Flight Form

Although Captain Fan Guojun also felt that what Li Wei said was nonsense and remained skeptical about the whole thing, he still agreed to accommodate Li Wei, allowing him to leave the Dawn through a single-person hatch on the top of the massive ship.

Having obtained this small privilege, Li Wei also agreed to a minor condition: he would allow them to observe when he departed.

Feeling that this wasn't much of an issue, he readily agreed.

The people on the ship were quite curious about the other world Li Wei spoke of, asking everything from the geographical environment to the economic situation and the global landscape. When they learned from Li Wei that the China of the other world was experiencing an unstoppable resurgence, a sense of pride welled up within them—different worlds, same dream.

After several hours of conversation, Li Wei finally climbed through a single-person maintenance passage in the ship's cabin and emerged onto the top of the vessel, where he was greeted by a sea storm of lightning and thunder.

The bean-sized raindrops hitting his face made his body shudder, and he subconsciously shrank back. Looking left and right for a moment, he discovered that the other eight large ships were sailing in the distance, all heading in the same direction.

Li Wei stood on the top of the large ship; apart from the Chinese vessels, the other ships did not seem to notice his presence.

Braving the intense storm, he walked to the curved edge of the ship and looked down at the surging, turbulent waves below, unable to help but swallow hard.

His thalassophobia flared up on a mental level, causing him to instinctively associate the deep, dark sea below with some unspeakable deity and giant sea beasts.

Splash!

The sound of the waves, mixed with the cool scent of the ocean, entered Li Wei's olfactory senses. After steeling himself and preparing mentally for the seawater, he finally decided to try his flight form first!

"Take it step by step, get soaked first, one thing at a time!" Li Wei encouraged himself internally, then pulled out the pre-designed flight form model and controlled the Blacklight biomass to mimic the transformation.

Amidst a constant churning of dark red flesh-tendrils, his hands gradually fused with the cross-section of his body, and a pair of dark red fleshy wings emerged.

Resembling the folded wings of a bat, they could reach a wingspan of six meters when fully extended.

He spread his bat wings against the storm, but the powerful, unexpected thrust of the gale forced him to take a step back, though the suction cups on his soles kept him from being blown away.

Because he had never assimilated birds and didn't understand their anatomy well, Li Wei's first attempt at flight ended in failure.

He flapped his wings continuously and managed to get airborne, but his control over flight was far from proficient. Even with the gas compressed by his cells, he could barely manage free flight.

At this level, it couldn't be considered a perfected form; his speed couldn't be increased, and after practical application, he realized that bat wings on a human body were not only lame but looked absolutely hideous.

After the model was scrapped and he landed back on the ship, he decided to take a shortcut!

Finding the maintenance hatch, Li Wei pounded hard on the seamless "manhole cover."

After knocking for a while, the hatch opened. Li Wei reached out, gripped the edge of the opening, and shouted inside: "I might need a hawk, a bird of prey. Tell Captain Fan."

"Please wait a moment!" A man's voice came from the gap in the hatch; it was one of the two guards who had been following Fan Guojun earlier.

Although Blacklight was already self-correcting the flaws in the bat-wing form, it was indeed much easier to just borrow directly from birds.

Li Wei sat on the edge of the hatch, tilting his head to let the rain soak his body, sighing at how intense the rain was.

White light flashed across the firmament, illuminating Li Wei's wet face and his unchanging hairstyle.

BOOM!

The thunder followed half a second after the lightning, clearly indicating that the strike was not far from them.

After waiting for a while, the hatch opened again. The guard held up a cardboard box. Li Wei took the small box, shouted a thank you inside, and the hatch was closed.

Opening the box slightly, Li Wei reached his right hand inside and grabbed the body of the fluffy bird. With a quick squeeze and a pull, the bird was pierced by his tentacles and assimilated as part of his own body.

Once the reference sample was obtained, Blacklight's powerful evolutionary ability manifested. With just a slight nudge from his consciousness, Li Wei's body began to roll and contract.

The cardboard box was blown away by the hurricane, but Li Wei, now a cocoon of blood, remained motionless.

A moment later, Li Wei's body had transformed into something resembling an armored form, though it was much slimmer than the heavy armor, with smooth, streamlined surfaces everywhere and two extra pairs of wings on his back.

Li Wei spread his four bat-like wings; they were larger and thinner than the previous ones, but their durability had increased rather than decreased.

He curiously flapped his wings, and the gas produced by his internal cells was expelled with the movement, allowing him to fly against the direction of the storm with ease.

Having gained true flight capability, Li Wei was overjoyed. Like a child who had just received a new toy, he drifted and soared through the rain.

The lightness of riding the gale and the pleasure of defying nature kept Li Wei flying tirelessly, to the point that he even forgot there was another form he needed to develop tonight.

After flying a circle near the sea, he became unsatisfied and began to climb higher, attempting to reach the clouds, wanting to fly even higher!

"This feeling is absolutely amazing!"

CRACK!

As soon as he finished that sentence, a brilliant bolt of lightning struck down from above, hitting the oblivious Li Wei directly.

Hundreds of millions of volts of electricity instantly stiffened his entire body, short-circuited his thoughts, and sent his cells into a wild spasm, causing him to tumble through the wind as he plummeted.

He slammed into the observation window of the main control room of the Ark of America, bouncing off the surface before falling into the seawater below.

The sudden shock made the crew on duty jump from their chairs.

"Damn it, what was that?!"

"Did something just crash into us?!"

"Should we report this?"

Who am I? Where am I? I think I just did something stupid, what was it?

Uh... I'd better just forget it!

The electricity coursing through his body dissipated after being conducted and diluted by the seawater. Li Wei's short-circuited mind returned to his body, and his chaotic transformation reverted back to his human form.

Thinking of the foolish thing he had just done, he wished he could crawl into a crack in the ground, but he was already deep in the middle of the ocean.

The terror of the deep sea far exceeded his imagination, and his special night-vision mimicry eyes allowed him to vaguely see the seabed where he currently was.

Below the seabed where the Ark was sailing, there was a complex of buildings stretching into the darkness beyond his sight. Directly beneath him was a submerged city!

The deep blue world led into boundless darkness, and his blurred vision allowed him to face the unknown terror directly; the surging waves on the surface seemed to exist in a different world from the deathly silence beneath, reflecting one another.

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