon became the new king of the mountains and forests.
However, a wolf's lifespan is only about ten to twenty years. When Blood Shadow's soul merged into the wolf's body, the wolf was already an old wolf with a lifespan of more than ten years. The injection of Blood Shadow's soul did not add any lifespan to the wolf.
The poor ninja wolf felt his body aging day by day, and it was clear that he was about to die. However, Blood Shadow, who had the experience of being a wolf again after being a human in one life, was unwilling to let the laws of nature take away his right to live. So he carefully studied the experience of his soul entering the wolf's back and felt that this was a completely repeatable method, and it was also his only chance to prolong his life.
Blood Shadow had had enough of being a beast and didn't want to be a wolf again after his reincarnation. So this time, before his body became too old to run, he ran to the edge of a village and wandered around there for more than a month before finally catching a child who had run out to play alone.
Although the Blood Shadow possessed human intelligence, it could not speak like a human, and therefore could not communicate with the child. Helpless, it could only hold down the child's hands and feet with its four paws and repeatedly provoke and humiliate the child, who was already terrified and paralyzed with fear, with its gaping maw.
Until the child was provoked into a fit of rage, he finally mustered up the courage to raise his only movable head and bite the ninja wolf's neck... thus successfully completing the second inheritance of the Blood Shadow.
This time, however, because the vessel for the inheritance is a child who is only a few years old, although he has mastered many ninja techniques, his strength is limited by his height and physical limitations.
However, this child was originally an orphan in the village, and he was often humiliated by many people. He harbored deep resentment in his heart. Now that he had merged with the souls of the Blood Shadow and the Hungry Wolf, and was tainted with that ferocious wolf nature, he naturally could no longer tolerate being bullied. So when the few bad children who always bullied him bullied him again, the third-generation Blood Shadow, with his wolf nature unleashed, let out a shrill wolf howl, and then cruelly killed all the children with a knife.
The smell of blood intensified Blood Shadow's ferocity. Having grown accustomed to eating blood over the past few years, he had long since become used to this kind of life. However, now that he was human again, he could only eat dry, coarse flour pancakes, and his mouth had long since become tasteless.
The smell of blood reignited his wolfish nature, and he immediately brandished the knife in his hand, ripped open the bodies of the three children, dug out their hearts, and swallowed them whole.
To Blood Shadow's surprise, after swallowing the hearts of several people, he felt a surge of power suddenly erupt from his deep soul, rapidly merging into his new body… This made him suddenly realize that the hearts of living people had such miraculous effects, actually able to reabsorb the large amount of unknown energy he had brought with him during the soul fusion into his new body. With this method, after each subsequent inheritance, Blood Shadow could rapidly regain his original abilities in the shortest possible time…
After several generations of succession, the lowest-ranking genin in the ninja world finally gradually improved his strength through almost endless training.
When he passed on his skills to the seventh generation, he became a Jonin, a rare talent in the world, and the name of the Blood Shadow finally became widely known.
When he passed on his skills to the thirteenth generation, he made an even greater breakthrough, becoming a legendary ninja who was rare to appear even once every few centuries.
However, when the Blood Shadow was passed down to the previous generation, namely the dwarf who had challenged Zhou Ziwei to a duel in Dongshan, his strength was reduced to the level of a Jonin once again due to the dwarf's extremely poor physical condition.
Originally, Xueying had hoped that the legacy of the Great Ninja could be restored to its former glory by passing it down to Ito Koji. However, because he was eager to provoke Zhou Ziwei, the seventeenth generation of the lineage was ultimately brought to a complete end.
After learning the truth, Zhou Ziwei couldn't help but feel secretly fortunate. If he hadn't encountered the weakest of the recent generations of Blood Shadows, he might have been defeated and killed during the final battle in Dongshan.
According to the information extracted from that soul's memories, when a ninja can advance from the level of Jonin to Dainin, the difference in their actual strength seems to be vast.
If that memory were true, Zhou Ziwei simply couldn't imagine just how powerful a Great Ninja would be.
However, Zhou Ziwei had some doubts about the authenticity of this memory. Perhaps the Japanese were arrogant and conceited by nature, and even in their soul memories, they might leave behind some self-deceiving false information.
Otherwise, with Blood Shadow only at the Jonin level, he could already hold the eighth position among the world's top ten assassins. If he were to truly return to the Great Ninja level, wouldn't that be outrageous?
After sorting through these chaotic soul memories, Zhou Ziwei hesitated for a moment before selecting only the soul memories of a few ninja skills that he felt might be useful to him. Then, he expelled all the other soul memories from his sea of souls.
Then Zhou Ziwei contracted all the soul power in his body and reversed it into the sea of soul power, and then began to liquefy and condense the newly added soul power.
This process of condensing soul power didn't take much time. After all, Zhou Ziwei had been working tirelessly every night to condense the large amount of misty soul power he absorbed during the day into liquid soul power. This was something he was very familiar with, so it naturally didn't take much time.
After being purified by the six-syllable mantra hundreds and thousands of times in the sea of souls, the trace of violent aura inherited from the Blood Shadow's soul was finally purified completely, allowing Zhou Ziwei's mindset to fully recover its former peace.
Ninjas' abilities are extremely strange, quite different from ordinary martial artists. Although Zhou Ziwei directly inherited the soul memories of the Blood Shadow, and thus became familiar with ninjutsu almost instantly, it was as if he had studied it for decades or even centuries. However, many of these techniques involved specific power exertion methods and unique skills, which even Zhou Ziwei could hardly reach the level of the Blood Shadow immediately.
After Zhou Ziwei woke up, he immediately tried out his skills and performed a few standard ninjutsu moves. However, he found that with his current abilities, he not only couldn't reach the level of the legendary Great Ninja, but he couldn't even compare to the level of the dwarf Shi Xueying. He estimated that he could at most reach the level of a Chunin.
Zhou Ziwei originally had a quick way to achieve this, which was to directly devour the hearts of living people. Since the Blood Shadow inheritance could use this method to stimulate the mysterious energy hidden in the soul power, allowing the newly inherited Blood Shadow to fully recover the strength of its previous life in just a few days, then Zhou Ziwei could also use the same method to stimulate some kind of power hidden in the soul of that Blood Shadow.
However, Zhou Ziwei felt nauseous at the thought of eating a raw heart and refused to try it no matter what.
Once the newly acquired soul power is completely condensed into liquid soul power, even if he wanted to use this method to increase his strength again, it would probably be too late.
Volume 2: The Assassin's Nightmare, Chapter 333: Hypnosis
After opening the door, Zhou Ziwei nodded to A-Da, who was guarding outside, and said, "Go and bring over the person I brought back last night."
"yes."
When Ah Er saw Zhou Ziwei emerge from the room unharmed, he breathed a long sigh of relief. He quickly ran to another room, brought over Mr. Zhu, who was still unconscious and whom Ah Er had been guarding, and placed him in Zhou Ziwei's room.
"Ziwei, are you alright?"
Just then, Liu Xiaofei, still half asleep, came out of the next room. The girl had been quite worried last night when she saw Zhou Ziwei return, as his expression seemed a bit off. She had stayed in Zhou Ziwei's room for most of the night until dawn before going to the next room to get a short nap. Hearing Zhou Ziwei's voice, she was immediately awakened.
Seeing the worry on her face, Zhou Ziwei felt a pang of sympathy. He walked over and gently ruffled Liu Xiaofei's black hair, chuckling as he said, "I'm fine, in fact, I'm perfectly fine... Hehe... Don't worry, just wait a little longer. After I've dealt with this person, we should be heading back to Dangyang."
"real."
Upon hearing this, Liu Xiaofei immediately beamed with joy, but then suddenly seemed to remember something, and said somewhat awkwardly, "But... then... your wife, she... I..."
Sensing the hesitation and unease in Liu Xiaofei's expression, Zhou Ziwei sighed softly, pulled Liu Xiaofei's head tightly into his arms, patted her back firmly, and whispered, "Don't worry, I'm here... everything will be resolved. In short... I won't let you suffer any injustice."
Reassured by Zhou Ziwei, Liu Xiaofei felt much more at ease. She nodded vigorously and murmured softly, "Xiaofei isn't afraid of being wronged, she's just afraid you won't accept me... Even if your wife can't accept me, don't kick me out... Just let me be your secret lover, okay?"
Liu Xiaofei's pitiful words pierced Zhou Ziwei's heart, and he unconsciously hugged her tighter, nodding gently and saying, "Don't worry... I won't send you away, silly girl... how could you be so silly!"
After spending a brief moment of intimacy with Liu Xiaofei, Zhou Ziwei returned to his room alone once again.
This time, Zhou Ziwei didn't waste much time. He slapped Mr. Zhu's chest so hard that it caved in, immediately forcing his soul out of his body. Then, he chanted the Six-Syllable Mantra and swallowed it.
Mr. Zhu's soul memories were not complicated. In his life, hypnosis was the only skill he possessed that could form a kind of obsession in his soul. Therefore, Zhou Ziwei did not have to exert much effort to extract this memory completely from Mr. Zhu's soul.
It must be said that Zhou Ziwei was quite surprised after mastering Mr. Zhu's expertise in hypnosis. He was not amazed by how terrifying or profound the technique was, but rather by how simple it was.
Yes, in Zhou Ziwei's view, this so-called hypnosis is indeed a very simple thing. It is just a matter of mastering a small trick, rearranging and combining one's own soul power in a different way, and then sending it into the soul sea of another person, thus completing the so-called hypnosis.
Before understanding the mystery, it may seem incredibly complicated, but once you grasp the secret, you'll find it's just a simple trick.
However... Zhou Ziwei forgot the immense soul power he possessed. For him, it was as simple as eating and drinking. But for an ordinary person, just the step of sending their spiritual power out of their body would be enough to make most people struggle to their death.
Having mastered hypnosis, Zhou Ziwei casually picked up Mr. Zhu's corpse, leaped out of the window, and used his spatial manipulation to fly to a nearby deserted spot. With a thought, a large hand suddenly plunged into the ground, and then his body twisted rapidly a few times. Instantly, the ground rippled violently as if a pot of water had been boiled. Zhou Ziwei then silently slipped into the ground with Mr. Zhu's corpse.
A dozen seconds later, the soil on another patch of ground nearby began to churn strangely, and then a figure emerged from it like an eel.
With a gentle lift, he soared into the air, then lightly shook off the dirt clinging to his body, a faint smile appearing on Zhou Ziwei's lips.
This earth-burrowing technique is indeed quite amazing, and the difficulty involved is considerable.
Before he learned it, Zhou Ziwei saw the blood shadow's incredibly swift and bizarre burrowing technique and almost thought it was the legendary immortal earth-遁 (earth-遁 is a type of magic used by immortals). However, he now understood that it was just some control over the soil and some techniques for exerting force. Its essence was mainly imitating the technique of a loach burrowing underground, but with strong physical qualities and flexible control of the body, it could produce effects that ordinary people could not imagine.
Zhou Ziwei had only just mastered the technique of burrowing, so he was far from being able to do it as freely and effortlessly as Xueying. However, he had the advantage of physical strength, which was far superior to Xueying's back then, so he was not necessarily weaker in this application.
He didn't burrow into the ground very quickly, but he still managed to burrow to a depth of more than ten meters while carrying someone behind him. This is something that even Blood Shadow would have had a hard time doing back then.
Zhou Ziwei continued to dive down to a depth of more than ten meters. When he felt the dampness and heaviness below, he stopped and casually left Mr. Zhu's body there. He then emerged alone at an even faster speed. Having mastered the tortoise breathing technique from the ninjutsu, Zhou Ziwei estimated that even if he were buried underground for about half an hour, he wouldn't suffocate.
If this place weren't in a densely populated area, Zhou Ziwei would really like to explore this underground world to his heart's content...
After successfully disposing of the body using his burrowing technique, Zhou Ziwei quietly returned to his room. He changed his clothes, washed himself thoroughly in the ensuite bathroom, and then opened the door to ask A'da. Learning that Li Yifeng and the others had returned to the jadeite rough stone trading fair to continue today's jadeite auction, Zhou Ziwei nodded and decided to take Liu Xiaofei back to Dangyang first. He would leave the Yelü brothers and the others there until the auction was over, the exchange's business was running smoothly, and a large number of security personnel had been hired and trained before they would come to Dangyang to find him.
So Zhou Ziwei called Li Yifeng to give instructions, and without saying goodbye to everyone in person, he immediately had Liu Xiaofei pack her belongings, and the two of them immediately drove the Audi back home.
However, Zhou Ziwei was still thinking about the hatred between Luan Yuqing and Qiao Mulin, so before leaving, he made a special trip to the hospital again. He easily evaded the defenses of Qiao Mulin's bodyguards, flew in through the window, and under Qiao Mulin's horrified gaze, gently touched the scoundrel's forehead with a finger. A wisp of pure soul power, carrying enormous destructive force, rushed straight into Qiao Mulin's sea of souls like a mountain-splitting axe, instantly destroying most of the guy's soul consciousness.
Zhou Ziwei withdrew his fingers, looked at Qiao Mulin, whose face was completely blank, and sneered softly. He knew that if he hadn't used his skills to save him, this guy would have been an idiot for life.
In fact, treating someone like this is far more cruel than killing them. It's just unknown whether Luan Yuqing will be satisfied with this outcome. Luan Yuqing has been helping Zhou Ziwei a lot recently, and Zhou Ziwei's impression of her has been changing.
If Luan Yuqing is not satisfied with the result, Zhou Ziwei will definitely grab this idiot and throw him in front of Luan Yuqing next time, so that Luan Yuqing can torture this scoundrel herself.
After crippling Qiao Mulin, Zhou Ziwei quietly returned to his car and left the county town with Liu Xiaofei without looking back.
When they passed the Bat Cave, Zhou Ziwei asked Liu Xiaofei to wait in the car for a while, while he leaped down from the cliff and found the entrance to the ancient tomb that had been buried in the soil. He then used his burrowing technique to dive into the secret passage he had entered before, and after carefully diving a distance, he dared not go any further.
Last time, through the ladybug's eyes, he saw that there were quite a few soul entities in this ancient tomb. This time, he came specifically to hunt these solidified soul entities.
Although one can absorb purer energy through the Heart of Flame and transform it into one's own soul power, the soul energy absorbed from those soul entities must undergo continuous purification before it can become one's own energy.
Unfortunately, the Heart of Flame had been consumed by continuous absorption along the way, and Zhou Ziwei estimated that the remaining Heart of Flame could only provide him with absorption for about ten more days before completely dissipating into nothingness. Therefore, Zhou Ziwei thought that before leaving this place, he might as well replenish one or two more soul bodies.
Anyway, after Zhou Ziwei absorbed the souls inside the bullet, there was hardly any soul power left. Although it was unknown how many souls the space inside the bullet could hold, it should be able to hold two more, just like last time.
Zhou Ziwei waited patiently for almost half an hour, but not a single ghostly figure appeared. He was puzzled for a while before finally remembering that it was still daytime and the weather seemed to be quite nice today.
These pure souls would probably be rather sluggish during the day when the yang energy is strong, and they probably wouldn't wander around aimlessly! Although this is an underground tomb, and a rare place of extreme yin, in this kind of weather, those souls that have lived here for who knows how many hundreds of years probably wouldn't be running around like this!
Thinking of this, Zhou Ziwei's mind immediately became active again.
However, after learning that this place was likely the tomb of an ancient Burmese emperor, he did not feel any covetousness for the large number of burial objects that might be there.
The main reason was that he knew how many powerful soul beings existed in this tomb, and that Zhou Ziwei could obtain the wealth within through other means, so he had no greed for the burial goods.
However… Zhou Ziwei vaguely remembered that in the so-called underground treasure map that Luan Yuqing had shown him, there seemed to be a golden flame symbol marked near the center of the map.
At the time, Zhou Ziwei did not know what the golden flame represented. However, ever since he obtained the Heart of Flame, he had unconsciously associated it with the symbol on the treasure map. He always guessed that the symbol was very likely to indicate the existence of the Heart of Flame there.
According to Zhou Ziwei's speculation, the Heart of Flame should be a kind of jadeite associated mineral. The conditions for its formation must be quite harsh. Moreover, due to its characteristic of spontaneous combustion when exposed to light, once it is unearthed, it will probably burn to ashes in no time. That's why, over the years, there has been virtually no news of such a thing being passed down.
However, if this is indeed the tomb of a Burmese king, as Zhou Ziwei speculated, then the possibility that the Heart of Flame was buried here is extremely high.
After all, jadeite is only produced in Myanmar, and the ruler of Myanmar would naturally want to possess the most and best jadeite as his burial goods.
The Heart of Flame is a rare associated mineral, and its value must be considerable, but for a king, acquiring a few should not be a problem.
The Heart of Flame would hardly survive for long in other environments, but in this underground tomb, the dark environment is similar to that of an jade mine. The Heart of Flame buried here should be able to survive for thousands of years without any problems.
What people fear most is greed. If it weren't for the possibility that the Heart of Flame might exist here, Zhou Ziwei would probably have retreated without hesitation after lying in ambush for a while and not seeing those wandering souls, or he would have come back at night, or waited for another opportunity to come here next time.
However, now that he was tempted by the Heart of Flame, Zhou Ziwei was unwilling to leave no matter what.
After hesitating for a long time, Zhou Ziwei was really reluctant to miss the chance to obtain the possible Heart of Flame. Moreover, since there was no ghostly figure of a soul in sight, it was a good opportunity for him to explore the ancient tomb. Although it was a bit risky, it was not entirely impossible to succeed. He couldn't resist the temptation, so he carefully continued to sneak into the tomb according to the general direction he remembered...
Last time, Zhou Ziwei only entered the outer perimeter of the ancient tomb before fleeing immediately, meaning he had never actually entered the tomb. Now, however, Zhou Ziwei finally realized that the tomb of the King of Myanmar was indeed exceptionally large, likely comparable to the tombs of ordinary emperors in ancient China.