
Breathing stopped.
Most of the time, this signals death.
Every cell in the human body requires oxygen for aerobic respiration. This process involves the oxidation of organic substances like glucose, producing energy stored as adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to fuel the body.
But now, Zoe realized she no longer needed to breathe, and a doubt arose within her.
She had stopped needing food and external energy since her first evolution.
Putting aside the exaggeration of becoming an ultimate being not requiring external energy, she should have stopped needing to breathe after her first evolution.
Without any external supplements, where would oxygen still be needed for reactions?
Yet, it was only after her sixth evolutionary sleep that she stopped needing to breathe.
She thought to herself.
Perhaps her evolutionary mechanism had only just realized she no longer required oxygen? Maybe it simply shut down the breathing process, which had previously only been a facade?
If that were the case, she could have checked the changes in the oxygen levels she inhaled and exhaled to verify whether it was just a show.
If the oxygen levels didn't change, it would mean her previous breathing had indeed been a mere pretense, perhaps even bypassing the lungs.
Unfortunately...
She no longer had the opportunity to verify whether her past breathing had been just for show.
After all, she truly no longer needed to breathe.
Even if she forced herself to breathe manually, the oxygen levels she inhaled and exhaled would remain unchanged.
After thinking in silence for a long time, Zoe suddenly realized that her previous cautious and meticulous studies might have still lacked professionalism, with many details overlooked.
She would need to be more careful in the future.
With this in mind, Zoe began her usual procedure, observing and experimenting with the changes from her latest slumber evolution.
First, she scanned her body with her mental power, instantly obtaining the precise data on her physique.
As always, her size and shape hadn’t changed. She was still close to 175 cm in height, with a standard athletic build, and her weight remained around 100 kg. There was no doubt about it—her overall body data seemed to have been temporarily locked by some mechanism as if optimized to its possible limit.
Next.
Zoe began her muscle tremor training.
This exercise, which involved both mental and physical exertion, quickly caused her physical strength to deplete.
She reached the same 19-second mark as her previous record and kept going.
She lasted until 24 seconds before exhaustion set in.
Feeling the emptiness in both her body and mind, Zoe formed an assessment of her current physical strength.
If her normal strength had been around 3.5 tons before, now it seemed to have nearly doubled to 6 tons.
This made Zoe feel a surge of joy.
She had always believed that physical strength was the most important aspect.
While she didn't expect to reach a level where "all methods can be shattered by a single punch," she at least aimed to achieve something like being able to change the weather with a punch.
During her fifth evolutionary sleep by the seaside, she had made the mistake of being greedy and selecting two directions, which caused her to halt her physical evolution. This had worried her for quite some time.
Now, with her physical evolution restored, she couldn’t help but sigh in relief.
Indeed, being greedy and selecting multiple directions had caused her evolution process to be incomplete, neglecting improvements in physical strength.
Choosing only one direction this time had kept everything on track.
With this thought in mind, Zoe reached for a glass bottle containing snake soup, prepared the previous evening.
Her eyes glowed with a faint red light.
She aimed her heat vision at the snake soup.
Using her heat vision felt no different than before—it still felt natural and easy to control, and the intensity seemed unchanged.
However...
Eight seconds passed, and the heat vision had not stopped.
Ten seconds later, the heat vision continued.
Twelve seconds in, the soup in the glass bottle began to boil.
At fifteen seconds, the bottle, made of heat-resistant glass, began to emit steam, and Zoe’s heat vision finally faded.
Feeling the surrounding air grow hot and sensing the soreness in her eyes, Zoe understood that the duration of her heat vision had almost reached its limit.
Fifteen seconds was a significant improvement compared to her previous eight-second limit.
What had once been an impossible improvement through daily training was now enhanced by the evolutionary sleep.
While she still had a long way to go to reach her short-term goal of one minute, progress was progress. There was still potential for further growth.
Zoe nodded in satisfaction, opened the glass bottle, and poured the scalding snake soup into her mouth, steam rising from the bottle's mouth.
A temperature of 100°C felt like lukewarm water to her—not because she could no longer perceive small differences in temperature, but because even at 100°C, it didn't hurt or break her defenses.
TFTC
TFTC
Thanks for the chapter. This is a great skill to start exploring the R-18 hahaha