The more Zhou Ziwei learned, the more he feared the creature in the sky. Realizing this, he couldn't help but feel a little anxious.
Knowing that the guy has already scanned the street in front of the building, he will likely scan the building itself next.
This is a bit troublesome. If Zhou Ziwei stays in this building, he will likely be exposed immediately after being swept away by that guy's spiritual energy.
If he were to leave... this is a skyscraper that is over sixty stories high, and Zhou Ziwei is currently on the roof of this skyscraper.
If Zhou Ziwei wanted to leave this building in a normal way, it would probably take at least twenty minutes, and twenty minutes... would probably be enough time for that person to scan the building several times over.
If Zhou Ziwei were to leave using a special method... such as riding the wind energy to fly away, or jumping down... as soon as he uses this energy and causes a fluctuation, that guy in the sky will definitely notice it immediately.
This was a real dilemma, or... Zhou Ziwei had no choice at all; he could only choose to fight the one in the sky. Zhou Ziwei sighed in frustration and helplessness, and was about to stand up to prepare for this inexplicable battle when he suddenly heard a voice from below the building.
"Little friend upstairs, please don't do anything rash... You're still so young, there are so many wonderful things in this world that you've never had the chance to experience. If you take your own life like this, your parents and your family will be heartbroken. Believe me, little friend, whatever grievances or worries you have, you can tell me... I can help you solve them, okay?"
The sound was broadcast through a loudspeaker, so loud it could pierce the air and split rocks, and could be heard for miles. Zhou Ziwei naturally couldn't miss it. He paused for a moment, then looked down in the direction from which the sound came, and was immediately startled.
It turns out that at some point, the open-air parking lot below the building and the street in front of it were now densely packed with people.
More than a dozen police cars were parked in the parking lot below, and more than twenty people were frantically unfolding a huge air cushion. Blowers were connected to the four corners of the air cushion, continuously filling it with air, and the huge air cushion slowly inflated.
On top of a police car stood a blonde, blue-eyed, and elegant policewoman holding a megaphone, shouting loudly at Zhou Ziwei. A series of comforting and encouraging words flowed continuously from the megaphone, and after talking for so long, she didn't repeat a single word.
The building is very tall. From the top, even the cars look like tiny ants, and people... basically look like insignificant specks of dust.
However, Zhou Ziwei's eyes had been nurtured by the power of his soul for a long time. Even without specially injecting soul power to improve his vision, his vision was many times stronger than that of an ordinary person under normal circumstances. At this distance, Zhou Ziwei was still able to see the general appearance of the blonde beauty.
Holy crap, what's going on here? Are they making a movie?
Zhou Ziwei was quite puzzled, but then he looked at his two legs dangling from the edge of the building and suddenly realized that... he had been sitting on this skyscraper for half an hour to observe the thing flying around in the sky. If he had sat a little further in, it wouldn't have been a problem, but he had jumped over the safety railing on the rooftop and sat right on the edge of the building. It was quite terrifying and dangerous for a child to sit there at such a height; a slightly stronger gust of wind could easily blow him off.
If the people below don't notice him, that's fine, but once someone does, they'll naturally think he's a troubled child who's been wronged at home and wants to jump off a building to commit suicide, but can't make up his mind right now.
Zhou Ziwei didn't have much affection for the Americans, because Kniel's actions in having the police arrest little boys everywhere made him even more disgusted with the American police. However, he never expected that the American police would be so efficient, quick, and tireless in rescuing a child.
Or perhaps their actions were more of a show for the public, but in any case, the efficiency was astonishing.
Anyway, Zhou Ziwei knew that if this were in China, the police would definitely not be this efficient, and might not even have the time or inclination to deal with such a trivial matter.
With a loud crash, the large iron gate on the rooftop was flung open from the inside, and then more than a dozen people rushed up together.
Several of these people were clearly reporters, holding cameras and video cameras and trying to take pictures of Zhou Ziwei.
Several people in plainclothes were shouting at Zhou Ziwei, and their messages were basically the same as those of the blonde woman with the megaphone below. However, the same words coming from this guy's mouth didn't sound so friendly.
Zhou Ziwei gave a slight wry smile and quickly raised his hand to cover his face, preventing the reporters from taking pictures of it.
Although he didn't intend to commit suicide, once these reporters report on it, they can fabricate all sorts of sensational stories for you.
Maybe tomorrow's newspapers will publish articles like "Little boy commits suicide over a pretty girl in kindergarten."
Then, they would put a close-up photo of Zhou Ziwei in the newspaper... In that case, it would be difficult for Zhou Ziwei not to become famous.
Although few people recognized Zhou Ziwei's current appearance, he was still ashamed of himself when he thought about it. To avoid being harassed by those annoying reporters and to escape the upcoming spiritual energy scan, Zhou Ziwei looked down at the large air cushion below the building, which had expanded to a certain size. He hesitated for a moment, then jumped and fell straight down into the air cushion.
Zhou Ziwei did not use any power. His soul power was hidden in his sea of souls, and all his attribute-less energy was hidden in his middle dantian. At this moment, he was basically a person without any protective measures who was free-falling from a building.
However, Zhou Ziwei certainly didn't intend to die. Although he didn't use energy to protect himself or slow down his descent, his aim was excellent. He jumped straight down to the center of the huge air cushion below.
Although the building is nearly two hundred meters tall, even a small pebble falling from such a height would likely be pulverized. However, with the massive air cushion providing cushioning, most of the force would likely be absorbed. As for the remaining force, Zhou Ziwei could withstand it entirely with his pure physical strength and sturdiness, even without using any of his soul power or attribute-less energy.
Back then, that giant jumped from a height of 100 meters and landed in a pile of rocks without getting hurt in the slightest. That guy relied entirely on his strong physical strength and had no ability to use energy, yet he was still safe and sound. Therefore, Zhou Ziwei believed that as long as he didn't make any mistakes, he could be guaranteed to be unharmed even without using his soul power or attribute-less energy.
Zhou Ziwei's only worry was... with such a commotion here, he wondered if the person in the sky would also be attracted to it. Even though he had already scanned the street below once, given the large number of people here, it was not impossible that he would scan it again, or even give him, the aerial acrobat, a more detailed scan.
However, if he stayed obediently on the rooftop of that building anyway, he would still be scanned by the spiritual energy of that person in the sky. He might as well take the risk and gamble. If he succeeded, it would be best if he could get away with it. If he failed to escape the person's spiritual energy scan... the situation wouldn't be much worse.
Since we'll have to face it sooner or later, why not be decisive?
"Ah...he jumped down! Quick, take a picture! Quick, take a picture!"
The reporters who had just climbed to the rooftop were greatly annoyed when they saw this. The reason they had gone to so much trouble to climb to the top was to capture some close-up shots of the people jumping off the building.
But who knew that before they could even start taking pictures, the person had already jumped! If they hadn't rushed to the rooftop, they could have easily captured a close-up shot of the poor kid falling right now... What a blunder...
Zhou Ziwei wasn't afraid at all. The height of over 200 meters didn't pose much of a threat to him. If he wanted, he wouldn't care if it were several hundred meters higher.
The whistling wind kept rushing past his ears, and Zhou Ziwei felt as if he were being surrounded by the wind.
Zhou Ziwei knew this was an illusion. In reality, there might not be any wind at all. It was just that the air was relatively still in one area, while Zhou Ziwei was in free fall, descending with tremendous force, rapidly penetrating through clusters of relatively fixed air. This caused air movement, and once the air moved, it naturally formed "wind," one of the natural energies...
As his body moved through the rising gusts of wind, Zhou Ziwei seemed to gain a faint understanding, as if his comprehension of wind energy had reached a new level.
However... with a formidable enemy at his side, even though Zhou Ziwei had made some progress, he dared not immediately test the extent of his understanding of wind energy. He could only hope to calm down and study it properly after escaping this calamity.
Volume 3, King of the City, Chapter 597: Transformers
Just as Zhou Ziwei was enjoying the thrill of freefall and contemplating the mysteries of wind energy, he suddenly heard a commotion among the crowd below the building. Someone shouted, "Ah...ya...he jumped down! It looks like he's going to fall into the crowd! Everyone run! If he hits us, we're all doomed!"
"Oh no! He'll fall to his death like that! Quick... quick, move the air cushion to the left!"
The policewoman's voice came from the loudspeaker. Zhou Ziwei paused, startled, and looked down, puzzled. He thought, "That's right... if I fall like this, I should land straight in the center of the air cushion. Why is the policewoman ordering people to move the air cushion? This... isn't this sabotage?" Those carrying the air cushion below couldn't see Zhou Ziwei's landing point due to the angle. Upon hearing the policewoman's command, they frantically pushed the air cushion to the left.
Those guys were really fast. By the time Zhou Ziwei had fallen from the sixtieth floor to the teens, they had already pushed the air cushion a good ten meters away. And because Zhou Ziwei landed at a lower level, even the people pushing the air cushion could feel it now... their position seemed to have shifted a lot... the child seemed to land where the air cushion had been, not here at all.
At this moment, the policewoman who had been giving haphazard instructions realized something was wrong and hurriedly shouted, "You've gone too far... Go back... Pull the air cushion back!"
The twenty-odd officers who had been pulling the air cushion were utterly speechless. What kind of person was this? Not only did she make a mistake in her command, but she also accused us of moving the air cushion too far. How shameless! The accident hadn't even happened yet, and she had already come up with an excuse to shirk responsibility, trying to make us her scapegoats? No way! The drag marks on the ground were obvious, proving the original position of the air cushion. After the child fell to the ground, we would protect the scene and prevent her from shifting the blame onto us.
As it turned out, the policewoman who was slow to realize the mistake was incredibly wrong. By then, Zhou Ziwei was already almost hitting the ground before she had the people pull the air cushion back. It was too late...
Zhou Ziwei glared angrily at the blonde policewoman standing on the roof of the police car, holding a megaphone and giving orders haphazardly with an air of superiority… Then he was stunned to find that the policewoman was indeed quite pretty, with fair skin, a tall figure, a full, round mouth, and a high, straight nose, but… her eyes were slanted so badly that they completely ruined her otherwise somewhat attractive face.
Holy crap, are you kidding me?! A cross-eyed guy is actually directing the rescue?! This is outrageous!
Zhou Ziwei inwardly groaned. If there had been that air cushion below, he wouldn't have been injured even without using any soul power or natural energy. But now that the air cushion was gone, he was relying entirely on his bare skin to crash into the stone-paved parking lot... After accelerating for over two hundred meters, his descent was now at an extremely terrifying level, even more terrifying than the giant who jumped from a hundred meters.
After all, the Titans are enormous, and the air resistance they experience when falling from the sky is also great. Although the Titans do not use energy to slow down, they are skilled in fighting techniques and have a unique secret technique that allows them to adjust their posture in the air to reduce the impact force on their bodies when they land on the ground.
However, Zhou Ziwei was completely different. This time, he not only fell from a much greater height, exceeding two hundred meters, but despite his short stature, his weight was astonishing, several times heavier than that of an average person. At a certain height, two iron balls might land simultaneously, but an iron ball and a wooden ball could never land at the same time.
This means that the force of the fall applied to Zhou Ziwei was much greater than that of an ordinary person, at least several times greater.
Therefore, there's absolutely no way Zhou Ziwei could withstand this violent impact with his physical strength alone. If he doesn't want to fall to his death here, he'll have to use his mysterious power at the crucial moment; otherwise... he'll have to give up this body and start over!
"That squinty-eyed beauty, I'll fuck you!" Looking at the ground looming larger before him, feeling the sharp, knife-like winds sweeping past him, Zhou Ziwei was filled with rage and hatred. He couldn't help but curse at the policewoman responsible for this mess…
"It's over, it's over... the poor child is doomed."
"What are the police doing...? The person was about to jump onto that air cushion, but at the crucial moment, the police moved the air cushion away. What are they doing? Are they treating human life like dirt?"
"No way! Does everyone in Los Angeles have no one left? They actually sent a woman with an eye problem to give orders like this. Isn't this irresponsible towards the safety of the citizens? We want to complain! We want to protest..."
Seeing a perfectly healthy little boy about to be smashed to pieces on the ground due to a police error, the onlookers were filled with righteous indignation. The police officers who were desperately pulling the air cushion back knew it was too late. As the boy was about to hit the ground, several officers involuntarily stopped and stared blankly at the little boy in freefall, their eyes filled with sorrow and guilt...
Did he just fall and die? Poor child…
Under the watchful eyes of countless people, the small figure approached the ground at an almost frenzied speed. At that moment, everyone involuntarily imagined the child crashing onto the solid ground and turning into a bloody mess. The tragic scene filled them with a helpless fear.
Closer...closer still...
Finally, the little boy's body gradually enlarged in everyone's sight, and then... he finally crashed heavily onto the stone-paved ground of the parking lot, and then... everyone's eyes almost popped out of their sockets.
Because they suddenly saw... when the little boy fell to the ground, it was as if he hadn't landed on a hard stone slab, but rather on a ball of cotton, or a swamp, or a lake.
As soon as the little boy landed, he created a crater in the ground, and then the stone slabs in that area seemed to ripple like waves, swallowing the little boy's body whole.
About a second later, the ground there had completely returned to its usual calm, and the little boy who had fallen from the sky... or rather, the thing that should have become a corpse, had vanished without a trace. Not even a speck of blood remained on the smooth stone slab, nor any marks left from the violent impact.
It was as if nothing had ever happened, as if there had never been a little boy sitting alone on the rooftop, as if that small figure had never leaped so boldly from the two-hundred-meter-tall building, and as if that squinty-eyed beauty had never given any random instructions. It was as if nothing had ever happened.
Everyone present was stunned. In the past half hour, at least several thousand people had gathered in the vicinity to watch the scene. What was even more outrageous was that a local television station in the city discovered this live news, and the station's interview vehicle happened to be nearby. So they simply set up cameras on the spot and began to broadcast the suicide live.
In this way, it can be said that at least tens of thousands of people witnessed this bizarre scene at the same time.
The host, who was broadcasting live, was so excited he was practically in a daze, babbling incoherently and not knowing what he was saying. But you couldn't blame him; how could such a supernatural event, witnessed by countless people and happening in broad daylight, not be terrifying? A perfectly healthy person fell to the ground and sank... If they hadn't seen it with their own eyes, even if they had seen it on TV, they would probably have thought it was a performance, a special effect.
However, only footage shown in variety shows is edited, while what they are showing now is a news program, and a live news program at that. I believe that no matter how shocked the viewers in front of the TV are by this sudden appearance, they will not doubt that the TV station has produced such a fake footage to deceive them!
Therefore, their exclusive live broadcast program will definitely become an instant hit, and soon this small-time host, whose main program is not his, will become a big star.
The host shouted into the microphone, "He really has disappeared... We will be providing full coverage of this incident. The police will soon provide details about the little boy, and then... our reporters will conduct further in-depth investigations... Where did this little boy go? Did he travel to another world, enter the legendary underworld, or was he rescued by aliens and taken to another dimension...? As our program continues its investigation, please stay tuned. We will soon release a follow-up report on this news..."
The male anchor yelled into the microphone and was about to ask the cameraman to switch the camera to film the expressions of the audience who were greatly shocked when he suddenly heard someone behind him point to the sky and shout, "God... what is that?"
The male anchor paused for a moment, then looked in the direction the man was pointing. He saw a dark, indistinct object suddenly flying down from mid-air. The object was falling at an extremely fast speed, several times faster than the little boy who had been in freefall. He couldn't make out what was inside the object; he could only see a blurry shadow.
"Quick, take the shot!" The male anchor realized that another news story that could easily spark controversy had emerged, and he quickly told the cameraman to capture this precious moment.
However, just as he finished speaking, the dark figure crashed heavily to the ground. Then, a loud "boom" was heard. At the spot where the little boy had just fallen, a cloud of dust and countless pieces of stone and soil flew up like exploding water droplets, soaring dozens of meters high.
Many onlookers were immediately splattered with flying stones and sand, but fortunately, the stones and sand were pulverized, so even if they hit someone, they would only hurt for a moment and then be done with it, without causing any irreparable injury or death.
A moment later, as the dust and smoke slowly dissipated, the onlookers once again let out an incredulous exclamation.
Right where the little boy had just fallen, a deep hole suddenly appeared. In an instant, a large pit with a diameter of about one meter and a bottomless depth appeared.
At least from the surface, they couldn't see how deep the pit was. One busybody picked up a fist-sized rock and threw it vertically into the hole. Surprisingly, more than twenty seconds later, someone with sharp ears faintly heard a slight sound coming from deep within the cave.
Everyone gasped again.
What was that thing that fell from the sky a second time? It can carve such a bottomless cave in the ground in an instant! That's terrifying! In the blink of an eye, a cave hundreds or even thousands of meters deep was carved out. If this person were to work at an oil company drilling wells, they could drill a well every second… Imagine how much money they could save the oil companies…
"Breaking news...breaking news..." The male anchor hurriedly instructed the cameraman to point the lens at the bottomless cave, then continued his excited, rambling explanation: "Just a minute ago...an unidentified object fell from the sky again, disappearing right where the little boy who just fell landed. But this time, unlike last time when the ground was like a still lake with only a ripple before returning to normal, it suddenly left behind a bottomless cave..."
Zhou Ziwei was furious. The instant he hit the ground, he had no choice but to release a large amount of attribute-less energy. After it was converted into pure earth energy on his body, it rushed into the ground below and merged with it.
In the next moment, the land within a radius of several meters completely transformed into a part of Zhou Ziwei's body. In that area, almost every grain of sand and every speck of dust seemed to be a cell in Zhou Ziwei's body, which could be adjusted at will according to Zhou Ziwei's thoughts.
This is the ability that comes only after one has grasped the true meaning of the earth's energy, and can truly transform it into a power that belongs to oneself through a connection with natural energy.
So when Zhou Ziwei crashed headfirst into the stone-paved parking lot, it felt almost like jumping into a pile of cotton. The hard ground, driven by Zhou Ziwei's will, became the softest object. Despite falling at such a high speed, Zhou Ziwei felt no pain at all; on the contrary, he felt quite comfortable.
It's like a baby sleeping in the womb; the feeling is so captivating that you don't want to wake up.
However, Zhou Ziwei knew that he had just used so much earth energy, which would inevitably cause a strong energy fluctuation. The guy flying around in the sky would be attracted and would definitely be coming over soon.
Zhou Ziwei didn't want to hurt innocent people, so he naturally wouldn't return to the ground to wait for that guy to arrive. Instead, he simply used the momentum of his fall to clear a path with the earth's energy, his body seemingly still in the void, separating the land below, and continuing to fall into the depths of the earth without stopping.
Zhou Ziwei did this with a sliver of hope: that the guy chasing him wasn't good at walking underground. If that were the case, wouldn't he be able to immediately escape the guy's entanglement by burrowing underground? You have to understand that burrowing underground isn't like swimming; it's not something just any Tom, Dick, or Harry can do, not even if the opponent is a terrifyingly powerful Spirit Martial Master.
After all, a Spirit Martial Master's entire reliance lies in the spiritual weapons they wield. If their spiritual weapons aren't adept at traversing underground, then they probably wouldn't have the ability to chase after someone all the way down into the ground. However, Zhou Ziwei's little hope was quickly dashed. Zhou Ziwei had deliberately sank a short distance underground at first, wanting to use his soul power to monitor whether the guy behind him would actually chase him down into the ground.
So he only sank to a depth of about 200 meters before stopping. His soul power's scanning range was 240 meters; any deeper and he couldn't scan. Just as Zhou Ziwei's figure stopped deep underground, he suddenly realized that the guy had indeed caught up. Under Zhou Ziwei's soul power scan, he could clearly feel that just as the guy was about to fall to the ground, the huge iron cage-like spiritual artifact surrounding him suddenly wriggled. Then, the front end assembled into something like an electric drill bit, while the rear part instantly condensed and contracted into something resembling a cone.