A miscalculation.
Yu Xian had assumed this would awaken Hu Weijie's consciousness, but instead, it had unexpectedly empowered him.
At that moment, unable to locate Yu Xian, Hu Weijie constantly scanned his surroundings. Gradually, four more eyes sprouted on his head, followed by a human face forming at the back of his skull bearing another six eyes.
Eyes continued to burgeon all over his body until finally an eye on the crown of his head locked onto Yu Xian in midair.
*Boom!*
In an instant, his legs kicked out with tremendous force, propelling his body outside the bubble, and with a single punch, he shattered it.
Yet the moment he leaped, Yu Xian had already anticipated the move and teleported away beforehand. Hu Weijie looked down toward the distant bubble; the tails behind him fanned out into wings, and he flashed before the bubble in an instant, throwing another punch.
The bubble burst on the spot, and Yu Xian teleported away again, taking Gong Qian with him.
This time, Hu Weijie appeared to have adapted to Yu Xian's combat style. Relying on the densely clustered eyes covering his body, he could pinpoint Yu Xian's new location elsewhere with extraordinary speed. Thus, after blowing the bubble apart with one fist, he used his wings for propulsion and appeared before Yu Xian at a hundred times the speed of sound.
Yet just as he drew close, a dainty fist materialized from his right.
*Boom!*
The blow landed squarely on his cheek, sending him flying through the air under immense force and leaving behind a deep fist imprint.
"His defense has increased a lot," Gong Qian said with a frown.
She had been able to blow the giant nine-tailed fox apart with a single punch before, but against Hu Weijie now, a single strike couldn't even break him.
Hu Weijie plunged his tails into the earth, bringing himself to a steady halt. Glancing toward Yu Xian's direction, he thrust violently with his tails and charged at Yu Xian once more.
"Let's use that move. Get ready!" Yu Xian called out earnestly to Gong Qian.
In a flash, Gong Qian grasped Yu Xian's intent and nodded. "Do it!"
Hu Weijie was simply too powerful now. While Gong Qian could handle him, if Yu Xian took a single hit, he would be instantly killed.
It was far too dangerous.
Yu Xian manipulated a massive swarm of bubbles to converge rapidly on Hu Weijie.
As Hu Weijie swept his tails around, shattering scores of approaching bubbles, a fist emerged right above his head and hammered him straight into the dirt mid-charge.
*Rumble!*
The ground was instantly plowed into a long trench by Hu Weijie. Just as he tried to push himself up before the mound of dirt, another punch slammed into his skull, driving his head into the earth and cratering the ground.
Without needing to aim at all, Gong Qian unleashed a frenzied flurry of punches forward. Fists materialized from different bubbles and varying angles, battering Hu Weijie until he was completely pinned underground.
Hu Weijie tried several times to prop himself up, but the moment he exerted force, Gong Qian's fists struck him down. Under the crushing weight of tens of thousands of tons of brute force, his body repeatedly crashed into the earth, driving the crater deeper and deeper.
Yet Hu Weijie was not Deimos after all. The eyes across his body twitched frantically, searching for an opening to counterattack.
Unable to find a suitable moment, those eyes gradually turned blood-red.
Suddenly, beams of crimson light shot from those red eyes.
Numerous bubbles were blasted apart on the spot.
Yu Xian frowned slightly, immediately conjuring more bubbles to fill the gaps.
With a thought, he channeled his voice through one of the bubbles directly to Hu Weijie: "You are Hu Weijie! You are Hu Tu'er's father, and you are Hu Xian'er's husband! Wake up!"
Hu Weijie lunged with a hand to seize the bubble. Because his resistance was so frantic, a brand-new arm sprouted from his elbow, clawing wildly forward.
"Wake up! You are Hu Weijie!"
Seeing that he reacted to this, Yu Xian's eyes brightened slightly, and he repeated the words over and over.
Suddenly, Hu Weijie ceased his struggles to rise. It was as though he had frozen, lying motionless upon the ground.
Yu Xian and Gong Qian exchanged a glance and held back from disturbing or attacking him. Neither of them actually wanted to kill Hu Weijie; they wanted to uncover more secrets regarding the serum from him.
***
A reputation far outstripping one's capabilities was like a crown far too heavy, capable of crushing a man until he could scarcely breathe.
As one of the renowned Seven Heroes of the Hu Family in Silver City, Hu Weijie had always harbored deep agony within his heart. His other six brothers had all built immensely successful careers, and by contrast, he felt like trash cast upon a refuse heap.
Especially Hu Junjie, who basked in boundless glory; whenever anyone brought him up, they would give a thumbs-up and praise him as a real man.
Whereas Hu Weijie felt like someone brought along merely to make up the numbers.
The Seven Heroes of the Hu Family needed seven people, which was the only reason he was one of them.
He was clumsy with words, far from clever, and habitually taciturn. Even his wife and daughter barely paid him any mind. He had always felt like an extraneous idler who merely happened to be alive.
One day a year ago, after disposing of a corpse, he had saved an old man on his way back to the city. Out of gratitude, the old man extended an olive branch, inviting him to join a grand experiment.
The man possessed a mysterious drug capable of strengthening a creature's innate bloodline and power, as well as integrating bloodlines from other species to break through inherent limits.
All Hu Weijie had to do was dispose of the failed test subjects.
As a seasoned cleaner, he worked for this mysterious old man in his spare time, quietly transporting one grotesquely mutated failed subject after another out of Silver City.
At long last, the experiment succeeded.
They created a perfect creature.
It could shape-shift at will, possessed the genes of numerous transcendent creatures, lacked any weakness, and was powerful to the point of being virtually invincible.
Yet an accident occurred: this perfect creature broke through the laboratory's layered containment measures with ease and vanished into the night, even causing the aberrant worms in the facility to breach containment.
The moment the aberrant worms escaped, Hu Weijie knew disaster was imminent.
Taking advantage of the chaos, he seized a large batch of the perfected serum and slipped out of Silver City under the cover of night. His goal was remarkably simple: achieve self-evolution and become an existence even more powerful and perfect than the Fox Progenitor.
He would become the most illustrious among the Seven Heroes of the Hu Family.
At Xingniao Airport, he had prepared everything, even setting up numerous tape recorders to awaken his consciousness.
He stripped off his clothes and injected the serum from the syringes into his body, one after another, continuously dosing himself. Boundless power surged forth like an endless spring. He had originally possessed only two tails, but now tail after tail sprouted from behind him.
The surrounding tape recorders constantly broadcast his name, while the foxes in their cages shrieked in terror.
Whenever he began to lose himself beneath the sheer overwhelming power, these sounds pulled him back, making him realize he was undergoing a magnificent evolution.
*Boom!*
Just as he felt his ninth tail about to emerge, a deafening crash echoed from outside Xingniao Airport. Then he saw the escaped "perfect creature" standing right outside the door.
The look in its eyes chilled him to the marrow...
Chapter 61