A segment of DNA beyond human comprehension began to function, converting the Yellow Sun's light, with its unique wavelength, into some kind of energy and sending it throughout this body that was nearly at the end of its strength.
Do not think this kind of cleansing and rebirth was a good thing. The stimulation was like dumping a basin of cold water into boiling oil, making the whole pot explode!
This converted energy did not simply increase the body's strength. Starting from the cellular level, it drastically enhanced every sense and bodily function.
Even a passing breeze struck his sensitive, fragile skin like a battering ram, transmitting its force deep into his body. Not only were his internal organs shaken, but cracks formed in his bones as well.
Yet the damage was repaired in an instant, and the restored parts became stronger than before. This frail body was continuously reinforced through the repeating cycle of destruction and repair.
The tiny sounds that ordinary people would never notice, along with the ultrahigh and ultralow frequencies beyond the human hearing range, tempered and strengthened his eardrums and auditory nerves in the same way.
Then came his sense of smell, vision, touch and pain distributed across every part of his skin. All his senses were exchanging information with the outside world at a speed beyond human imagination.
To handle such complex sensory information, the neural pathways in his brain continually broke through their limits, strengthening and developing again and again.
It could be said that the forging of a Steel Body was not inevitable. Rather, after Super Senses had been enhanced, it became a necessary upgrade to bear their feedback. Without a Steel Body, he simply could not endure the pressure brought by those Super Senses.
It was like trying to harness an eight-hundred-horsepower Formula racing engine and its tire grip with a bamboo chassis and driveshaft. The result would only be the car falling apart, not an astonishing performance.
These cells, sensitive to the extreme, gradually adapted to the aftereffects of excessive sensitivity through this continuous self-enhancement.
At the same time, the repeatedly strengthened cells throughout his body developed somewhat different functions. Those functions merely awaited proper development.
It was like how, so long as a car's engine was powerful enough and its body and components were adjusted accordingly, there was no reason it could not double as a speedboat or an airplane.
But if the enhancement process had come with a long adaptation period, perhaps the person being enhanced would not have suffered so much.
Yet as mentioned before, this was like pouring cold water into a pot of boiling oil. Every reaction was violent and swift. The pain involved was beyond outsiders' imagination.
Worse still, all of this was only physical enhancement. Although his brain cells had been strengthened accordingly, his way of thinking had not changed or developed alongside them.
It was like using early DOS software on a supercomputer and trying to run a AAA game. The hardware might be capable, but without qualified software and hardware drivers, it was all useless.
The brain did have shutdown mechanisms, such as making someone faint. But those only appeared when its functions were overloaded, and they did not count as a true shutdown or reboot of the brain.
However, the Super Brain and neural cells of the changing person were enough to process all this information, while his thinking patterns had not changed accordingly. Since his brain had not yet been pushed to its limit, it naturally would not take such action.
What was happening to him now was that chaotic information intertwined in his mind. His visual and auditory nerves crossed their wires, while the regions for smell, memory, and emotion were fighting over territory.
This was not simply a case of muddled memories, or excessive external stimulation overwhelming the nerves and sending a warning through pain.
If anything, what the changing person faced was even worse. His brain was not performing its proper function at all. Instead, it was actively holding him back.
Fortunately, his enhanced organs and muscles were tough enough. Otherwise, under the command of that chaotic brain, they might have rebelled as well.
Luckily, the worst did not happen. His whole body seemed to be governed by instinct, allowing him to function normally like a person.
It was just that everything still remained at the most basic level and had not manifested outwardly. That was why the young Russians carrying the "corpse" had not noticed that the thing in their hands was about to rise from the dead.
The trigger came when they reached their destination and roughly threw the "corpse" onto the ground. Several of them began looking for a place and tools, preparing to bury the body.
Whether it was the airflow during the move or the places where the young men had grabbed him, each had brought terrifying stimulation to the unconscious man. That impact, then, was no less than a heavy bomb exploding beside an ordinary person.
If that still could not wake him, then he was probably truly dead. So, unsurprisingly—well, very surprisingly for the young men—the "corpse" thrown onto the ground bolted upright and let out a roar!
The sudden change nearly scared the young men into wetting themselves. Of all the bizarre rumors and inhuman enemies, "zombies" were undoubtedly the most troublesome.
After all, no one knew how to kill someone who was already dead a second time.
Shoot them in the head? What if that did not work? Then would they not be the ones dying instead?
Before the young men could decide what to do, the risen corpse ran off... leaving a group of living people staring at one another.
The awakened man's mind was still chaotic. His body alone was in control now, driven by instinct, like how a foot or hand jerks on its own when the knee or elbow is struck with a hammer. It had nothing to do with the brain; it was merely a neural reflex.
So his running was simply an instinctive pursuit of energy—the light of the Yellow Sun. Just as a hungry person chased a delicious scent and a thirsty person wanted water.
Naturally, such pursuit would not deliberately destroy anything. Anywhere that cast a shadow would not become part of his route.
Thus, there would be no scenes of him smashing through trees or rocks along the way. He was merely a person leaving everyone in the dust at an astonishing speed.
By the time he reached the end of the land, the running man was completely naked. His cotton patient's gown could not withstand the wind pressure and had long since been torn to shreds during the run.
The end of the land was not the end of his run. With one great leap, he jumped from the cliff onto the sea's surface and ran across the water. His speed did not decrease by much compared to when he was on land.
Instead, the shockwave from breaking the sound barrier stirred up towering waves that parted to both sides. It was like a speedboat cutting across the water, except the impact and speed brought by this "speedboat" were at least on the scale of ten thousand tons.
But as the splashing waves rose lower and lower, it showed that the running man was slowing down as well.
In the end, he stopped at a stretch of coast and collapsed onto the sand, soaked through by the icy seawater.