What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 179: “Programming”



Seeing Officer Chen’s message, Xiang Kun was naturally bewildered.

But soon Officer Chen sent another message: “Haha, just kidding.”

Officer Chen: “However, it’s really a coincidence, we are currently working on the case. We’ve received numerous public reports about that consulting company and have been monitoring it for a while, because it may involve an organized crime gang, so we have been collecting evidence.”

Officer Chen: “However, this morning, an unexpected situation occurred and there was a significant breakthrough in the case. I won’t tell you the specifics, but those who should be arrested are almost all caught now. Soon you should be able to see the news report.”

After ending his idle chat with Officer Chen, Xiang Kun started to guess what the “unexpected situation” was.

According to the information he got from chatting with Tang Baona just now, the impactful “heavy-flavored” dream he sensed last night, should belong to the key person in the consulting company.

‘Dreaming that dream last night and waking up to “significant progress” in the case this morning,’ Xiang Kun had reason to believe that this significant progress was related to the impact on the key person.

After all, that dream… was indeed too impactful, coupled with the bizarre feeling brought by the eight-armed, eight-eyed monster, it’s very possible that the key person might have more associations after waking up.

When Xiang Kun had searched online before, he had also seen the photos of the key person and knew that they were already over 70 years old.

The things that people of this age consider and fear may not only be death, right?

Didn’t he run to the police to confess first thing in the morning after having that dream?

It shouldn’t be that exaggerated, there’s probably not entirely due to the dream effect. Maybe he was already having conflicts with his partners, or he noticed that the police were watching him?

Xiang Kun didn’t think too much, he grabbed his keys and phone, went out to buy groceries, preparing the menu for his dinner with Tang Baona and Yang Zhen Er tonight.

In the supermarket, Xiang Kun was pushing a shopping cart and buying ingredients while thinking about how to use the “Emotion Infusion” to create special associated items.

From the process of making the eight-armed, eight-eyed wooden carving and the two calligraphy pieces, as well as subsequent functionality, “Emotion Infusion” creates special associations for the items. It should be a variation of the “Emotional Assimilation” ability and can be simply understood as the effect of “Emotional Assimilation” on the item.

Xiang Kun now believes that even though he doesn’t know if it’s oriented by his own training or the root quality of the vampire mutation, after a series of mutations, his consciousness seems to be able to “program” surrounding things to a certain extent.

As for humans or other creatures, they possess consciousness, have memories, emotions, thoughts, etc, which can be understood as having an “operating system,” having various functional “applications,” and possessing a lot of

“data.”

So whether it’s Xiang Kun using “Mental Deterrence”, “Emotional Assimilation”, or “Co-manifestation”, he can exert real-time influence, establish connections with what should’ve been offline standalone systems, giving them certain instructions, and obtaining some data feedback.

And for non-living objects, such as tissues, coins, boxwood, etc, he needs to first format them with consciousness, then program the functions he wants on it.

So, when exerting influence on non-living objects, whether it’s “Super Sensory Contact” or “Emotional Infusion”, it’s much slower than impacting a living creature, and it all needs to go through a Blood-drinking Period to “take effect.”

Perhaps after the Blood-Drinking Period, the backend application in his brain corresponding to controlling and receiving the “programmed” functions on those objects are “compiled” and can “run.”

These “programs” and “functions” basically won’t have any intuitively visible impact on the external structure of the object, either only communicating and passing data at the consciousness level with Xiang Kun, or linking with others’ consciousness.

“Super Sensory Contact” and “Emotional Infusion” cannot coexist on the same object, perhaps because their formats are incompatible and they require different operating environments.

Of course, these are just assumptions made by Xiang Kun in order to facilitate his thinking and comprehension.

According to this assumption, what Xiang Kun wants to do now is to figure out how his “programming” functionality on items through “Emotion Infusion” is achieved, whether there is a way to “reverse compile”, understand the application method, and then improve it.

There are two issues to solve at present:

Does the object of “Emotion Infusion” have the ability to emotionally assimilate or influence a sober person? If it does, what’s the reason it didn’t exert influence before, and how to solve it?

How to extract the emotions obtained from the “Emotion Infusion” object and utilize them?

For the first issue, Xiang Kun currently has two ideas. One is to extend the production time, that is, to increase the duration of the “Emotion Infusion”, but he’s already spent more than ten hours making the eight-armed, eight-eyed wood carving, which is quite a long time. He can’t possibly use all the waking hours of a blood-sucking cycle of more than a hundred hours to make one item, right? That would involve too much investment, and it would be difficult to sustain the same emotion for that long in one go.

Another solution is to increase the quantity, create more associating items by using the same “Emotional Infusion” process, and then see if this could enhance the influence and indirectly affect others within a certain space.

As for the second problem, from previous tests, whether it is “Mental

Deterrence” or “Emotional Assimilation”, a prerequisite conditions is that Xiang Kun himself must first enter into a certain emotional state.

The emotional state required for “Mental Deterrence” is easier to find, because it has a clear target. But if the emotions become too intense and brutal it could backlash causing the loss of rationality. Compared with it, “Emotional Assimilation” is harder to enter into but once there, it’s not easy to lose rationality, he will still act according to his existing habits and personality.

Once in the Flower and Bird market, Xiang Kun simulated a state of emotion that feels like ruling over the world, by recalling the memory image of a Giant Owl overlooking its territory. However, the source of this emotion did not come from the owl’s memory, it ultimately came from his own “experience” through those memory images.

Therefore, the emotions extracted from associative items can’t be directly applied to “Mental Deterrence” and “Emotional Assimilation”. There needs to be a “Data Transformation” process to convert these extracted emotions into his own.

As for how to transform it, that requires a case-by-case analysis.

As Xiang Kun was considering his several abilities in the concept of “Programming”, his pocket phone buzzed. He picked it up to see a message from Tang Baona, saying that her sister and her “Prospective brother-in-law” heard from Yang Zhen’er that Xiang Kun’s cooking is “Super delicious”, and they also wanted to come over for dinner, wondering if this would be okay.

Obviously, there was some reluctance in Xiang Kun’s instincts. He has improved his ability to interact and deal with people a lot better than before, but at heart, he is still not a person who enjoys a lively atmosphere and likes to make a lot of new friends.

He’s already quite familiar with Tang Baona and Yang Zhen’er, treating them as friends, it feels quite relaxing and comfortable. But as for their relatives and friends, even though he knows they are all good people, still makes him feel uncomfortable.

Furthermore, his habits are already clear to Yang Zhen’er and Tang Baona and they have already adapted to it. However, being together with other people, he’d have to explain everything all over again, which he finds very troublesome.

However, without an appropriate reason to refuse, Xiang Kun hesitated for a moment before replying:

“Of course there’s no problem, what sort of taste do they prefer?”

“No need to prepare specifically, your original taste is amazing already! Thanks Chef Xiang! ” Tang Baona sent back a grin emoji.

Apparently, she hadn’t realized that every time Xiang Kun prepared their meals, he specifically adjusted each dish to cater to each of their taste buds.

Since he didn’t know the tastes of the two new guests, Xiang Kun didn’t think too much about it. As per the predetermined plan, he’ll just prepare meals according to Tang BaoNa and Yang Xhen’er’s taste, only increasing the portion to serve four.

At five-thirty in the afternoon, Tang BaoNa and the others arrived at Xiang

Kun’s house.

Tang Baoting, Tang Baona’s sister, looked similar to her but taller and fuller, her face was always wearing a smile and she seemed like a good communicator.

Her boyfriend or rather, her fiance, Gao Yao, was a good-looking guy with an idol-like presence, who was over 1.8 meters tall and had clean and fair skin.

“Hi Xiang Kun, I am Nana’s sister Baoting, also Xiao Han’s classmate, and I am pretty familiar with Chang Bin; I’ve constantly heard about you from him.” Tang Baoting greeted with a smile.

After simple greetings, Xiang Kun led them into the house, saying, “Take a seat in the living room. I’ll go back to the kitchen to get things ready and dinner should be ready in about twenty-five minutes. The WIFI password is **** and the drinks are in the fridge, help yourselves.”

“Don’t worry! We won’t be shy around you. Come on, give my camera a show of your pretentious cooking skills! I need to record this!” Yang Zhen’er said excitedly as she followed Xiang Kun to the kitchen.

“Go away! If you dare to come in, I won’t make the dishes you like the most for dinner, believe it or not!” Xiang Kun threatened outright.

Yang Zhen’er clearly felt deterred, she pouted and walked back to the living room: “Stingy! All the videos I recorded are already posted online ..

Tang Baona saw the Canary woodcarving placed beside the computer in Xiang Kun’s open bedroom and walked towards it in surprise, delicately pick it up to examine it.

Tang Baoting and her boyfriend also came over, admiring the Canary woodcarving. Especially when Tang Baoting placed the woodcarving beside the birdcage in the living room for a comparison, the striking similarity left everyone astonished.

If it weren’t for the woodcarving being colorless, if placed inside the birdcage, at first glance, they could easily mistake it for a real one.

Tang Baona also placed the eight-armed, eight-eyed woodcarving she brought over next to it, sighing: “Looks like Xiang Kun’s woodcarving skills have improved again.”

I recommend “I Really Didn’t Want to be Reborn”. This book portrays the female protagonist exceedingly well. Reading it, you’ll be cursing the scum male lead while you can’t help but subscribe to it..


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