Because of the extremely close proximity, Zhou Ziwei was only a dozen or twenty meters away from the spears before they exploded. Now, the spear tips suddenly increased in speed, and even though Zhou Ziwei had been prepared, he was caught off guard and made a flurry of activity.
He was immediately struck by the tips of more than a dozen spears.
These spears, thrown by the soldiers with brute force and accelerated a second time, had a much greater impact force than the arrows shot by archers. Even as Zhou Ziwei was being shot, he had a flash of inspiration and made the vortex under his feet spin his body rapidly as if he were going crazy. As a result, when the spear halves hit Zhou Ziwei, the force was immediately reduced by about seven-tenths.
Although Zhou Ziwei was still wincing in pain for a while, it was still within his tolerance. He figured that even if he suffered some minor injuries at this moment, they would be completely healed almost instantly after a large amount of soul power was injected into his body later...
Seeing that Zhou Ziwei hadn't been shot dead despite his condition, the silver-haired general on the city wall let out a beast-like howl, and then raised his sword into the air once more...
Zhou Ziwei was slightly startled upon seeing this. The fighting prowess unleashed by these natives was already making him feel completely overwhelmed. Not wanting to delay any longer, he quickly pushed the speed of the vortex beneath his feet to its limit. After closing the distance by another forty or fifty meters in an instant, Zhou Ziwei decisively stopped the vortex and, using the powerful momentum and gravity, pushed his speed to an unimaginable level, slamming heavily onto a flat area on the city wall...
The distance is too close. If the defenders on the city wall were to throw any weapons at Zhou Ziwei at this moment, not to mention whether they could hurt Zhou Ziwei, a large number of the soldiers here would probably get injured in the process!
The silver-haired general paused slightly upon seeing this, then abruptly threw down his sword, bared his teeth and roared, before pulling out a token-like object from his robes. With his two withered hands, he forcefully snapped it open, and a chilling beam of light pierced through the broken token, shooting straight into the sky…
Zhou Ziwei initially thought the beam of light emanating from the token was some kind of terrifying weapon, but he soon realized that the beam of light was simply shooting straight into the air. If it were a weapon, why was the direction of the attack not being aimed at it?
Just as Zhou Ziwei was feeling puzzled, a sudden, intense chill rose in his heart. He looked in the direction of the chilling aura and immediately saw a metal device, resembling a sniper rifle, locked onto his body from atop a towering spire in the very center of the castle…
Volume 2: The Assassin's Nightmare, Chapter 393: Optimization and Regeneration
When Zhou Ziwei saw that thing, which looked like a gun barrel, rapidly making slight adjustments to its angle as he moved around the spire, he couldn't help but be slightly taken aback.
Could this really be true? He simply couldn't believe that a group of indigenous people who looked so primitive from head to toe would actually use advanced firearms like sniper rifles, and those firearms even looked quite sophisticated.
However, when Zhou Ziwei thought that before him, humans on Earth had probably been here at least twice, and the most recent time was a few years ago, then it was not impossible that outsiders had brought modern technology and advanced firearms from Earth to this world.
It's just a sniper rifle, right? Do you think I'm afraid of you?
Zhou Ziwei curled his lip in disdain, showing his contempt for the thing that most likely came from his hometown.
However, the chill emanating from his heart made him dare not be careless at all. He was about to fall from the sky onto the city wall. Countless soldiers below were either holding out spears or wielding broadswords, waiting to give this uninvited guest a proper welcome. However, Zhou Ziwei still focused his main attention on the shiny metal thing.
Has it finally arrived?
When Zhou Ziwei saw the top of the metal object suddenly light up, all the nerves in his body tensed up immediately. Normally, even the fastest sniper rifle should not be able to keep up with his reaction speed, but this time he felt something was wrong. The feeling of being constantly locked on was like a person walking in the deep mountains being stared at by a pair of fierce wolf eyes, which always made his scalp tingle.
Seeing that damned gun barrel finally light up this time made Zhou Ziwei's nerves tense, but he couldn't help but breathe a slight sigh of relief.
Often, actually facing death isn't that scary; it's the wait for death that's most likely to break you down.
However, when Zhou Ziwei focused all his attention on what was being shot out of the gun barrel, he was horrified and screamed.
What shot out of the gun barrel was not a sniper bullet, but a beam of snow-white light!
Good heavens... what is this thing?!
Zhou Ziwei's hair stood on end instantly. If only one bullet was fired from the gun barrel, then no matter how terrifying the bullet's speed was, Zhou Ziwei was more than 90% confident that he could successfully dodge it.
But now what's being shot out isn't bullets, but beams of light... How terrifying is the speed of light... Even though Zhou Ziwei's consciousness can barely match the speed of light, his body's reaction speed still can't reach that abnormal level.
Therefore, when Zhou Ziwei saw the white beam of light suddenly appear and instinctively tried to dodge, he only slightly shifted his body to the left, barely avoiding the vital spot of his heart. However, the scorching light still pierced his chest...
The instant Zhou Ziwei's body was struck by the white beam of light, a massive surge of energy also rushed into every part of Zhou Ziwei's body, devastating his organs and cells with overwhelming force.
The intense pain caused Zhou Ziwei to lose his senses for a moment, and in that instant, he seemed to fall asleep, both physically and spiritually.
In that instant, as Zhou Ziwei lost his focus, the two large vortexes that were originally floating in the air, tightly supporting Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang, and the six smaller vortexes that were blocking the arrows for them, immediately turned into a scattered mass of air with a "whoosh" and completely merged into the surrounding air, disappearing without a trace in the blink of an eye, because they lost Zhou Ziwei's control.
At this moment, neither Wang Xuewei nor Chu Qiutang screamed or shed tears of fear, because they had forgotten their predicament and seemed completely unaware that their bodies were breaking free of their usual protection and plummeting straight down from a height of over a hundred meters.
When that snow-white beam of light struck and pierced Zhou Ziwei's body, the two of them were completely stunned, staring blankly at Zhou Ziwei, who was losing control and rolling towards the city wall.
Zhou Ziwei's consciousness was lost for less than half a second before he regained full awareness. Although the excruciating pain was still raging in his body and nerves, it seemed to have nothing to do with him at this moment.
At this moment, Zhou Ziwei felt like a calm bystander, silently observing the terrible state of his body from another perspective.
The enormous pillar of light contained an energy body similar to lightning, but it was clearly not real electricity. Its properties could cause numbness and convulsions, but its solid form also gave it strong penetrability. At that moment, the pillar of light pierced a deep hole, more than an inch deep, into Zhou Ziwei's chest.
Normally, with the powerful penetrating force of this beam of light, it shouldn't have been difficult for it to pass directly through Zhou Ziwei's body. However, in reality, this beam of light seemed to possess a trace of its own sentience. It seemed to know which target it should attack, so after entering Zhou Ziwei's body, it immediately scattered within him, surging in all directions and frantically destroying his body.
After regaining consciousness, Zhou Ziwei immediately and without hesitation mobilized a large amount of liquid soul power and injected it into all his organs and nerves.
The powerful regenerative abilities of the liquid soul force displayed equally terrifying strength at this moment. With the destructive power of that beam of light, Zhou Ziwei's body was riddled with holes and looked terrible in just a moment. However, with the injection of liquid soul force, every cell seemed to cheer joyfully under the call of that infinite vitality. Every organ began an endless process of repair and improvement. His entire body, from head to toe, wherever the beam of light had damaged, began to revive itself like a madman under the soaking of this liquid soul force.
Every cell is doing its best to continuously devour cells that have died due to the destruction caused by the energy beams, and then rapidly divides into new cells.
Cell division requires a large amount of energy, which should normally be provided by the body's own energy supply system. However, because the rate of cell regeneration and division has reached an extremely rapid pace, the body's normal supply simply cannot meet this intense demand. Therefore, as the cells divide, they automatically absorb the scattered energy emitted by the white lightning raging around them to meet the energy requirements for cell division...
Initially, the restorative power of the liquid soul force was far less effective than the destructive power of the white light pillar. However, as a strange energy flowed out of Zhou Ziwei's Tanzhong acupoint and automatically protected several of his vital internal organs, the restorative effect of the liquid soul force gradually increased as it devoured the energy in the white light pillar during the struggle between the other organs.
In just one second, countless billions of cells in his body were torn to pieces by the unbridled white energy beam. At the same time, countless billions of cells were devoured by the temporarily intact cells around them. And even at the same time as the devouring, hundreds of millions of new cells were immediately split off.
Each new cell that splits out after being devoured is unconsciously optimized in various characteristics and physiological indices. After a short while, when the powerful energy beam finally subsided and disappeared in Zhou Ziwei's body, Zhou Ziwei was not killed by the enormous power of the beam. Instead, his body underwent countless evolutions in that instant.
When Zhou Ziwei opened his eyes again, he suddenly felt that the whole world seemed to have changed.
The terrifying white beam of light that had created a bloody hole in Zhou Ziwei's chest had long since healed on its own. Even if someone were to examine Zhou Ziwei's chest closely with a microscope now, they would not be able to find any trace of the wound.
In that life-or-death struggle, each round of cell regeneration and division in Zhou Ziwei's body was a process that approached perfection. Although the progress that this division could achieve was very limited, after countless perfect divisions, his body was at least ten times better than before. In such a perfectly optimized state, how could his body possibly have any scars left?
With a deafening boom, Zhou Ziwei's feet landed firmly on the ground. Because he had plunged from over a hundred meters in the air and deliberately increased his speed, the impact of his descent made the noise far more astonishing than the sound of a millstone-sized meteorite hitting the ground.
The ground above the city gate is paved with thick bluestone. Even after countless years of erosion, the bluestone ground has not worn much, only slightly smoother than it was hundreds of years ago.
However, at this moment, Zhou Ziwei's feet stomped down and directly broke through the surface of the bluestone bricks, and due to the vibration, countless tiny cracks appeared on all the bluestone bricks within a radius of several meters.
All the soldiers within a dozen meters of Zhou Ziwei were thrown into the air by the powerful shockwave and were sent flying.
These men were all soldiers wielding broadswords. When they saw Zhou Ziwei falling towards them, they raised their heavy swords, ready to cut him into pieces the moment he landed. However, they did not expect Zhou Ziwei's fall to be so powerful that they didn't even need to lift a finger; the shockwave from the fall alone was enough to kill them.
Zhou Ziwei reluctantly pulled his feet out of the rubble. He then saw that the boots from the top-of-the-line equipment he had managed to get from the old commander had completely turned to dust. His clothes and pants were also torn beyond recognition. Most noticeably, his trousers were now much shorter, resembling capri pants, and his sleeves had also been shortened.
Zhou Ziwei was slightly taken aback, then realized that it wasn't that his clothes were too small or too short, but rather that he... had suddenly grown taller.
After being reborn into this body, Zhou Ziwei was once slightly dissatisfied with his current height. This was probably because his predecessor had not done anything good since childhood, and his physical development was obviously not very good, making him much shorter than his younger brother, Zhou Zixu.
As for his thin appearance, it was even more pitiful to look at. If it weren't for the fact that Dangyang City's anti-drug work has always been very good and there are basically no drugs circulating in the city, Zhou Ziwei would have suspected that his ex-girlfriend grew up eating opium. Otherwise, how could he have grown up like that?
And now... after being hit by that white beam of light, Zhou Ziwei not only didn't die, but seemed to have taken hormones and been fed fertilizer. In just a short while, he became much stronger, grew at least six or seven centimeters taller, his skin became much whiter than before, and he even looked more handsome than before.
If Zhou Ziwei hadn't suddenly discovered that the amount of soul power stored in his sea of souls had been reduced by half in just a few short seconds, he might have even jumped up laughing.
However, when he learned that this change in his body had come at the cost of consuming over 30,000 units of soul power, Zhou Ziwei felt no joy whatsoever. Instead, he felt an urge to bang his head against a wall... and also an urge to swallow that strange weapon that could shoot out white beams of light whole...
More than 30,000 units of soul power... What an enormous number! Zhou Ziwei hadn't had a way to replenish his soul power for a while, and because of the terrifying soul-devouring insects that appeared in that underground tomb, Zhou Ziwei dared not go in there to collect souls to replenish himself. It can be said that every time he consumes a little, his reserves will decrease.
Normally, even a slight overexertion during a battle would cause him immense pain, but now, half of his strength was gone in just a few seconds. How could he possibly be laughing now?
However, now is not the time to cry, because Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang are falling from the sky right behind him. What's giving Zhou Ziwei a headache is that the two women are falling in a different direction than him. If nothing unexpected happens, the two women will fall headlong into the vast river outside the castle.
The most deadly thing was that at this moment, after a few seconds of stunned silence, countless soldiers on the city wall raised their bows and arrows or javelins, and at least half of the soldiers cast their ill-intentioned glances at the two women who were falling from mid-air.
Only the soldiers closest to Zhou Ziwei brandished their weapons and charged straight at him...
As for the silver-haired general who had been personally commanding all the officers and soldiers in battle, he was now staring blankly at Zhou Ziwei, who had been hit by the white beam of light but was now standing on the city wall as if nothing had happened. He even forgot his duties and did not make a sound for a long time.
In an instant, more than a dozen thick-backed broadswords, accompanied by fierce gusts of wind, slashed viciously down towards Zhou Ziwei's head and body. At the same time, countless arrows and spears, detached from bowstrings and rough hands of soldiers, rained down upon the two women in the air with a "whooshing" sound...
If Zhou Ziwei were to deal with the guys around him first before attending to Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang… those two beauties would be riddled with holes and turned into two pitiful little hedgehogs. Although the power of those dozen or so large machetes was fierce, Zhou Ziwei felt that they were more like paper tigers. His intuition told him that even if he didn't dodge or hide, and just stood there and let them hack away, these dozen or so ordinary people wouldn't be able to hurt him.
Although Zhou Ziwei had experienced similar sensations before after cleansing his body with the Water of Reincarnation, the feeling back then was far less intense than it is now. While Zhou Ziwei didn't understand how he could have such abnormal confidence, he couldn't afford to think about it any longer. If he hesitated for even half a second, Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang would be doomed.
Zhou Ziwei didn't even glance at the dozen or so gleaming swords aimed at him. In an instant, he focused his soul and consciousness on his Tanzhong acupoint, barely managing to gather almost all the remaining non-attribute energy in the tiny space of his middle dantian. With a slight flick of his wrist, he clapped his hand in the air... A powerful gust of air suddenly shot out from his palm, instantly scattering the arrows that had first struck Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang...
Volume 2: The Assassin's Nightmare, Chapter 394: The Steel Torrent
After the fierce wind dispersed the arrows that had been shot in front of Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang, it did not form a dozen or so cyclones like before. Instead, under the control of Zhou Ziwei's soul consciousness, it suddenly formed a huge tornado. The tornado spun and moved rapidly, and in the blink of an eye, it swept up Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang, who were about to fall into the river outside the castle, and then flew towards Zhou Ziwei.
Although the thousands of archers on the castle had not received further instructions from the silver-haired general, they believed that these people flying in from the sky were their enemies to be killed. So they did not hesitate at all, and volleys of arrows never stopped from beginning to end.
No matter how powerful and dense their arrows were, as soon as they hit the huge tornado, they were immediately shredded into dust by the rapidly spinning wind, just like fat meat thrown into a meat grinder.
Not a single arrow could harm Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang, who were hiding inside the tornado.
As for those incredibly powerful giant arrows, they can generally only be used against distant targets. At this moment, Wang Xuewei and Chu are right in front of the castle, and those dozen or so cumbersome crossbows can't even turn around to aim, so they are naturally unusable against the enemy.
At the same time that the huge tornado formed, more than a dozen large cleavers struck Zhou Ziwei's vital points almost simultaneously.
With a deafening "boom," just as a dozen blades were about to strike, a dazzling white light suddenly erupted from Zhou Ziwei's body. The dozen or so broadswords, upon striking the white light, melted away instantly, like snowflakes falling into boiling oil. The remaining dozen or so swordsmen, each holding a wooden hilt, stood there dumbfounded, staring at Zhou Ziwei as the white light slowly receded into his body, seemingly completely stunned.
All the fighting spirit and courage they had shown just now had been completely exhausted by this astonishing scene.
Not to mention that the dozen or so soldiers were terrified, even Zhou Ziwei himself was quite startled by this strange turn of events. Although he had quite a few random abilities, most of his previous abilities were based on soul power, but this inexplicable ability... he didn't even know how it appeared.
In fact, the white light emanating from his body was not under his conscious control. Zhou Ziwei was so focused on saving Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang that he had no time to attend to his own needs.
He simply assumed that after his body was strengthened by the five drops of the Water of Reincarnation, he would no longer be afraid of ordinary sword and spear attacks.
Although these soldiers looked very burly, and the broadswords they wielded were terrifyingly heavy, Zhou Ziwei estimated that his body had just undergone another round of enhancement. He figured that no matter how strong these men were, or how sharp their swords were, they could only cause him minor superficial wounds at most. As long as Zhou Ziwei still possessed soul power, such ordinary external injuries would be nothing to him. Therefore, Zhou Ziwei didn't take the attacks of those dozen or so swordsmen seriously.
However, what happened later was far beyond her expectations. When threatened with death, the white light automatically emerged from his body.
However, Zhou Ziwei dared to unleash his power. This inexplicable white light was neither composed of soul power nor was it transformed from the attribute-less energy stored in his Tanzhong acupoint.
In fact, right after Zhou Ziwei unleashed that powerful energy that transformed into a tornado and rescued Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang, the vast space within his Tanzhong acupoint was already depleted, almost devoid of any energy. So how could he possibly use that attribute-less energy to repel enemies?
However, after a slight pause, Zhou Ziwei immediately guessed the origin of the white light... because from the color of the white light and the strange effect it contained, Zhou Ziwei easily associated it with the white light that had just shot out from the giant tower in the center of the castle.
That white light had tormented Zhou Ziwei to the point of near ecstasy, nearly driving him insane several times. So the impression that thing left on Zhou Ziwei was truly profound.
Unexpectedly, this thing not only combined tens of thousands of soul powers to thoroughly temper Zhou Ziwei's body countless times, but the beam of light itself was also hidden in every cell of his body.
Just now, Zhou Ziwei was worried about Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang, and didn't pay attention to the strange phenomena that happened to him. However, after a moment of recollection, he immediately remembered some of the unusual changes on his body.
The white light did indeed come from his body, and it came from every single cell in his body at the same time, eventually converging and rising outside his body.
However, Zhou Ziwei was still very surprised. Since these white lights had already been assimilated and combined with his body cells in the struggle with his soul power, how could they separate on their own when his body was about to be damaged?
Could it be that these magical white lights actually possess their own consciousness and thoughts?
If it were anyone else, they would definitely not even think about this. A beam of light, or an unknown energy body, could have its own thoughts? Isn't that nonsense? But Zhou Ziwei is an exception, because he himself has personally created countless independent souls, giving life to many things that would otherwise never have thoughts or intelligence.
So... even if the idea of a light possessing its own consciousness is absurd, Zhou Ziwei didn't think it was impossible.
What Zhou Ziwei found most incomprehensible and unimaginable was... those dozen or so large machetes... Zhou Ziwei clearly felt those dozen or so large machetes being melted away by that white light. After the white light retracted back into his body, Zhou Ziwei vaguely felt that there seemed to be something extra inside his body.
But how could that be? A dozen or so large machetes… and those were thick-backed blades, each probably weighing at least thirty or forty pounds. A dozen or so machetes together would weigh at least four or five hundred pounds… If those machetes were truly absorbed into his body by the white light… and he suddenly had four or five hundred pounds of extra weight inside him, even the most dense person should be able to sense it, right? But the problem is, although he feels something is off inside him, his weight hasn't increased by even half a pound… So… what's going on? If those machetes weren't absorbed, where did they go? They couldn't just vanish into thin air, could they?
Zhou Ziwei didn't have time to dwell on this issue. His soul consciousness had already activated the miniature tornado, lifting Wang Xuewei and Chu Qiutang onto the city wall. However, this meant that the two, who were originally only facing attacks from one side, were now being attacked from all directions.