What It's Like Being a Vampire

“I really got the doll!” Yang Zhen’er couldn’t help but exclaim.

Tian Baona, holding the doll she had grabbed, was excited as well, looking at Xiang Kun: “The method you told us really worked.”

Xiang Kun also had a surprised expression on his face. He gave her a thumbs up, “I didn’t expect you could grab it. It seems you have a knack for this, worthy of the ‘Tang’s Iron Claw Princess’ known in the martial arts world.”

“Hmph! And you are the ‘Beggar’s Iron Hand’!” Tang Baona retaliated with a laugh, holding the doll.

Xiang Kun joked with Tang Baona, but he was quietly self-evaluating in his mind: Although he successfully strengthened the current in the toy machine’s claw, enabling it to firmly grip the doll, he clearly didn’t control it well and exerted too much force.

Fortunately, under normal circumstances, no one would think he had tampered with the machine. They would probably just think the machine malfunctioned. Not even he, a month ago, would have thought that anyone could pull off such a feat.

Xiang Kun and Yang Zhen’er carried a bag of drinks and snacks each, and Tang Baona carried the doll as they giggled and chatted on their way back to the hotel.

There were eight of them in total on this trip. They had paired up two by two, each in a standard room. Tang Baona was with Yang Zhen’er, Yang Zhuo with Xiao Min, Zhang Qian with Yang Jie. Xiang Kun naturally shared a room with Zi Cheng.

After Tang Baona and Xiang Kun had split the drinks and snacks between the other rooms, Xiang Kun flicked the coin he had previously put on top of the claw machine towards her before heading back to his room.

Tang Baona instinctively caught it, and then heard Xiang Kun say: “This lucky coin is now yours. Didn’t you want to learn coin flipping? I’ll send you a tutorial video, and you can start practicing. If you have any questions, just ask me.”

Tang Baona looked at the ordinary-looking, common one yuan coin in her hand, and nodded with a smile, “Okay!”

Once she returned to the room, Tang Baona held the coin in her fingers, attempting to imitate Xiang Kun’s flipping. The coin only made a couple of slow turns though, before it couldn’t go any further, and almost strained her fingers in the process.

Thinking of the smooth movements of Xiang Kun flipping the coin, she felt a little annoyed. Could her piano- and guitar-playing fingers not compare with his keyboard-typing ones?

In another room, Xiang Kun had knocked for a good while before Zi Cheng, holding his phone, rushed in to unlock the door. The instant the door was open, Zi Cheng went back to his bed with his head lowered engrossed in his mobile game.

Xiang Kun was a bit curious. Zi Cheng was never the type to pay much attention to mobile games, considering them too simple and uninteresting. Could he have changed his mind now?

However, recollecting the scene when they delivered drinks to the other rooms just now, he instantly understood what’s going on — apart from him, Tang Baona, and Yang Zhen’er who went out shopping, everyone else including Yang Zhuo, Xiao Min, Zhang Qian, and Yang Jie were all playing the same game.

The five of them were teamed up, playing “King’s Glory”.

Sure enough, the sound from Zi Cheng’s phone was Yang Jie’s voice, “Jungler? Get over here fast, they’re about to beat me to death!”

Zi Cheng hurriedly replied, “Coming, I’m on my way!”

“Don’t, Brother Liu! Finish this round of jungling first. You’re only at level 3, and we’ll be feeding them kills if we go over like this! Don’t listen to my sister, she loves to overreact while gaming! Sis, you’re the top-laner, you have to hold the top lane, don’t try to take on two people by yourself! Do you even know how to farm under the turret?” Yang Zhuo’s concerned tone.

However, in the next moment, Yang Jie screams out, “Ah! I’m dead!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll avenge you right now!” Zi Cheng quickly replied.

“Yang Zhuo, stop following Liu Chuang and come help me, I’m about to get killed too!” Zhang Qian’s frustrated voice echoed.

Xiao Min’s voice followed, “Come to the mid lane, honey. Get over here, I’m going to kill this Zhen Ji!”

Then, “Play it safe and farm, stop killing!” This was definitely a warning from the poor Yang Zhuo.

Xiang Kun was on the verge of laughing, deciding not to disturb Zi Cheng and went to his table to charge his phone.

He set his phone screen not to automatically lock, and then took out another coin that had established “super sensory contact”, and put it next to his phone. He stared at the phone on the table, concentrating and entering the “super sensory state”.

After this latest blood drinking, he was able to enter the “super sensory state” quite swiftly. As long as he prepared himself mentally, he could enter the state in one to two seconds.

In the “super sensory state”, Xiang Kun could easily determine feedback information from his phone, such as its exact position.

He then began trying to influence his phone through the coin.

Normally, touch screens of electronic products consist of two layers of transparent conductive layers, an insulating layer separating the conductive layers, and electrodes.

When a touch screen operates, the two conductive layers act like a resistance network. When voltage is applied to one layer of electrodes, a voltage gradient is formed. If a force causes the two layers to touch at a point, a voltage can be measured at the touching point on the electrode layer which wasn’t charged, thus revealing the coordinates of the touch point.

However, most phones nowadays use capacitive screens. When a human finger touches the screen, the body’s electric field causes the finger and the screen’s surface to form a coupling capacitor. For high-frequency current, a capacitor is a direct conductor, and as such, the finger will draw a very small current from the touch point. This current flows out from each corner of the screen. Theoretically, the current flowing through the four corners is proportional to the distance from the finger to the corners. By calculating the proportions of the four currents, the controller can determine the position and send it to the processor.

In the “super sensory state”, Xiang Kun can use “super sensory contact” or “emotional infusion” to influence the people or objects around him. Although these influences can’t simulate physical touch, they can affect the electric and magnetic fields. One of the major advantages is that this influence can directly penetrate any object, completely ignoring any barrier.

In the “super sensory state”, as long as Xiang Kun can “understand” what the feedback information from the surrounding environment means, he can create a reverse influence. All objects that reflect feedback information are defenseless against him. It’s a realm where he alone has control.

Theoretically, Xiang Kun could bypass the phone screen altogether, directly influencing the controller’s coordinates or the operation information that the processor needs.

Unfortunately, that kind of operation is too complex. Not to mention that he can’t do it yet, he has a hard time even observing and interpreting the information. So, he finally turned to trying to emulate the current drawn during a finger touch that he had observed before.

After switching in and out of the “super sensory state” multiple times, Xiang Kun finally achieved success:

He randomly opened an application on his phone.

Yes. At this point, even this simple operation was extremely difficult for him.

He still couldn’t accurately control the location of touch activation. He had intended to open WeChat, but ended up opening Alipay instead.

However, for Xiang Kun, having such a degree of influence in the “super sensory state” already excited him a lot.

As time went by, he grew more and more familiar with the “super sensory state”. As he could interpret increasing amounts of environmental information, he naturally grew capable of greater and more complex influences.

After he affected his phone screen in “super sensory state”, it seemed to have some aftereffects. It became a bit less responsive for a short while and the touch point seemed to be stuck in place.

Thankfully, the screen recovers after being turned off for half a minute.

Immersed in his research, Xiang Kun glanced at Zi Cheng, who was engrossed in his game, his forehead beading with sweat, and the vested the impulse to play a prank on him.

He laid down on his bed, placed his cellphone and that coin on the nightstand between them, and then closed his eyes pretending to sleep.

In fact, he entered into the “Super Sensory State”, locked onto Zi Cheng’s cellphone, and began to meddle with it using the coin on the nightstand.

“Here I come, here I come! I can win this!” Zi Cheng was playing the character of Ah Ke in the jungle, but upon realizing the support from Yang Zhuo and marksman Zhang Qian were out, he quickly declared, “No, no, we can’t win the team fight. Retreat, defend, defend!”

“Retreat, my ass! They’ve all dumped their skills on me. Go in and reap them, Brother Liu…” The desperate and hoarse voice of Yang Zhuo could be heard from the mobile.

Zi Cheng decided to play safe and retreat, also to protect Yang Jie’s Arthur’s retreat.

But suddenly, the joystick malfunctioned, and his character, not obeying his commands, started to move off course.

“Damn it! What’s happening? Screen freeze? Bloody hell! It’s the internet! It’s the bloody bad network! I’m freezing, I’m freezing, I’m freezing…”

Seeing his character running back into enemy champion, Zi Cheng tried frantically to control it back by pressing in the skill and attack keys, mashing whichever was available.

To his surprise, when all the enemies were low on health and had used up their main control skills, Zi Cheng’s Ah Ke kept reap headcounts, continuously refreshed his skills, scored a quadruple kill, and turned the tide of the battle.

“66666, Brother Chuang is awesome! We should fight like this! Wait, you said you froze?” Yang Zhuo’s voice rang out.

Zi Cheng was stunned for a moment, then chuckled, “Yes, I froze for a moment, else, I would have aced. Damn, the unsteady internet service of China Unicom!”

Xiang Kun, who had just emerged from the “Super Sensory State”, was dumbfounded upon hearing this. He didn’t intentionally help Zi Cheng counterattack, and in fact, even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. He was still unable to open an app accurately, let alone control a game character precisely. He was merely playing a prank on Zi Cheng, obstructing him from controlling the character freely.

With a newfound excitement akin to discovering a new toy, Xiang Kun entered the “Super Sensory State” again, using the “emotion-infused” items distributed everywhere as “portals” or “jump points”.

“Emotion-infused” items could lure his perception to “descend”, and items with “Super Sensory Contact”, could enable him to affect the surrounding objects to a certain extent.

Therefore, he directly sensed that “rabbit wood carving”, “descended” to its surrounding in the “Super Sensory State”, and soon found the bone that had established a “Super Sensory Contact” with him.

On the day of Chang Bin’s wedding, Xiang Kun had already sensed that the bone had left the Qinling Uninhabited Area.

But judging from the continuous sensing afterwards, the bone was not sent to QiCheng City, but to another direction.

The city to which it was sent was a place Xiang Kun hadn’t been to after his mutation, so he could deduce the approximate direction based on the sensing, but couldn’t precisely locate it.

It seems that at least the bone and the rabbit wood carving were taken to the same place.

According to the feedback information he had summarized before, the bone was now under a high-rise building on the second basement floor. Even though it’s past midnight, there were still a few people scattered throughout this building.

Xiang Kun had more than once sensed the surrounding conditions in the “Super Sensory State” through the rabbit wood carving, so he had some understanding of the body feedback information of the members who had transported the rabbit wood carving and other items out of the Qinling Uninhabited Area.

According to his judgment, the person closest to the bone that had established the “Super Sensory Contact” should be one of the members who had transported these things out of the Qinling Uninhabited Area.

The location where these things are now must be another secret research base of “Divine Technology”. The people still around these things are definitely the relevant researchers.

Xiang Kun thought, could he do something?

In Bao Wang City, An Tie Town, within a certain high-tech industrial park.

In the second basement of a certain building, Fang Pingfang, dressed in a work suit, was frowning at computer screen displaying various data. She seemed deep in thought inside a laboratory.

After bringing those things out of the Qinling Uninhabited Area, she got into Mr. Liang’s arranged car, following those “things” all the way to this research center in An Tie Town.

This was Fang Pingfang’s first time here.

Obviously, the equipment here was far more advanced and updated than at the research base in QiCheng City. The security and confidentiality here were also more thorough, making it evident that it was newly established.

Initially, Mr. Liang planned a holiday for the members involved in the Qinling Uninhabited Area expedition, allowing them to get some rest. After all, the half-month long exploration in the Qinling Uninhabited Area was a severe challenge to most people, both physically and mentally.

However, Fang Pingfang rejected the holiday and took the initiative to request Mr. Liang to allow her to continue to participate in the analysis and research of the items brought out from the Qinling Uninhabited Area.

In fact, the main analysis target was the “rabbit wood carving”.

But after various testings and research, they failed to gather much valuable information from it.

The only useful clue, they got was that the rabbit wood carving was carved with a pointed metal tool. The residual metal debris on the wooden carving could reveal the material of the carving tool, which could be used to search for similar artifacts in the market.

But, this was akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. Ultimately, they may end up empty-handed.

No human or humanoid DNA or fingerprints were left on the woodcarving, which puzzled them. After all, in the Qinling Uninhabited Area, the carver, a human who ran around barefoot, would he have deliberately worn gloves when carving the rabbit?

Remembering the special and eerie “Rabbit Meat Invasion Dream” on the way back, Fang Pingfang felt a bit frightened but more so excited and thrilled.

Wasn’t the reason she came back to China and accepted Mr. Liang’s invitation to sign the confidentiality agreement and join this secret division of “Divine Technology” to study these unknown, mysterious things?

Over the past few days, she has shifted her focus from the rabbit wood carving to the other items brought from the Qinling Uninhabited Area and the footprint, hoping to find a breakthrough.

Suddenly, the lights in the lab flickered. Fang Pingfang looked up in surprise. The Research Center’s equipment was very modern and the supporting facilities were excellent. The voltage was always stable. Even though she had been working late for the past few days, this was the first time she encountered this situation of flickering lights.