What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 200 - 200 Birth (Middle)

Since Xiao Pingguo doesn’t need to go to school now, she often chats with Xiang Kun during the day, asking him for computer knowledge. She really enjoys learning about computers now, all thanks to Xiang Kun’s guidance.

Li Yang often sees Xiao Pingguo talking to Xiang Kun when he comes home these days. After listening in on their conversation for a while, he was quite amazed.

He could hear Xiang Kun diligently imparting knowledge, trying to help Xiao Pingguo understand how computers work. Although he didn’t think learning these things had much significance for Xiao Pingguo, as long as she was happy and interested in learning, he was more than glad to support her.

After meeting Xiang Kun today and watching him teaching his daughter first hand, he was deeply touched by Xiang Kun’s earnest desire to teach.

He could tell Xiang Kun cared deeply about Xiao Pingguo’s learning progress, whether she understood, whether she had grasped the concepts. As a teacher himself, he fully understood this desire to teach and illuminate. Wanting Xiao Pingguo to learn was for her own good. After all, Xiang Kun didn’t benefit whatsoever from this, so Li Yang quietly accepted this favor.

Moreover, the exquisite, three-piece wood carving set Xiang Kun gifted to Xiao Pingguo made him feel he should return the favor at an appropriate time.

“Uncle Xiang’s hearing might be even better than mine,” Xiao Pingguo suddenly said.

Li Yang was taken aback and looked at his daughter. He was well aware of how good her hearing was, so Xiang Kun’s hearing is better than hers? That seemed unlikely.

Xiao Pingguo recalled, “When I told you, Uncle, or others about some of the sounds I heard, you often couldn’t hear some of them. But when I chatted with Uncle Xiang, he could hear almost all the sounds I heard. And he could even tell me some sound details that I couldn’t quite make out.”

Li Yang thought back to the first time they met Xiang Kun, the barefoot man strolling on the mountain road, and his brother, a former policeman’s assessment of Xiang Kun. “Xiang Kun must have trained his hearing specifically, right?” He speculated Xiang Kun’s earlier mountain trips and barefoot walks might have been special types of training, perhaps for building determination and will.

Xiao Pingguo nodded, “Uncle Xiang is amazing.”

Li Yang agreed with his daughter’s assessment, especially after eating at Xiang Kun’s house twice, he had a deeper understanding.

Having a professional hobby outside one’s career is already a rare thing, considering everyone’s energy and time are limited.

While Xiang Kun was excellent at cooking, he was also very skilled at wood carving, and even his canary was well cared for. His understanding of the bird’s vocal expressions was as good as Xiao Pingguo’s. It was exceptional. Not to mention, he consistently worked on maintaining his physique which, again, required significant time and energy.

“Xiao Pingguo, when we get back, shall we buy a canary to keep?” Li Yang suddenly proposed to his daughter. Seeing her joyously playing with Xiang Kun’s canary, he hoped that she would experience that same joy at home.

Of course, the best choice would be to bring the canary home, but Li Yang knew how much effort Xiang Kun put into the bird. Asking to take it home was impolite, and Xiao Pingguo wouldn’t agree. So the only option was to buy their own.

Upon hearing her father’s suggestion, Xiao Pingguo hesitated for a moment, appeared to be tempted, but eventually shook her head gently, “No need. When I want to listen to bird songs, I can go to the park outside our community. Many of them ‘know’ me now. When I bring bird food, they would fly near me. I find it hard to take care of myself now; adding a pet would be even more difficult. In the end, you and Aunt Yang would be the ones who’d have to look after it.”

At night, Xiang Kun successfully triggered Xiao Pingguo’s dreamland using one of the motherboard wood carvings he gifted her.

This dreamland was similar to the ones Xiang Kun had “observed” previously: there was no imagery, just emptiness.

Faintly, he could hear familiar voices discussing various computer hardware knowledge. Listening carefully, Xiang Kun realized it was his voice, artificially sped up, like someone speaking at a 2.0x speed which was somewhat amusing.

Aw, making Xiao Pingguo “attend class” even in her dreams – that somehow felt a bit embarrassing?

However, the emotions that Xiang Kun stimulated this time in his “Emotional Infusion” were “interest” and “focus”. The fact that Xiao Pingguo could listen to his “lectures” in such emotional contexts proves that she genuinely finds this knowledge interesting.

Xiang Kun began to skillfully utilize Xiao Pingguo’s unique cognitive method in the dreamland to perceive his surroundings, trying to find the projection of the “Emotional Infusion”. This time, while he was making the woodcarving, his emotions of “interest” and “focus” originated from his own early years’ curiosity and passion for computer hardware, and also his recent involvement in the “AI Assistant Plan”. Based on past experience, the projection of such emotions should resemble the computer hardware that Xiang Kun visualized during the “Emotional Infusion”.

What Xiang Kun aimed to do was to observe these potential “models” in Xiao Pingguo’s dreamland using her unique cognitive method.

However, after perceiving all around, Xiang Kun found that Xiao Pingguo was located in what appeared to be an abandoned “city”.

Calling it a “city” seemed slightly inaccurate, because in her cognition, the various tall, short, and uniquely shaped “buildings” around her didn’t really resemble normal houses.

Then he heard his own voice sped up: “Xiao Pingguo, you see these capacitors, they play a role on the motherboard, one is filtering, eliminating interference, and the other is coupling, transmitting signals. As for how they achieve this and what principle it is, let me give you an example…”

Xiang Kun abruptly realized that the place where Xiao Pingguo was in her dreamland was not a “city” but a gigantic motherboard resembling a city!

The massive “buildings” that looked different in Xiao Pingguo’s perception, were actually components of the motherboard, constructed by her cognition through previous touch. No wonder Xiang Kun couldn’t identify them through her perception, they looked very different compared to the actual enlarged motherboard.

Xiang Kun suddenly thought of something and used Xiao Pingguo’s perception to “explore” the source of his fast-forwarded voice, then he “perceived” a “person”.

The term “person” is used, because in Xiao Pingguo’s perception, there’s a head, a torso, hands and feet, the shape indeed resembles that of a person, and it’s emitting Xiang Kun’s voice.

But through Xiao Pingguo’s perception, the whole body of that “person” seems to be made up of various types of circuit boards, with complex circuits inside, and an invisible space on the outside framing everything inside the “person’s” body. Within that space, there’s a great amount of constantly fluctuating code, including binary, Assembly Language, C Language formats, and more, it’s all mixed up, but there’s some kind of strange logic connecting these codes together.

When Xiang Kun snapped back to reality, he found that the dreamland had ended, he could see images again, no longer was he in that void where he couldn’t see anything.

However, his thoughts were still indulged in that “person”.

He had now realized, that the “person” in Xiao Pingguo’s dreamland, who guided her through the “motherboard city”, explaining various computer knowledge and principles with a fast-forwarded voice of Xiang Kun, was the projection of his “Emotional Infusion” in that woodcarving.

And Xiao Pingguo, in her dreamland, had used her distinct cognitive pattern to establish a unique model for that “person”, a model that exists only in cognition, not in visual reality.

Xiang Kun believed that if others were to have dreams stimulated by that “motherboard woodcarving”, the emotional projections that appear in those dreams would have completely different images, which could just be a normal Xiang Kun or various computer accessories.

Xiang Kun sat blankly in his chair, again having that feeling of having grasped something, and this time, he had a firm grip on the “tail” of that feeling, not letting go!

If anyone was observing him, they would’ve thought Xiang Kun had gone crazy, as he just sat there, petrified, not moving or blinking, for an hour, two hours. He sat from late-night to midnight, from midnight till dawn, till sunrise.

When the “Canary” routinely flew by to say “hello”, Xiang Kun finally made a move. He swept the wood, carving knife, and various papers off the table, then pulled the keyboard over and began setting the environment on the computer. But midway, he felt something was wrong, and switched to the one of the computers he bought for Director Lin’s project.

Several hours later, Xiang Kun had moved all three computers and a laptop in his house to the living room, he moved his computer desk out from the room and joined it with the dining table, making it easier for him to switch between computers.

Then, he went on Jingdong to buy some peripherals and computer accessories, and after that, he immersed himself in a concept he had previously conceived, he wanted to try to bring that concept to reality.

In the following few days, Xiang Kun pretty much spent all his time in front of the row of screens, sometimes frenziedly typing in codes, sometimes contemplating with his head in his hands, lost in thought for an hour or two before continuining his frantic keyboard clicking.

Two nights later, Xiang Kun once again sensed one of the three pieces of woodcarving from Xiao Pingguo’s side and re-entered her dreamland.