The largest mansion in the Zhou family was inherited by him, the eldest son. The other properties, although smaller, were worth more than twice as much as the mansion when combined. Those properties belonged to Lin Zijia, the wife of Zhou Zixu and Zhou Zhengxiang, whom they had married a few years ago.
So... this mansion is now Zhou Ziwei's private property. However, because it is a critical time, the Zhou family needs to live together and be under the protection of the police. Therefore, Zhou Ziwei will not kick them out of "his own home". On the contrary, Zhou Ziwei himself still lives in the two-story villa in the New Century Community.
However, it was really inappropriate to leave these two large boxes of jade fragments in the small villa. Although the community had been advertised and touted as having advanced and comprehensive security measures when it was launched, Zhou Ziwei had encountered assassins who could come and go freely here more than once. He couldn't possibly stay at home all day to watch over these two boxes of treasures, so he had no choice but to move these things to the mansion and store them away.
After all, there's police protection there 24 hours a day, so it's much safer than here.
With this batch of jade fragments as a backing, even if the Zhou Group were to go bankrupt completely, Zhou Ziwei could still use this batch of jade to rebuild the Zhou Group into one that was no weaker than its original heyday.
But doing it that way would cost a lot of money, not to mention the time that would be wasted, which is what Zhou Ziwei is most distressed about.
After all, creating a company as large as the Zhou Group would take more than a year or two; the infrastructure alone would likely take a considerable amount of time.
Therefore… Zhou Ziwei would never give up the Zhou Group under any circumstances. Having done all this… Zhou Ziwei finally breathed a sigh of relief and began preparing his counterattack…
Volume 1 The Rebirth of a Prodigy Chapter 189 A Makeover
To get the Zhou Group out of its predicament and out of the threat of bankruptcy, the first step is to eliminate the threats from the outside world.
So Zhou Ziwei's first priority was to eliminate that "big shot" who had spent a lot of money to put a bounty on the black market assassin website.
Zhou Ziwei had already learned the guy's identity through the information previously investigated by the Zhou family. The man's name was Xiao Yundong, thirty-seven years old, and he was the owner of a very powerful foreign trade company.
It is said that he has over a billion yuan in assets that are publicly known, and his hidden assets are even more numerous and difficult to count.
If this person were just a businessman, it wouldn't be a problem. What's most troublesome is that he's actually the son of a high-ranking official. His father is a ministerial-level leader with considerable power in the military and political circles.
A former soldier who rose through the ranks to become a ministerial-level official, he is now semi-retired, but the network of connections he has built over the years is still considerable.
Xiao Yundong's father didn't actively seek any personal gain for his only son. However, sometimes, when one person achieves success, even their relatives and friends benefit. Even if Xiao Yundong had some difficult matters, he didn't need to bother his strict father. As long as he communicated with Xiao Yundong's subordinates, some clever people would take the initiative to handle everything for him.
Over time, it was inevitable that Xiao Yundong would develop an arrogant and domineering personality.
Xiao Yundong was a womanizer. At thirty-seven years old, he was still unmarried, not because he couldn't find a wife, but because he had too many concubines. He currently had seventeen or eighteen concubines under his care. However, to avoid future property disputes, he had taken good precautions and had not allowed any of these women with unclear identities to have children for him.
Excessive indulgence over a long period of time naturally took its toll on his body. Since Xiao Yundong did not yet have any descendants to inherit his wealth, he naturally paid more attention to men's health maintenance. It was under these circumstances that he chose the male health products produced by the Zhou Group.
And you know what? Those male enhancement products really worked. After taking them for more than ten days, Xiao Yundong's ability in that area became more and more vigorous, which made his dozen or so concubines beam with joy and praise him endlessly.
Who knew that in his excitement, this guy, in order to win over a minor celebrity he had just spent a lot of money to secure, disregarded the instructions and doubled the dosage of the product. As a result... after a fierce outburst, this guy completely lost his erection.
After that, not only did he not get that minor celebrity, but even if he gritted his teeth and used force to invite a big star he had long coveted to give him a blowjob, his penis didn't react at all.
Later, after a hospital examination, the doctor had no solution and could only helplessly inform him that he would have to say goodbye to a happy sex life forever.
Enraged, Xiao Yundong beat up several doctors who treated him at the hospital. Back home, he abused his dozen or so concubines. After drinking all night, he finally hardened his heart and took out nearly half of his wealth. He first secretly investigated the Zhou Group, then posted numerous bounty ads on the black market assassin website. At the same time, he used his grandfather's connections to suppress the Zhou Group with all his might, hoping to cripple it and force it into bankruptcy, so that he could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Given Xiao Yundong's sudden and significant actions, his father, unless he is blind or deaf, would certainly know something about it.
If it were any other situation, his father would naturally not have allowed Xiao Yundong to act recklessly. However... after learning that Xiao Yundong had completely lost his fertility, even he almost lost control due to the intense sense of despair. He also hated the Zhou Group to the core, which is why he acquiesced to his son's behavior.
Otherwise, without his tacit approval, how could Xiao Yundong have mobilized so many connections behind his back?
After seeing the information, Zhou Ziwei's last bit of sympathy for this family vanished. This guy had been messing around with so many women; his health was probably already severely compromised. Supplements couldn't fill his stomach... and then he took his anger out on others after something went wrong... If he were only taking his anger out on the people actually involved, that would be one thing, but Zhou Ziwei had never even worked for the Zhou Group before, yet he was listed as a killable person simply because his surname was Zhou. This guy... really didn't know the meaning of death.
Therefore, if Zhou Ziwei wants to eliminate the potential troubles for himself and the entire Zhou Group, the first person he needs to deal with is Xiao Yundong.
Otherwise, even if Zhou Ziwei had a way to take down the black market assassin network, wouldn't that guy still have half of the assets? If that guy got desperate and came after other assassin organizations, Zhou Ziwei wouldn't have anything else to do.
Just as Zhou Ziwei was about to set off after learning about the other party's information, he unexpectedly received another box from Wu Di in Yunnan. Zhou Ziwei was overjoyed. Before he even opened the box, he scanned it with his soul power and knew that it contained the new type of cross dart that he had racked his brains to design.
Zhou Ziwei had been looking forward to this new type of cross-shaped dart for a long time, and he had no choice but to open it now.
Inside the exquisite pear wood box were a total of twenty new-style cross darts, all of which were handmade and exquisitely crafted. Each tiny part was also painstakingly polished from fine steel.
Zhou Ziwei first tested the new cross-shaped dart using the ordinary method of launching it. He found that the newly added movable joint design of the new cross-shaped dart did not affect the state of the dart in the air. After throwing it, the effect was no different from that of an ordinary cross-shaped dart, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
The next and most important step is to create a brand new, independent soul within the body of this new cross-shaped dart, and to carve complex neural pathways throughout the entire body.
This process took Zhou Ziwei half a night to complete, and he finally managed to depict all the simulated neural lines on a new type of cross-shaped dart.
This took Zhou Ziwei dozens of soul points to finally complete.
The so-called simulated nerve lines are actually Zhou Ziwei using his soul power to continuously move back and forth within the fixed lines inside the dart. This causes the steel around those lines to be subtly influenced by his soul power, gradually undergoing a qualitative change. Once this qualitative change reaches a certain level, Zhou Ziwei can simply inject a wisp of soul power again without any special control. That wisp of soul power will naturally flow according to the traces left by countless back-and-forth inscriptions, and will never deviate.
Before this, Zhou Ziwei had only made theoretical deductions and was not sure if they were feasible. However, after half a night of experimentation, it was finally proven that his previous deductions were indeed correct.
There were originally no roads in the world. Later, when people frequently walked along the same route, roads were formed. This is a common sense statement full of philosophical meaning.
Zhou Ziwei used this common sense to create a method for artificially generating nerve endings in a non-living organism.
And he actually succeeded...
Zhou Ziwei then inserted the specially made high-efficiency micro battery that had been sent along with the new cross-shaped dart into the battery slot on the dart body before preparing to create an independent soul within the dart body.
The design of this battery was only added by Zhou Ziwei later. After handing the design drawings to Wu Di, he realized that even if the cross-shaped dart had complete simulated nerve lines inside, which could control every tiny movement of the dart, it was still possible to convert soul power into power and make an object move physically.
However... this energy conversion is quite uneconomical and quite difficult.
Even just making a screw turn slightly on the ground would require Zhou Ziwei to expend almost half of his soul power, and this expenditure would be several times greater than the soul power required to create an independent soul entity within that screw.
However, if one can use the power of the soul to control other energies and convert them into power, the consumption will be much less.
Electrical energy is obviously a type of energy that is more suitable for conversion, because the way electric current exists is similar to that of soul energy. Zhou Ziwei had already proven the feasibility of this idea through simple experiments. Sure enough, soul power can be used to control electrical energy to convert it into power to drive the soul power.
Of course... the electricity can't be too strong, otherwise it will easily disperse all the soul power, but it also can't be too weak, otherwise the cross-shaped dart's autonomous action will be weak and powerless, becoming a useless ability.
Zhou Ziwei had originally considered designing the new cross-shaped dart as something entirely electronically controlled, with a miniature motor installed inside, like a model airplane or car. This would eliminate the need for the step of engraving nerve lines. Zhou Ziwei would then only need to create an independent soul inside the electronic dart, allowing it to replace the remote control for operation.
However, after much thought, Zhou Ziwei still felt that if the darts were controlled entirely by circuits, the action of the darts would inevitably fall into a vicious cycle of rigidity and inflexibility. How much more powerful could such a new type of darts be compared to the traditional darts?
So after much consideration, Zhou Ziwei decided to put in more effort and use more of his spiritual power to create a new type of cross dart that could truly come to life.
It took half a night to carve the nerve lines, but creating an independent soul within the dart was much quicker, taking less than a minute.
However, the amount of soul power consumed in creating an independent soul body this time surprised Zhou Ziwei again... He usually only needed to consume half a soul power to create an independent soul body in the traditional cross-shaped dart, but this time it took nearly twenty soul power to complete the creation.
It has long been proven that to create an independent soul within an object, the larger the object's volume and the more complex its structure, the more soul power is required. While this new type of cross-shaped dart is structurally more complex than the original, the complexity is still limited, except for the addition of a battery. However, the soul power required to create an independent soul has increased by more than forty times, which is clearly due to the simulated nerve lines pre-carved inside the dart.
This result both excited and pained Zhou Ziwei. In total, he had already consumed nearly a hundred soul power on this small new-style cross dart. Judging from his current soul power reserves, without using the soul entity in the bullet in his chest to replenish it, he would probably have to exhaust all his soul power to modify all twenty new-style cross darts.
However, the greater the cost, the better the product might be, so Zhou Ziwei was filled with anticipation...
"Attention passengers, flight XXX to Yongfeng City will be taking off in twenty minutes. Please proceed with your ticket checks and boarding..."
Upon hearing the announcement in the airport waiting hall, Zhou Ziwei immediately stood up expressionlessly, then slung his small, lightweight bag over his shoulder and slowly walked toward the security checkpoint.
At the same time, he gently unzipped the backpack and then lightly patted it without leaving a trace. Instantly, three beams of light shot out of the bag like three bolts of lightning, flying straight into the sky and disappearing quickly.
"Wow—what's that...?"
A sharp-eyed young man nearby exclaimed in surprise, but after rubbing his eyes, he couldn't see anything anymore. He muttered dejectedly, "Damn it... I clearly saw three beams of light... Am I just seeing things?"
Zhou Ziwei smiled slightly, not panicking at being seen. He simply gave the young man an innocent and bewildered look before quickly entering the security checkpoint...
At this moment, Zhou Ziwei had completely changed his appearance. Although he wasn't particularly handsome, he still had a certain dashing charm. Now, he had transformed into an ordinary-looking middle-aged man who would be easily lost in a crowd.
His ID card has been replaced with a new one. He is now called Zhang Jiayang and works as a professional salesman. He doesn't have a fixed company; he can take on any project that makes money. He travels frequently to cities of all sizes across the country.
The name and ID card are real. However, this person accidentally stumbled upon a drug deal while traveling during a break from a business trip in Yunnan. The outcome was predictable. Before this, Zhou Ziwei had already asked Wu Di to help him get a few real unclaimed ID cards, preferably with simple information about the ID card owner.
For a border bigwig like Wu Di, such a trivial matter was easier than drinking water. He immediately sent more than a dozen unclaimed ID cards to Zhou Ziwei, and the owners of each ID card had recently died, and no one knew about their deaths yet. Zhou Ziwei could confidently impersonate any of them.
Zhou Ziwei is going out to kill someone this time, and he is no longer an insignificant figure. Although the Zhou Group is on the verge of bankruptcy at any time, before it officially went bankrupt, it was a group company with total assets of over one billion. His every move will inevitably attract the attention of the police.
If he were to simply swagger off to Yongfeng City, where Xiao Yundong was located, and then Xiao Yundong, the person suspected of hiring someone to kill him, were to mysteriously die... then even if the police didn't find any evidence, they would naturally understand that it was him who did it.
That's why Zhou Ziwei had to change his appearance before leaving Dangyang.
Fortunately, Zhou Ziwei still had a magical amoeba on him. By sticking this little worm to his face, he could transform into anyone at will, even black or white people. This was because the amoeba had been replenishing its soul power daily by Zhou Ziwei, and it had slowly begun to undergo some evolutionary reactions. Among these reactions, color change was a new talent of its.
Now, if Zhou Ziwei wanted to, he could even turn himself into a Smurf...
Although Luan Yuqing clung to him, wanting to stay by his side, Zhou Ziwei couldn't change Luan Yuqing's appearance as well, so he completely ignored the woman's obsession.
Anyway, the Zhou family compound is now under very tight police protection. If Qiao Mulin really dares to come and kidnap Luan Yuqing, he'll be asking for trouble. Therefore, Zhou Ziwei doesn't need to worry about Luan Yuqing at all.
Before leaving, Zhou Ziwei had already moved back to the Zhou family compound, and then pretended to be sick and stayed away from home.
He didn't hide this from Zhou Zixu. If anyone came looking for Zhou Ziwei, Zhou Zixu would naturally help cover for him. For now, he could keep it a secret for as long as possible. If someone found out that Zhou Ziwei was missing, as long as no one had any evidence to prove that Zhou Ziwei had been to Yongfeng, then even if they had suspicions, they couldn't do anything to Zhou Ziwei.
When it was time to board, Zhou Ziwei deliberately lagged behind and waited until everyone else had boarded before slowly making his way up the plane.
Two flight attendants in blue uniforms stood at the cabin door, welcoming him with smiles on their faces. Although his movements were as impatient as an old lady's, the two flight attendants showed no displeasure due to their excellent professionalism.
"Hey... why are there small advertisements plastered on your plane?"
Zhou Ziwei stopped abruptly at the cabin door and pointed at the door behind the two flight attendants, making a fuss.
"Huh...what...what small advertisement?"
The two flight attendants glanced back instinctively, and in that instant, three bright silver lights flashed and fell precisely into Zhou Ziwei's slightly open backpack. Zhou Ziwei then deftly pulled the zipper on the backpack.
Then he exclaimed "Oh!" and said, "Sorry... I must have misread it. That should be your airline's logo, right? To me, it looks like a cheap advertisement for treating psoriasis on the street..."
Zhou Ziwei's analogy left the two flight attendants speechless, but they still tried their best to maintain their charming smiles. After welcoming Zhou Ziwei into the cabin, the two beautiful flight attendants exchanged a glance and rolled their eyes at Zhou Ziwei's back.
Volume 1, Rebirth of a Prodigy, Chapter 190: The Counter-Assassination Begins
When Zhou Ziwei got off the plane at Yongfeng Airport, it was already evening. He hailed a taxi at random, chose a relatively remote area, and checked into an ordinary hotel. He then released his ladybug to keep watch outside, while he lay in bed to rest and begin a deep sleep.
Zhou Ziwei didn't get up to wash until midnight...
Zhou Ziwei already had a fairly thorough understanding of Xiao Yundong's information. In the past, finding Xiao Yundong's whereabouts at night was like finding a needle in a haystack.
Who can blame him when he has so many concubines, sixteen or seventeen... He probably doesn't even know which one he'll spend the night with... And that doesn't even include the times he'll have casual flings...
However, this guy's happy life has now been completely ruined. No matter how beautiful his concubines are, they are now just a source of annoyance and frustration.
Moreover, he posted a bounty on the black market assassin website, but after so long, he has only managed to kill one important figure, Zhou Zhengxiang. Apart from that, only two minor characters have been killed. Therefore, he has to be wary of a backlash from the Zhou family.
After all, when he discovered that his manhood wasn't working, he was furious and contacted the Zhou Group, issuing a serious threat. He believed that the Zhou family could easily connect him with the bounty information.
It's not impossible that the Zhou family might retaliate in kind, issuing a bounty or hiring assassins to kill him. So, for the time being, Xiao Yundong has been staying at home unless there's something important going on. He has also hired a group of very skilled security guards to protect his home like a fortress.
The reason why Xiao Yundong went to use his grandfather's connections to wipe out the entire Zhou Group after issuing the bounty was to put the Zhou Group in a difficult situation. That way, even if the Zhou family wanted to hire assassins to deal with him in the same way, they wouldn't be able to spare much money.
Hiring assassins now is a bottomless pit of money. To hire a decent assassin, you need at least a few million. If you want to pose a threat to Xiao Yundong, who is already on guard, hiring just one or two high-level assassins won't be very useful. But if you hire an entire assassin organization or mercenaries, that's something the Zhou family, who are currently in a predicament, can't afford.
Xiao Yundong's concerns were not unfounded. As early as after Zhou Zhengxiang was attacked for the first time but managed to escape, he began to arrange for people to conduct a detailed investigation of Xiao Yundong's information and recorded a large amount of data.