Logically speaking, such a thin and flexible longsword would be difficult to condense power and extremely difficult to control, so its lethality should be very limited. However, for Zhou Ziwei, the rapidly trembling blade was just a decoy to confuse the enemy. Through the independent soul within the alloy suit, he could control every inch of the longsword from tip to hilt at will.
Or you could say that the knife was like a part of Zhou Ziwei's body, so he used it with ease.
"Kill!" The Blue Armored Army sergeant in charge of the giant iron crossbows finally snapped out of his daze when Zhou Ziwei charged in and produced a long sword from nowhere. He immediately drew a thick-backed short sword from his waist, shouted a command, and then slashed at Zhou Ziwei's neck. The ordinary soldiers nearby, at their officer's command, also snapped out of their daze and hurriedly raised their weapons, hacking fiercely at Zhou Ziwei's body.
Zhou Ziwei's lips curled slightly, but he was unwilling to stand there any longer and wait for the divine power within his body to come out and devour the swords that were slashing at him. Instead, he gently shook the slender alloy knife in his hand, and instantly the knife light that was originally just trembling in a small area separated into hundreds of blades of light, as if it had turned into a curtain of light, to meet the seven or eight blue-armored soldiers rushing towards him.
The clanging sounds were incessant. Zhou Ziwei's longsword almost instantly intercepted the seven or eight weapons slashing at him. The sharpness of the alloy blade once again greatly surprised Zhou Ziwei. Throughout the entire process, Zhou Ziwei felt almost no pressure. When the alloy blade made contact with the opponent's weapons, it felt like cutting a piece of freshly cooked tofu with a knife. He didn't need to exert any extra force. Every weapon that came into contact with the alloy blade was instantly separated into two parts.
The seven or eight blue-armored soldiers, who had exerted all their strength in their attack, found that their weapons suddenly felt much lighter halfway through. Before they could react, they began to lose their balance and leaned slightly forward.
The alloy knife in Zhou Ziwei's hand trembled and flashed with light once again, leaving a few bloodstains on the bodies of the blue-armored soldiers.
There was no deep-seated hatred between them, and Zhou Ziwei was not a member of the Great Xia Dynasty. Naturally, he would not kill all the Blue Armor Army soldiers. After the flash of swords, Zhou Ziwei only left some shallow knife wounds on the shoulders and thighs of each of them, which rendered them unable to fight again for a short time.
Then Zhou Ziwei once again swung the alloy battle sword that was integrated with their alloy suits, roared, and with a swift stroke, the heavy iron crossbows in front of him were instantly reduced to a pile of scrap metal, with not a single intact part remaining.
That's way too easy!
Seeing the pile of chopped scrap metal in front of him, Zhou Ziwei's eyebrows twitched almost imperceptibly. From beginning to end, Zhou Ziwei did not feel any resistance from anything under his alloy knife. No matter how hard the iron or steel was, it seemed to be no different from air under the blade of this alloy knife. It would be cut in two with just a light slash. The process was so easy that Zhou Ziwei even had a very unreal feeling.
"Boom boom—" Just as Zhou Ziwei was slightly stunned, a series of neat footsteps came from behind him. A group of soldiers wearing blue iron armor and holding heavy iron spears approached Zhou Ziwei aggressively like a steel torrent.
Zhou Ziwei sighed softly, but did not charge towards the blue-armored soldiers. The heavy armor they wore was too heavy, and if Zhou Ziwei wanted to fight them in close combat, he would have to kill them without hesitation. Otherwise, it might be disadvantageous for him.
Although Zhou Ziwei needed a large number of souls to replenish his scarce soul power, he did not want these souls to be innocent people he had killed with his own hands.
At this moment, there are already so many souls floating in the sky above the entire battlefield that he can't absorb them all even if he tries his best. So why should he waste his killing intent and kill so many more people?
Therefore, Zhou Ziwei completely ignored the provocative shouts from the heavily armored soldiers, turned slightly, and rushed away from the area, heading towards the densest battleground between the two sides.
Along the way, Zhou Ziwei wielded his alloy knife, creating a dazzling screen of light. Without exception, all the Blue Armor soldiers who attempted to intercept him on the road had their weapons cut in two by his sharp alloy knife, leaving two shallow wounds on their shoulders. Although the wounds were not very deep, they were enough to render them unable to fight and no longer be able to raise their weapons to fight the enemy.
Zhou Ziwei ran swiftly, covering more than a hundred meters in the blink of an eye. Then, looking up at the illusory soul shadows above his head, a smile appeared on Zhou Ziwei's lips. He once again began chanting the Six-Syllable Mantra from his sea of souls.
Orange halos of light burst forth from Zhou Ziwei's sea of souls, expanding to their limit before shrinking back one by one. At the same time, they brought forth surging waves of soul power, instantly filling the previously somewhat empty space of Zhou Ziwei's sea of souls.
This time, the effect was slightly better than when reciting the Six-Syllable Mantra of Avalokiteshvara high in the sky, and I absorbed about 15,000 units of soul power in one go.
The soul power of soldiers in this world is obviously much stronger than that of ordinary people on Earth. Ordinary people on Earth generally have a soul energy of around ten, while the soul energy of soldiers here is almost never less than twenty. Therefore, when Zhou Ziwei absorbed more than 15,000 soul power this time, he had only devoured a few hundred soul bodies.
After silently sensing the situation in his Sea of Souls, Zhou Ziwei discovered that his current storage of misty soul power had reached nearly 30,000, while the space of his Sea of Souls was only more than half full. Judging from the speed of absorption, he should be able to absorb at least one more time, as long as it doesn't absorb more than 20,000 soul power at once, before his Sea of Souls is completely full.
Zhou Ziwei had already thought about this. Although there were many souls floating around here, he couldn't swallow them all, even though he had a good appetite. After all, the soul power he swallowed in this way was all in the form of mist. Although his sea of souls had expanded a lot, he could only swallow a maximum of 50,000 souls at a time.
However, transforming this misty soul power into liquid soul power is not an easy task. It requires him to seal off all his consciousness and five senses, shrink all his soul consciousness and soul power back into the sea of soul, and then repeatedly use the six-syllable mantra to temper this soul power in the sea of soul. Only then will this soul power condense in the tempering process and eventually turn from gaseous to liquid.
Therefore, this time Zhou Ziwei could only fill his Sea of Souls with misty soul power in one go. He could no longer care about how many souls were left. He could only return to Xianjing with the old charlatan and find a safe place to cultivate and refine the misty soul power.
If he can condense all these misty soul powers before tonight, then perhaps he can take advantage of the darkness before the scattered wandering ghosts in the mountains and fields are completely destroyed and harvest them again.
Of course… Zhou Ziwei could also condense these unabsorbable souls into soul beads, but… condensing soul beads is an even more time-consuming and laborious task. Even if Zhou Ziwei condensed them non-stop until dawn, he probably wouldn't be able to produce many soul beads. How could that be faster than directly using the Six-Syllable Mantra to devour souls? Zhou Ziwei knew that the old swindler and the others were still waiting at the top. He couldn't just recklessly capture souls everywhere on this battlefield to condense them, could he?
Having made up his mind, Zhou Ziwei didn't hesitate at all. He continued running towards the battlefield, seemingly evading the armored soldiers behind him. After running nearly two hundred meters, he looked up at the density of the floating souls above him. Carefully calculating, he figured he couldn't possibly absorb more than 20,000 souls in one breath. Only then did he stop, relieved, and began chanting the Six-Syllable Mantra for the third time…
However, Zhou Ziwei was completely unaware that in his desperate escape, he had unknowingly run into a formation entirely composed of soldiers clad in red battle armor. The thousand heavily armored soldiers following behind him suddenly halted, then simultaneously let out a fierce roar, hurling their seemingly immense spears at Zhou Ziwei and the red-armored soldiers within a hundred-meter radius of him. As the spears flew towards their targets, their overlapping paths caused them to collide in mid-air, resulting in a deafening explosion. In an instant, each spear shattered upon impact, one spear becoming ten, and the thousand spears transforming into a volley of ten thousand spears. Thus, within a hundred-meter radius centered on Zhou Ziwei, the area was instantly enveloped in a dense, overlapping barrage of spear shadows…
These heavily armored spearmen were an elite force secretly cultivated by the Blue Armor Army over many years, and this was the first time they had been deployed to the battlefield. Therefore, although the Red Armor Army saw the menacing force, they did not take it seriously. Little did they know that the most powerful attack of these heavily armored spearmen was their volley of spears. Their seemingly casual volley had undergone a long period of training and refinement beforehand, and the force and angle of each spear thrown were strictly regulated.
A thousand men, almost simultaneously, would unleash a thousand spears, forming a massive attack network that would completely envelop a radius of a hundred meters around a single target in indiscriminate assault. Generally speaking, once someone in this thousand-man heavy armored spearmen launched this attack, even if they had wings, they would have no chance of escaping.
Because this is an attack that covers a radius of 100 meters, even if that person reacts, it would be impossible for them to escape 100 meters in an instant!
This heavily armored spearmen were actually a unit specifically designed for decapitation strikes. The Blue Armor Army originally planned to use this force when they reached the foot of Xianjing City and faced the high-ranking officials guarding Xianjing. However, Zhou Ziwei suddenly appeared out of nowhere, turning the Blue Armor Army's previously advantageous situation into chaos and disorder.
When the commander of the Blue Armor Army saw that Zhou Ziwei was not harmed at all by the volley of arrows, he panicked and had no choice but to bring out this trump card that he had prepared to save for last.
Volume 2: The Assassin's Nightmare, Chapter 410: Soaring Prices
Since Zhou Ziwei was initially in the Blue Armor Army's camp, surrounded by Blue Armor Army soldiers on all sides, the thousand-man heavy armor spearmen only pressed forward step by step without using their trump card. Otherwise, they would have caused heavy casualties among their own men.
But now that Zhou Ziwei had joined the ranks of the red-clad warriors, the heavily armored spearmen no longer had any reservations. So, under the command of their centurion, they simultaneously unleashed their strongest attack, which they had practiced for at least several years...
When Zhou Ziwei recites the Six-Syllable Mantra, he almost completely immerses himself in the sea of his soul. Although this immersion is not like completely shutting down the five senses and six consciousnesses, making him unable to see or hear anything happening in the outside world, he still greatly ignores what is happening in the outside world because most of his attention is focused on the sea of his soul.
So when Zhou Ziwei came to his senses and discovered the spear shadows flying all around Chang Changtian, the six-syllable mantra had already been completely recited, and six huge halos of light had spread out from Zhou Ziwei's sea of souls.
Then... just as the six enormous orange halos were rapidly shrinking back, Zhou Ziwei watched helplessly as one soldier after another, clad in red battle armor, fell to the ground under the almost indiscriminate attacks of the spear shadows...
A dazzling white light suddenly rose up, dissolving the spears that were attacking Zhou Ziwei and obscuring his horrified gaze. Then he began to feel torrents of souls, like the Yangtze River bursting its banks, rushing into his sea of souls from all directions.
In the blink of an eye, it filled his soul sea, which could still hold at least 20,000 units of soul power, to the brim, and the soul power continued to surge in frantically...
Damn it, how could this happen?
Zhou Ziwei was terrified that such a thing would happen.
He was not afraid of the attacks from the Blue Armor Army. He thought that with the divine power source and the protection of his alloy suit with its self-defense capabilities, even if he lay down and fell asleep, the thousands of troops here would not be able to harm a single hair on his head.
However, he never expected that just as he began chanting the Six-Syllable Mantra, those damned Blue Armor Army soldiers would launch a powerful, wide-range attack, causing the number of souls within the range of Zhou Ziwei's Six-Syllable Mantra to more than double in that short instant.
This caused Zhou Ziwei's sea of souls to absorb at least ten thousand more units of soul power at once, immediately plunging him into a crisis where his sea of souls was overburdened and on the verge of exploding...
Man proposes, God disposes...
Zhou Ziwei had long known that absorbing soul power too hastily could be extremely dangerous. He had just made a rough check of the number of soul entities in the air to confirm that absorbing it again would not be dangerous before he began reciting the Six-Syllable Mantra. However, unexpectedly, as he began reciting the mantra, nearly a thousand people within a hundred meters of him were slaughtered in one fell swoop, causing him immediate annihilation.
"Roar—" In his haste, Zhou Ziwei only thought about quickly consuming a large amount of soul power, so he didn't hesitate to let out a silent soul roar towards the group of people who had just thrown their spears.
Not far away, the thousand-man formation, under Zhou Ziwei's surging spiritual roar, seemed to be attacked by an invisible wave. From the front to the back, from the middle to the sides, every heavily armored blue-armored spearman seemed to have just drunk a large jar of strong liquor. Their feet were unsteady, and they staggered and fell one after another as if playing dominoes.
Unfortunately, the soul roar that Zhou Ziwei emitted using his misty soul power could only consume a few hundred units of soul power at most. This was nothing compared to the massive amount of soul power surging into Zhou Ziwei's sea of souls, and it had absolutely no effect on releasing the pent-up energy.
If the method of creating an independent soul entity is used to capture a complex special entity, such as the independent soul entity in the alloy suit on Zhou Ziwei's body, it would consume nearly 20,000 of his soul power.
However, the process of creating an independent soul is relatively slow, and Zhou Ziwei can't wait even half a second.
Therefore, the idea was only briefly in his mind before being immediately abandoned.
So the only remaining method that can instantly consume a large amount of soul power is soul coverage. Zhou Ziwei's current soul coverage area can reach a space of sixty meters around him. If such a huge area is filled with thick mist-like soul power, it can indeed consume a large part of the soul power in Zhou Ziwei's sea of souls.
However, when Zhou Ziwei tried to mobilize and release the soul power in his sea of souls, he was horrified to find that countless massive amounts of soul power were still being driven by the orange halo and constantly crowding into his already overflowing sea of souls.
By blocking all the passages leading to the Sea of Souls, Zhou Ziwei's attempt to release his soul power under these circumstances was like a small fish trying to swim upstream in a flood—completely impossible.
Or perhaps only a soul roar, with its power that can be concentrated and unleashed in an instant, can release a small portion of the soul's power under such circumstances.
Unfortunately... Soul Roar cannot be used continuously. He just used it once, and it's still on cooldown...
This is it, is this really the end? And a complete and utter end?
Zhou Ziwei clearly felt that his sea of souls was severely overloaded. In an instant, the sea of souls had expanded by a large circle, and the invisible barrier that constituted the sea of souls had begun to show faint cracks. Perhaps it would completely collapse in the next moment.
For Zhou Ziwei, who possesses supernatural abilities, the destruction of his physical body might not be considered true death; only the collapse of his soul sea could truly kill him.
Once the Sea of Souls collapses, all his soul power will become rootless and will instantly dissipate into the world, leaving no trace of his soul consciousness.
Although Zhou Ziwei's body has been tempered and refined, it seems that no force can easily kill him. However, the real killing intent actually comes from his own soul sea.
However, in that life-or-death moment, the mysterious white light particles that had been hidden in every cell of Zhou Ziwei's body suddenly surged out from every corner of his body as if they had gone mad, rushing into Zhou Ziwei's head like a swarm of bees. In an instant, they formed a small halo, which actually trapped the sea of soul hidden in Zhou Ziwei's brain, which was between the tangible and the intangible.
With this layer of mysterious white light binding it, the rapidly expanding sea of souls was suddenly and forcefully stopped. No matter how much soul power continued to flow into the limited space of the sea of souls, it could not expand the sea of souls even a little bit.
The misty soul power that filled the Sea of Souls began to churn violently because it had nowhere to vent. It felt as if someone's skull was being forcibly cracked open and someone was stirring it with a stick.
This caused Zhou Ziwei's consciousness to become completely chaotic, and in that instant, he even completely lost his sense of self...
The thousand-man heavy armored spearmen who had been knocked down by Zhou Ziwei's soul-stirring roar quickly got back up from the ground.
Perhaps because the soul energy of people in this world is generally more abundant than that of Earthlings, Zhou Ziwei's ordinary soul roar, delivered in a group attack mode, did not cause much harm to these well-trained soldiers.
The power of the soul's roar did indeed knock them to the ground involuntarily, but they all recovered immediately after only a few seconds.
Then, one by one, the thousand-man squad rose to their feet amidst the humiliating roar of their centurion, and charged toward Zhou Ziwei at top speed.
This is an elite team that fights to the death. Once they receive an order from their superior, they will fight to the bitter end until the mission is completed.
They have only lost their strongest weapon, the twin spears. But even without the spears, each of them still has a short sword. Even without the short swords, they still have their hands and feet. And even without their hands and feet, they still have their teeth.
In short... they will never give up until they kill their target.
At this moment, Zhou Ziwei stood alone on the hillside covered with corpses. The nearly one thousand Red-Clad Warriors around him were all riddled with bullets from the overwhelming barrage of spears, leaving them with not a single unscathed piece of flesh.
Each corpse had at least five or six short spears stuck in it, and the bright red blood stained the entire hillside in a shocking way.
Only Zhou Ziwei stood amidst the corpses, completely unharmed. However, he remained motionless, like a puppet, his mouth agape, his expression one of furious rage, yet no sound escaped his lips.
How could those heavily armored spearmen not see Zhou Ziwei's strange condition? They knew that if they wanted to kill this godlike figure, this was their only chance. So they all bravely charged forward, and in an instant, twenty or thirty short swords came from all directions at the same time.
After the previous attacks, anyone who wasn't a fool could see that the young man in the strange silver outfit must be carrying some kind of magical protective treasure. It could unleash a strange white light when a weapon was about to strike, and as soon as the white light appeared, any weapon would be instantly devoured, leaving not even a trace.
Therefore, the blue-armored soldiers who were attacking at close range were already prepared to die. They knew that after this slash, they would probably not only fail to harm the opponent, but they themselves would likely be swallowed up by the white light.
Therefore, as everyone swung their swords, they also widened their eyes, wanting to see clearly what that strange white light was. Even if they were to die, they wanted to die knowing why.
However, as the short knives in their hands drew closer and closer to Zhou Ziwei's body, the strange white light never appeared, and their eyes lit up with boundless surprise.
Unfortunately, just when they thought that the damned white light would not reappear and that their short swords would easily take the young man's life, they suddenly saw dark red rays shoot out from the young man's silver clothes, striking the short swords in their hands with perfect accuracy.
The scorching energy attached to those seemingly inconspicuous dark red lights instantly melted more than twenty short knives into molten iron, which fell to the ground with a hissing sound that sent chills down one's spine.
The remaining hilts of the swords held by these blue-armored soldiers quickly charred due to the excessive heat, turning into ashes. Along with them, most of the arms that held the short swords were also incinerated.
The muffled groans of pain emanated from the noses of the twenty-odd people, but no one let out a scream, nor did anyone fall down due to the excruciating pain. They simply covered their severed arms with their other arms, then quietly took a few steps back, making way for their comrades to charge forward again.
After several rounds of attacks, rows of blue-armored soldiers lost their precious arms and beloved daggers, but the outcome remained unchanged. The young man in silver still stood there unharmed and motionless.
However, observant people noticed that the dark red rays that were being emitted seemed to be gradually dimming.
"He's about to give up... Let's give it our all, we can definitely kill him!" Countless blue-armored soldiers who had lost their arms roared excitedly from the rear. Some even used their remaining hands to pick up stones from the ground and smash them forcefully against Zhou Ziwei's body.
With a "whoosh," a dark red ray once again shattered the projected stone into powder that fell to the ground. However, the rays emitted from the silver clothes afterward became much dimmer.
"Quick...everyone throw stones at him, it's more effective than cutting him with knives, he can't hold on much longer."
Upon seeing this, the centurion who led the heavily armored spearmen shouted with delight.
The soldiers who were originally prepared to sacrifice one of their arms to fight against the dark red rays on Zhou Ziwei immediately put away their short swords and began to search for stones on the ground.
The hillside was naturally covered with stones, and soon the team of over a thousand people gathered around with almost everyone holding a stone. Then, under the command of the centurion, every hundred people took turns raising stones and smashing them at Zhou Ziwei.
"Boom—" Hundreds of stones came crashing down from all directions, far more powerful than a close-quarters attack by twenty or thirty people. Although Zhou Ziwei also unleashed a hundred dark red rays, those rays, whose color had dimmed considerably, could only melt or knock down some of the smaller stones. The larger stones were only partially broken down before the energy in the rays was completely consumed. In the end, twenty or thirty stones, half-melted, struck Zhou Ziwei's body heavily.
The sounds of "thump, thump" were incessant. All the stones that hit Zhou Ziwei were bounced back by the impact, but Zhou Ziwei's body was also affected by these forces and began to sway, looking as if he was about to fall down at any moment.