What It's Like Being a Vampire

Xiang Kun had a chat with Yang Zhuo late into the night and found the conversation to be fruitful.

Whether he was “guiding” him, devising a training plan for his observational and reasoning abilities, or elaborating on how to shoot videos as well as the operational strategies for “Youlong Play Rabbit”, Yang Zhuo was quick to apprehend and grasp the concepts.

Naturally, when it came to the fluency of video editing, coming up with creative video content, and understanding what’s trending and audience preferences on major video platforms, Yang Zhuo was no match for Tang Baona.

However, Xiang Kun, based on his cognitive model of Yang Zhuo, acknowledged that his learning ability was quite good and still had great potential for improvement.

Yang Zhuo was also interested in part-time video production and operation for “Youlong Play Rabbit”. He began to follow this UP host “Youlong Play Rabbit” when he heard that the videos posted by this UP host were filmed in the same kitchen where Xiang Kun critiqued various food programs as he cooked bamboo rat meat.

Now that he knows the connection between Xiang Kun and “Youlong Play Rabbit”, naturally he would be eager to participate in the production.

Moreover, Xiang Kun had promised him a compensation. Although he was a little embarrassed, he was really looking forward to it and feeling really happy. His girlfriend, Xiao Min, isn’t a vanity lover. Yet, it cost a lot of money for casual dining, outings, and occasional gifts. His wallet was tightening up, and he already needed to borrow money from his sister.

…

When he was heading home from the café, it wasn’t even eleven at night yet. Xiang Kun didn’t catch a taxi but strolled down the street slowly.

Ever since Xiang Kun obtained this new, direct perception of electric and magnetic fields due to his last Blood-drinking Period, he has been using it frequently, searching for the method to sense electric and magnetic fields other than those of the atmosphere.

Although he could only vaguely perceive the trend, such as vaguely detecting whether high-power electrical appliances are turned on and off in a certain direction indoors, he believes that if he maintains the current pace of this perceptual enhancement and guides sufficient practices, and undergoes several more blood-drinking periods and several rounds of evolutionary mutations, he would be able to perceive information he wants to perceive.

He was never thinking about becoming a humanoid signal receiver, receiving various types of electromagnetic waves carrying information in the air.

Simply perceiving those electromagnetic waves is like peeking at a letter sent by someone, yet the words in the letter are written in a specific code that he doesn’t understand and cannot make sense of.

And if he allows himself to evolve the ability to demodulate and decode, that would be another massive “topic” that might take countless time and effort to achieve. Even if he does achieve it, it won’t have much meaning. It would be more practical to equip Alice with suitable equipment and let her take care of it.

However, being able to perceive those signals is not without significance, as he can selectively disrupt and interfere with the transmission of some signals. At times, it may provide him a safer environment and greater freedom of action.

Even if it reaches a certain level, it might be possible to directly produce effects similar to EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) and paralyze all electronic devices within a small range.

In other words, he doesn’t need to intercept and decode the letters delivered by the courier. All he needs to do is push the courier into the ditch, or simply block the road, allowing neither the courier nor the delivery to pass.

Despite the already low temperature and the wind chill, the city’s late-night is far from quiet. On more bustling streets, there are still quite a few pedestrians. Even roadside barbeque stalls and snack stands are still bustling, very lively.

Xiang Kun walked very slowly on the street as if he were taking a stroll.

He seemed to have found some feeling as if numerous hair-thin threads stretched out from his body, linked up with the surroundings and connected with things that they perceived as feedback, and then with delicate trembles, they brought back various pieces of information in an ambiguous manner.

The way he receives feedback is through the perceptual ability he recently developed from this Blood-drinking Period. This type of sensory organ seemed to be “integrated” within his brain nerves, and could closely influence his thoughts, and inversely, was also influenced by his thoughts and consciousness.

As if he had just struck upon the solution to a problem that had puzzled him for a long time, Xiang Kun increasingly focused his attention and even slowly began to exclude and screen out his other sensory abilities.

Suddenly, he could no longer hear any sounds, see any scenes, smell anything, nor feel his sense of touch. His consciousness seemed to have completely left his body and was hovering in the air.

But he wasn’t entirely without a foundation for his senses, there was still a special sensory ability, and his body had also become a part of this perception.

He felt like a creature swimming in water, using countless tentacles, or sensory appendages, to feel the environment around him.

At first, it was as if he were swimming in the depths of the ocean, feeling the changing currents around him. Then the entire ocean turned into rivers, within which he could swim at will. Then these rivers turned into lakes.

He realized that changes around him were closely related to his consciousness, but these changes were not directed by his consciousness, but rather the environment states that were perceived as his consciousness changed – all these states existed in real-time, but he could not perceive all states at the same time.

Feeling a moment of dizziness, Xiang Kun snapped out of the “out-of-body” state, regaining control of his senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch.

He noticed he was standing quietly by the roadside, recalling the moment he lost his visual, auditory, and other sensory abilities and the consciousness “out of body”. In that moment, he had walked up to this position.

He hadn’t fallen down due to the brief “disconnection” between his consciousness and his body, and his body was still in a normal state.

Xiang Kun glanced at the time, then recalled the last time he looked at his phone, and calculated the time spent walking on the road, making an estimate that this momentary “out of body” experience probably didn’t last more than a minute.

From the look of his surroundings, no one seemed to be paying any attention to him, no one stopped to look at him, and neither did the customers at the food stalls and shops not far away cast their eyes on him, which indicated that he himself didn’t exhibit any distinctly abnormal behavior just now.

Xiang Kun continued his walk expressionlessly. About ten minutes later, he sat down on the bench outside a lawn and closed his eyes, preparing to re-enter that special state of perception.

Earlier, while he was completely focused on perceiving the electric and magnetic fields, his other sensory abilities, such as vision and hearing, were suddenly cut off, making it feel as if his consciousness and body were completely separated.

But he understood that his sensory abilities were not completely excluded, there was one more sensory ability that supported his cognition—just the electric field perception ability that he gained only after this Blood-drinking Period mutation.

So, was what he perceived in that state the changes in electric and magnetic fields?

Was it just that in order to enter that “highly sensitive” mode and due to the conflict and interference with sensory abilities such as hearing, smelling, and seeing, he would temporarily exclude these senses, making it feel as if he abruptly lost the feeling and control of his body, and his soul left his body?

As for the dizziness when leaving that state, it was probably the brain’s method of self-defense when it couldn’t handle high loads at once.

While pondering, Xiang Kun, once again, started to follow the steps he took earlier and entered that special sensory mode where he “sealed” and “excluded” other senses.

This time, in that special sensory state, Xiang Kun paid more attention to the details regarding the changes in his environment and kept them in a fixed form.

He began to compare the cognitive models he had established through traditional sense information and observation modes such as infrared thermographic imaging of the surrounding environment before entering this special sensory state.

Under the comparison of the two cognitive models, Xiang Kun could confirm that what he perceived after entering this special sensory state was still the surrounding environment. However, he perceived the environment in another special way.

Was it the electric field? Magnetic field? Electromagnetic waves?

He knew that any substance above absolute zero would radiate electromagnetic waves. Was what he had perceived a sensory world made up of various waves?

This time, Xiang Kun proactively exited that sensory state before his brain became dizzy.

He continued observing the environment around him. After about ten minutes, he took out his phone, switched to video recording mode, held the camera out and closed his eyes to re-enter that special sensory state.

After several dozens of seconds, he picked up his phone to stop recording once he extricated himself from the special sensory state. Then, he started playing it back, listening carefully to the sound recorded by the phone and watching the video recorded by the phone, comparing it to the environmental changes that he perceived while in the special sensory state.

He realized that some of the environmental changes he perceived in that special state were actually oscillations and propagations of sound in the air. Some changes were due to people or cars moving on the road.

After sitting on a bench outside the lawn for over an hour, Xiang Kun repeatedly entered and exited that sensory state. He perceived the same surroundings and compared the varying changes, statistically consolidating them and establishing a cognitive model that translated between the two sensory states.

Xiang Kun believed that not long after now, using his brain’s reasoning ability, he could also basically summarize some of the laws and understand what he perceived when he entered that “special sensory state” and know “where” he was.

Tomorrow will be another Blood-drinking Period, so Xiang Kun did not go home tonight. Instead, he constantly switched environments to practice that “special sensory state.” He hoped that through sufficient guidance, training, and evolution of this sensory ability to a certain extent could occur after this Blood-drinking Period.

Of course, the current Xiang Kun would not allow his bizarre behaviors on the street just after mutation to be captured again by surveillance cameras. With the help of the infrared thermographic vision mode and other sensory modes, he was always able to confirm from a distance where the surveillance equipment was and effectively evade it.

At around four in the morning, when Xiang Kun entered the “special sensory state” again, he suddenly found that he had established contact with some distant existences. So, with a thought, he seemed to have taken a fast-track rail car through a channel and threw himself to the distant locations he was connected with.

In an instant, Xiang Kun realized what he had established contact with – what he was now perceiving was that rabbit woodcarving that was still in the Qinling Uninhabited Area being transported out by the people suspected to be from “Divine Technology”.

He found he could perceive the surrounding conditions. The woodcarving seemed to be packed by something, but his perception was not isolated by this. He could still extend his reach to fifteen or twenty meters outwards.

From the subtle changes in the surrounding environment, he counted that there were at least seventeen people and a lot of electronic devices. However, before he could gather more information, he exited the special sensory state due to the dizziness in his brain.

Xiang Kun, who had returned to a normal sensory state, was still slightly dizzy but couldn’t help but clench his fist and wave it excitedly.

That brief perception just now made him certain that his previous hopes of expanding his perception through objects with established connection, had finally come true!

Although he couldn’t see any pictures, couldn’t hear any sounds, couldn’t smell any scents, and didn’t have any actual touch, this special sensory state and special perception information still let him know many things he wanted to know!

He even believed that as time went by, he could even “decode” sound and images from the subtle environmental changes in the special sensory state.

Xiang Kun knew that it wasn’t really an ‘astral projection’ when he found himself seemingly diving into the remote location and possessing the rabbit wood carving.

According to the association between mini figurines and Apple established after the last lightning storm, Xiang Kun knew that this sense of establishing a connection was the result of a certain energy exchange across space between him and those objects.

In that special sensory state, his perception of the surrounding objects was also through that energy. That energy seemed to be his countless tentacles stretching out and perceiving what was around him.

However, the range of this perception was not infinite; if he didn’t borrow objects that had established a special connection, his perceptual range would be about fifty to sixty meters.

If it were just for observing the surrounding environment, it might not be much stronger than his judgement through the combination of visual, olfactory, auditory senses, etc.

But in conjunction with those objects that had established a special connection, it was equal to unlimitedly extending his perceptual range and he could peek into a lot of information that could not be obtained through normal senses.

It wasn’t until after sunrise that Xiang Kun returned home.

The targeted training that night, even for him, was quite exhausting. This fatigue was not physical, but psychological. Frequent brain stretching to the limit triggered self-protection, even occasionally causing latency in response and a sense of a brain freeze when in a normal sensory state.

When he expected to, he got hungry, so Xiang Kun drank blood and went to sleep.

January 11, Saturday.

At six forty in the morning, Xiang Kun sat up from the bed.

After confirming that his sleep time was within normal range, Xiang Kun immediately tried to enter that “Super Sensory State” – his name for that special sensory state.

The speed at which he entered the state was much faster than the day before, and he easily found the channel to sense those objects that had established an “Emotional Infusion”, and obtained information about their surrounding state.

Xiang Kun sensed the rabbit wood carving in Qinling Uninhabited Area, the Minion Wood Carving next to Apple, and the chopsticks next to Liu Shiling – all three “Emotional Infusion” objects in succession before exiting the “Super Sensory State” due to unbearable dizziness.

This time, through the rabbit wood carving, Xiang Kun updated the number of people suspected to be from “Divine Technology” in its surroundings: from seventeen to twenty-three. Of course, the actual number of people might be more than twenty-three.

After making some preparations and arrangements, Xiang Kun left with “Shiny” around ten and headed to the neighboring city, planning to send this canary to Apple again.

As for himself, he planned to go to QiCheng City.

Of course he knew that Zhou Rui and Fang Pin Fang were not in QiCheng City now. He just wanted to make some preparations in advance.

After discovering his new ability, Xiang Kun felt that some things needed to be arranged in advance.