What It's Like Being a Vampire

According to his regular blood-drinking schedule, Xiang Kun should have felt hunger on Nov 4, which was yesterday morning, and had his usual blood intake.

Based on his last recorded intake, he would have needed the blood of four Belgian rabbits this time. If the quantity did increase, it would be at most five rabbits.

However, to Xiang Kun’s surprise, after drinking blood from four rabbits, he was still strongly hungry. As a result, he took blood from two more rabbits.

Even after having the blood of six rabbits, he was still hungry.

Originally, there were six chubby Belgian rabbits reserved in Xiang Kun’s house. According to previous experiences, his blood intake should have shown stable linear growth. Under normal circumstances, having consumed four rabbits last time, reserving six rabbits should have given quite a large allowance.

After all, he’s currently living in a residential area. If he keeps too many rabbits at once, it would easily attract the attention of his neighbors and the property managers. Such a high number is unnecessary given the significant smell produced.

He never expected that his blood intake would suddenly increase so dramatically – six rabbits’ blood was still not enough.

Fortunately, while the blood intake was inadequate causing him to still feel hungry, he also felt drowsy which indicated that he had satisfied the basic requirement. Therefore, Xiang Kun didn’t risk getting a new source of blood but went straight to sleep.

Last time he hadn’t drunk enough blood, he slept for 32 hours. This time, he slept from 8 am on the 4th until 9 pm the next evening, sleeping a total of 37 hours!

Before sending the minion to Xiao Pingguo, Xiang Kun had been constantly testing his body and pondering the reasons for his sudden blood intake increase.

With this pace, his house might need to have about ten rabbits at all times. He is unsure whether eight Belgian rabbits’ blood would be sufficient for the next time?

After Xiao Pingguo’s dreamlike “shock education”, Xiang Kun shifted his attention to the twelve wooden carvings.

If there was anything different about this blood-drinking period, it would have been the total of fifteen wooden carvings he made, including thirteen minions and an Alsace and a Canary.

However, the wooden carvings of Alsace and Canary, because of the “super sensory contact” established in advance with the wood material, could not complete the “emotional infusion”.

So actually the number of “emotional infusions” is only thirteen minion carvings.

But thirteen, if considered only for its quantity, is indeed the most he has ever established a special association with objects, including the “super sensory contact” , within one blood-drinking period.

Assuming that his blood intake increased significantly this time because he carved thirteen “emotionally infused” minions, then:

1, It shouldn’t be due to excessive energy consumption, otherwise, the hunger should appear when energy consumption reaches a certain level, not at a set blood-drinking cycle. If his blood intake in the upcoming blood-drinking period is still over six rabbits, it would prove this point;

2, If the thirteen “emotional infusions” did not cause massive energy consumption leading to higher blood intake, it might have been due to the process of forming complete associations after the blood-drinking sleep, which required much larger blood intake than usual.

In other words, after Xiang Kun carved the thirteen “minions” and completed “emotional infusion”, the brain sent the body a “demand”: to fully establish the connection, it required more blood consumption. Therefore, when the blood-drinking period came, his body communicated the request for more blood, as a form of hunger.

This pattern seems similar to Xiang Kun’s targeted mutation training;

3, If point 2 is correct, then, whether it is “super sensory contact” or “emotional infusion”, these objects with special connections to Xiang Kun are actually the result of his bodily mutations. On some level, they might even be part of him as a whole?

So, the continuous connections between Xiang Kun and these objects, while in different forms, are not simply him “providing” these objects with some functionalities?

4, In this case, blood seems more like the “raw material” required for his periodical mutation and evolution. But what about the energy he exhausts during daily activities? Does it get transformed and stored “incidentally” in the process of periodic mutation, just like “charging”? But why hasn’t he ever felt hunger due to over-exercise to this date? Is it because his daily physical activities are almost trivial compared to his “charge”?

Or, is there another system providing energy to support his daily activities? He hasn’t been eating anything other than fresh blood. It definitely wouldn’t be something like “photosynthesis”, right?

Xiang Kun glanced irritably at his cabinet. His microscope was stored inside.

First, he should check whether his cells are still powered by ATP and then retrospectively trace the source of the ATP to see if it’s same as that in other humans.

Remembering the violent reaction of his erythrocytes during his previous observations, Xiang Kun decided to set this question aside for now, not to mention his current equipment wasn’t sufficient. He picked up his phone and began to check various messages received during his 37-hour sleeping period.

He received some messages on QQfrom an old acquaintance on the forum who used to outsource tasks to him, saying the investor who had mentioned the project wanted to chat with Xiang Kun and asked whether Xiang Kun would meet him in Pengcheng, or if they should schedule an online video conference. Of course, if Xiang Kun was willing to go to Pengcheng, they would cover the round-trip business class airfare and five-star hotel accommodation, with another bonus for his trouble.

The messages were sent at 9 am yesterday when Xiang Kun had just fallen “asleep”.

Having not received a reply for so long, Xiang Kun reckoned they might think he has refused.

Anyway, Xiang Kun originally felt this matter wouldn’t be possible. The investor would undoubtedly require him to work in Pengcheng, a condition he couldn’t possibly accept, so there’s nothing to feel regretful over. He would send the acquaintance a message tomorrow to say he hadn’t seen the message as he hadn’t checked QQthese days.

On WeChat, You Meng had sent him a message asking him to check his QQ email. Following the filming script Xiang Kun previously provided, he had made the first version of the video.

Xiang Kun opened his email to download and check out the video, but found himself shaking his head in response. You Meng’s “acting” was simply too poor. The whole video was embarrassingly bad, even a little bit… cringe-inducing.

Xiang Kun pondered a moment. Of course, he couldn’t possibly take the time to improve You Meng’s acting skills. However, for the official shoot, if they plan the storyboards well and do some post-production editing, they should be able to avoid quite a few issues.

But if they let a regular production team shoot it, would that be unprofessional? If they went for a more professional team, it seemed the cost would be too hizh, more than thev could afford.

Could it really be that I, a vampire, must go learn how to direct, film, handle lighting, and edit footage?

Thinking of Tang Baona’s hobby, Xiang Kun decided to ask her for advice tomorrow.

Then Xiang Kun thought of the “demo video” from his time at “Youlong Restaurant” that had been leaked. He wondered if, after a few days of cooling down, its popularity on the internet may have died down. Therefore, he headed to Weibo, planning to search for keywords like “Baldy” and “Bamboo Rat Meat”.

But as soon as he entered “Baldy”, several options popped up in the dropdown list:

“Bald Chef and Bald Lone Ranger are the same person.”

“Bald Chef turned out to be a hero.”

“Bald Culinary God and Fire Cloud Evil God.”

Xiang Kun stared at these with a perplexed look, feeling upset with an inexplicably uneasy premonition. So, he decided to search each of these terms.

The premonition came true. All these headlines had something to do with him!

Someone had actually linked him, from the cooking video, with the previously circulated image of his backside carrying the bow, along with the video where he kicked the knife-wielding thug!

What the hell!

When will this end?

Are they really going to milk his fame until it’s bone dry?!

Xiang Kun scratched his head, not quite understanding. Indeed, his face was shown in the cooking video, but how did people manage to connect this video with the image showing only the back of his head and the hero video whose image quality was quite poor?

The only ones who knew these three were him were Tang Baona, Xia Libing and Yang Zhen Er.

Given what he knew about them, they wouldn’t possibly blabber about this online without his consent.

After a few more minutes of searching, Xiang Kun finally found the “source of trouble”.

It was a Weibo user who worked in an IT company.

Two days ago, he tweeted a screenshot from Xiang Kun’s cooking video, a comparison image showing his figure carrying the bow, as well as the result of the comparison software:

“When I saw this video, I thought the main character was somewhat familiar. However, I couldn’t remember where I’ve seen him before. It wasn’t until I saw the ‘Urban Loner’ photo today that I noticed the similarity of their bald heads. Thus, I used software to perform a comparison based on the shapes of their heads and I’m fairly certain that they’re the same person.”

“If he had hair, I would be less certain. But since he’s bald and his ears are exposed, using images, there’s a 90% accuracy.”

“A 90% accuracy your ass! What a load of nonsense!”

Xiang Kun couldn’t help but want to face-palm.

Then he discovered that, about 20 hours after this tweet, another Weibo user quoted it and posted an enlarged and blurred video screenshot. The image showed a bald man wearing a sleeveless shirt, shorts, and flip flops. The user also shared a comparison of the figures from the cooking video, as well as the one carrying the bow, and the data results:

“I also thought the figure in this Weibo post looked familiar, which reminded me of an online video. Despite the low quality of that video, using image processing, I could pick out some main characteristics for comparison. There is an 80% chance that all three are the same person. ‘

“You guys joked about this bald chef being able to fight, now it seems like the joke has become reality. He actually stopped a crime, making him a genuine hero.”

Upon looking at this user’s certification, he was from another IT company! Why do all these IT guys have so much free time on their hands?!