What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Mood of the Canary

Xiang Kun first experimented with the two stones that had established a connection, confirming that once a connection was established, the stones in the stomach could be felt more clearly, capable of more effectively and directly suppressing the urge to vomit.

Of course, the discomfort did not diminish, but swallowing seemed to be much easier, as if several previous instances of eating without chewing had resulted in some adaptive changes to the oesophagus. However, the stomach’s rejection of regular food remained unchanged.

He reinserted the Rubik’s Cube corner piece that had established a connection back into the cube. Xiang Kun sensed his connection with the plastic corner piece and began to quickly turn the cube. In less than a minute, he had restored it to its original state, taking slightly over 20 seconds.

Speaking purely in terms of speed, his achievement was hardly outstanding. Xiang Kun vaguely remembered watching the leaderboard of an individual contest for the Level-three Rubik’s Cube several years ago – to make it to the top 100, a recovery speed of just over 5 seconds was required. Rubik’s Cube masters can fully observe a jumbled cube in 15 seconds, calculate an optimal recovery solution quickly in their minds, and then it all comes down to finger speed.

Given Xiang Kun’s current memory, thinking style, and finger control ability, if he were to undergo targeted training over a period of time, he could definitely reach the level of a Rubik’s Cube master, without needing the help of a corner piece with which he had established a connection.

However, Xiang Kun established a connection with the cube corner not to become a Rubik’s Cube master, and he didn’t care about the speed of restoration, so just then he didn’t even time himself and his restoration technique wasn’t standard. His main objective was to understand the effect that the connected Rubik’s Cube corner piece had on his manipulation of the entire Level-three Rubik’s Cube.

Xiang Kun discovered that no matter how the cube was turned, he always had a clear mental image of the position and angles of the corner piece that was orange, green, and white. Using it as a reference, he could more conveniently understand the positions of the other edge cubes and corner pieces of the Rubik’s Cube.

This basically demonstrated that when a part of a complex whole established a connection with Xiang Kun, his understanding of that whole would improve correspondingly – the degree of improvement depended on how much of that whole had connections with Xiang Kun.

If every part of a car were to establish connections with him, he could foresee that his control and understanding of the car would definitely reach a peak. As for the specific extent of the effects and whether he would become a racing champion, a car repair master, or both, it was still uncertain.

Of course, the process of establishing connections would certainly be extremely tedious, complicated, and time-consuming.

He had approximately theorized that to establish a connection with something, he would need a comprehensive understanding of its structure and various properties.

Items like tissues, coins, and paper were easy to handle, but even after he had looked up information about the plastic corner piece, learned about the type of plastic, and measured its weight and dimensions, it took him over an hour to establish a successful connection. Not to mention complex entities like a car, a mobile phone, or a computer. If he wanted to establish a connection with a circuit board, he wouldn’t even know where to start.

However, if he didn’t pursue a complete connection with the whole and only sought to establish a connection with a tiny part of it, it should not be difficult.

And once a part was connected, a lot of things could be done.

The next thing that needed to be attempted was how to establish a connection with a “single part” without separating it from the “complex whole”.

For instance, a screw on a mobile phone — establishing a connection with it directly, without unscrewing it. This would at least allow him to locate the phone through this screw.

In this way, many operations could be completed in a more straightforward manner.

While toyng with the Rubik’s Cube and mulling over these thoughts, Xiang Kun suddenly noticed that the canary in the cage on the corner cabinet was staring straight at him.

So Xiang Kun stared back, and it immediately became alert, hopping around in the cage and retreating to a corner.

Xiang Kun walked over, gently flipped his finger at the cage’s edge for a while, but the canary completely ignored him, still huddling in the corner motionlessly.

Feeling intrigued, Xiang Kun lifted the cage and turned it in his direction. As a result, the canary hopped to another corner and continued to huddle there.

Recalling the earring-wearing teenager who had previously been “intimidated” by him and had then “accidentally” encountered him again and been scared enough to call the police, Xiang Kun frowned. Did this bird also have a mental shadow?

But that can’t be right. The earring-wearing teenager was greatly affected because he had been oppressed with an extremely violent emotion at the time, even with a strong killing intent. But with this canary, whether at the flower and bird market or at home, his “intimidation” was much more gentle. At most, he just mimicked the dominant posture of the “Giant Owl” from his memory. Besides that, he mostly influenced it with relaxed and friendly emotions.

After some thought, Xiang Kun rose from his seat, closed all the doors and windows in the living room, then returned to open the bird cage. He pulled over a chair to sit in front of the cage, relaxed his body, and imagined in his mind that he was watching the sunrise by the mountains, breathing in the fresh air, enjoying the gentle morning breeze, and the canary was perched on his shoulder.

Xiang Kun reasoned that if aggressive emotions like oppression, intimidation, and threat could be conveyed through the air, could friendly emotions of closeness be conveyed to other animals as well?

This was similar to the situation at the flower and bird market when he had only used his imagination to create a scenario of himself dozing off by the seaside, which made all the birds recover from their intimidated state.

Perhaps he could use this emotional suggestion to make the canary understand what he wants and approach him?

However, after Xiang Kun had watched the sunrise in his mind with the canary for twenty minutes, the canary in the real world, still in the cage, showed no intention of coming out. On the bright side, it no longer turned its back on him, only continuing to huddle in the corner.

“Chirrup…chirrup chirrup…”

The canary suddenly chirped a few times, and Xiang Kun came back to his senses, listening carefully to distinguish the sound.

Although he had only had this bird for a few days, through WeChat, Xiang Kun had already had many exchanges with “Little Apple, the Bird Language Expert”, and had almost mastered the interpretation of the meanings behind this canary’s chirps.

While bird songs do carry meanings, they cannot be compared to the complexity of human language. They can only express general emotions and desires, much like humans use “ah”, “oh”, “ha”, “sigh”, etc. Under different circumstances, different tones, volumes, speeds, and intonations of these words would express different meanings, which others could generally understand clearly.

Xiang Kun now understood the general meaning expressed by the canary’s chirps – indications of submission or fear.

Xiang Kun touched his nose: “Am I really that scary…? When I was feeding on blood, I always did it in the kitchen, away from its sight. Could it have smelled the blood and guessed something?”

Xiang Kun didn’t continue to bother the canary. He left the cage door open and returned to his room, sitting back at his computer and recording the results of his experiments on establishing connections with objects.

Then he opened Jingdong, and purchased a handheld magnetic field detector and a microscope that he had added to his shopping cart earlier..