What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 91 “Princess Tangdou”

It’s a cover song video, but there aren’t any images of Tang Baona, instead, it’s comprised of different anime mashups.

The song Tang Baona covered is called “Goodbye Jianghu”, which Xiang Kun has heard before, originally sung by Hu Yanbin.

In his impression, it’s not easy to cover Hu Yanbin’s songs well, many say “only Hu Yanbin himself can sing his songs”, but when Tang Baona sang it, it surprisingly turned out very well.

Her voice has a thickness that most female voices lack, whether it’s mid-range or high notes, all give off a very steady feel. It’s like listening to a story, making it easy to immerse oneself in the melody and lyrics.

Last time when he was playing cards at Tang Baona’s place, she lost once and Xiang Kun asked her to sing a song. She sang Yu Chengqing’s “Spring Mud” , another difficult song to cover, but she sang it very well.

At that time, Xiang Kun just thought that she had a good voice and decent vocal skills, the song was pleasant to hear, as for other aspects, he couldn’t understand much due to his limited musical literacy.

Now that he’s watching this video, and hearing her sing with music accompaniment, Xiang Kun realizes that her singing skills seem to be much better than what he had previously thought.

Even though it’s a martial arts themed song, when paired with the various anime mashups, it didn’t seem mismatched at all.

Xiang Kun used to watch anime frequently when he was studying, but after starting work, he didn’t have much time left to do so. As a result, of the mashed-up anime scenes, he could only recognize One Piece and Naruto, he hasn’t watched the rest.

Though the video had only been posted for about 4 hours, it already had over 600 barrage messages, frequently there will be the same barrage messages filling half of the screen:

… “Where leaves fly, flames will blaze !!” .

… “I’m not wrong, it’s the world that’s wrong !!”

“My drill, is the drill that will break through the heavens !!” .

“This era is named after Whitebeard !!”

“My king’s sword points, is where our hearts aim at!” .

For some reason, Xiang Kun gets drawn into the video’s atmosphere. The short video of over 3 minutes quickly comes to an end with Tang Baona’s singing.

With a lingering feeling, Xiang Kun looks at the ID of the video uploader, the name is: Princess Tangdou…

Unexpectedly, Tang Baona would choose a name following the pattern of “XX Princess”, her WeChat nickname isn’t of this style. But Xiang Kun soon remembers that his previous IDs on Weibo and some forums used to be “Emperor Qiankun”, which also doesn’t seem any better. When he first started going online in high school, in certain forums and IT sector forums, he used many cringe-worthy nicknames such as “Code Supreme”, “KING_OF_CODE”.

What surprised Xiang Kun was that “Princess Tangdou” has more than 600,000 followers. Although he doesn’t often use Bilibili, he vaguely knew that those with over 500,000 followers are highly popular uploaders in the site.

He takes a look at the videos Tang Baona posted, there are over 80 of them,

90% of them are cover songs, including classic Cantonese songs, such as “Deep Deep Deep”, “Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division”, “Season of the Wind”, some Japanese songs, such as “LAST STARDUST”, “aLIEz”,

“Uninstall”, and some Chinese-style Mandarin songs, such as “Under the Heaven”, “A Chance Encounter”, ‘Moonlight Over the Horizon”, “Rain in Chang’an”, as well as a few original songs.

The videos are mostly anime or series mashups, Tang Baona never revealed her face. But it’s undeniable that her video editing skills are quite impressive, at least in terms of beat-matching, scene ambiance, and lyrics coordination, she’s done very well. Of course, it’s also possible that someone else edited the videos for her.

Looking at the barrage messages and comments, it seems that the fans didn’t know what “Princess Tangdou” looked like, they said that judging by her voice, she should be a very cool lady.

Some even addressed her as “Queen Tangdou”, “General Tang”, “Iron-blooded Tangdou Douluo”…

They probably would never guess that the real Tang Baona, is a girl who likes to tie twin ponytails, wears glasses, and has a Ioli style.

However, considering Tang Baona’s appearance, if she were to appear onscreen, her fan base might increase even more.

Xiang Kun listened from one song to another unconsciously, and ended up watching most of the videos posted by “Princess Tangdou”. He could understand why she has garnered so many fans.

Her voice and singing style are indeed very unique and recognizable. Different songs, under her rendition, can be transformed into her own style. Especially when singing traditional or martial arts-themed songs, she exhibits a bold and captivating spirit reminiscent of a female warrior.

Moreover, Xiang Kun’s experience of listening to her songs differs from that of online fans. Listening to a completely unfamiliar person singing online, and listening to someone singing in reality whom you know creates different feelings. One would subconsciously compare this voice with reality, overlapping it with the real person, creating a very peculiar feeling.

After their first meeting, Xiang Kun knew that Tang Baona was very passionate about ACG, but he never thought that she was a major Uploader on Bilibili, and that her singing was so amazing.

After listening to songs for a while and watching some videos, Xiang Kun felt that the influence he had just received had almost dissipated.

Apparently, the Intimidation Ability that can affect other creatures remotely, though very powerful, greatly affects oneself while affecting other creatures.

If it is like that time in the flower and bird market – simulating the emotional state of a “Giant Owl patrolling its territory, reigning supreme”, even if there is a backlash, the impact on himself would be limited.

But if it’s like tonight, where he puts himself in a violent and cruel state, it wouldn’t be too bad in the day, but at night he is likely to be subject to violent backlash, and even lose control.

If this happens in front of many people, it would be disastrous.

It seems that in the future, he would need to control this Intimidation Ability. He cannot be too extreme, and he needs to be even more cautious when using it after sunset.

Xiang Kun got up and went to the kitchen, cleaned up the mess on the floor, carefully cleaned up the blood that was sprayed all around.

When he saw the blood, Xiang Kun couldn’t help but lick his lips, a little tempted to taste it, but perhaps because several hours have passed, the blood had already lost its effectiveness on him, so there was no need for him to suppress too much.

During the whole process, the other three rabbits and one chicken and one duck locked in the cage didn’t dare to make a sound, as if they didn’t exist.

After cleaning the kitchen, Xiang Kun turned off the camera, then went back to his room and watched the footage he had just recorded.

He originally wanted to record the situation of the rabbits, chicken, and duck under his influence, but he didn’t expect that he would now have to observe his own condition.

Looking back to the beginning of the video, Xiang Kun appeared to be normal at first, his expression was just focused, at most his eyes were a bit cold.

But very quickly, his expression began to uncontrollably distort, his eyes filled with ferocity, violence, and madness, then he violently raised his right hand and hammered it down, moving so quickly that even the rapid motion was nearly imperceptible in the video recording.

After hitting the table, he quickly came to his senses under the stimulus of pain and sound.

Even for Xiang Kun, watching through this video, he could feel the immense pressure from his violently volatile, uncontrollable self.

That was the brutal and mad irrationality of a hungry beast, he could even somewhat comprehend the feelings of the rabbits, chicken, and duck in the cage behind him in the video…

In his heart, he secretly told himself that no matter what, he must not allow his consciousness to be swallowed up by these violent and crazy thoughts, to be completely influenced by them. He has to control them, not be controlled by them.

Xiang Kun turned off the video, thought for a moment, and then deleted it directly. Then he opened the web page and continued to listen to “Princess Tangdou’s” songs on Bilibili.

He found that what he liked best were her covers of “Swords Like a Dream” and “Desert Sea”. The former perfectly encapsulates her vocal uniqueness, while the latter interprets a rather mournful song with an unorthodox and carefree mood – the feel of which resonates deeply with him.

After a while, he suddenly remembered the animation “One Punch Man” that Tang Baona talked about when they first met. Later, she and Yang Zhen’er even called him “Teacher Saitama” for a while.

So he found the first season of the animation online and started watching. He was quite stunned at the quality, action designs, and fight scenes of the animation…. Has TV animation production reached this level now? And this was a work from two or three years ago?