What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 581: Chapter 581: Really Interesting

Having received the investigation information from Fang Pingfang, Zhao Feng, and others, Mr. Liang realized that they were close to finding the source of the Eight-armed Eight-eyed Illusion.

He keenly sensed that if the Eight-armed Eight-eyed Illusion and the little girl in a white skirt on the passenger plane wing, have a common source, it is likely this source would be directly related to the rabbit wood carving found in the uninhabited area of Qinling. If so, the “source” is highly likely to be a “Blood-eating creature”.

Moreover, this “Blood-eating creature” is of an exceptionally high level, capable of creating illusions at a long-distance and invading dreams through an object, not something an ordinary person can resist.

Thus, Mr. Liang promptly ordered Fang Pingfang’s team to stop their investigation, withdraw all contact, and stand by.

Based on their investigation information, Mr. Liang made a preliminary judgement that the source of the Eight-armed Eight-eyed Illusion should be one of the three: Xiang Kun, Xia Libing, and Tang Baona.

After personally intervening and collecting more information for analysis, Mr. Liang quickly ruled out Xia Libing and Tang Baona from his suspects list, leaving only Xiang Kun.

Although the information received showed that Xiang Kun exhibited many characteristics not typical of a “Blood-eating creature”, such as being seen eating normally in a restaurant along with other people in some surveillance videos, Mr. Liang was certain from other information that Xiang Kun is a “Blood-eating creature”.

However, after confirming Xiang Kun as the target, Mr. Liang did not immediately contact or investigate him. Instead, he was busy tracking another “Blood-eating creature”.

After the previous “giant raptor” caused a tourist to fall off a cliff in Wushu Mountain, old He demanded that Mr. Liang prioritize its capture. Yet, even as he was close to successfully hunting down the “giant raptor” in Wushu Mountain, the creature managed to escape by transforming into an egg. The sudden, eerie thunderstorm knocked down many of his drones, affecting his flight ability, and forcing him to abandon his pursuit.

During the subsequent investigation of a passenger plane near Jianzhou that was attacked by a flock of birds, attention was focused on the little girl in a white skirt who appeared on the wing of the plane. However, Mr. Liang deduced from various information and data that the bird flock was likely deliberately manipulated to attack the plane by a mutant bird. Although the mutant bird differed significantly from the previous “giant raptor” in Wushu Mountain in terms of its size, after carefully examining the bodies of the birds and conducting a day-long investigation in the area beneath the site of the bird strike, Mr. Liang was certain that they were the same creature.

Old He had already thrown a fit when Mr. Liang failed to capture the “giant raptor” the previous time. If he were to find out that the same bird was responsible for nearly causing an airliner crash, his blood pressure would probably skyrocket.

Therefore, Mr. Liang decided to prioritize the capture of this troublesome “bird” posing a significant threat to humans before proceeding to investigate Xiang Kun.

At least according to the current information, Xiang Kun, unlike Guo Tianxiang and the so-called “Bloodline Vampires” in Europe, does not feed on human blood. He blends well into society with many close friends, engaging in normal social activities in a stable living environment, thus the chances of him intentionally harming others is relatively small.

However, after several days of personal investigation, Mr. Liang found that the “bird” seemed to have vanished into thin air. Even with all resources employed for tracking, Mr. Liang still could not pinpoint its whereabouts.

The bird itself has the ability to become invisible, which makes it difficult to find. Yet, he has a fleet of drones, plus various proprietary and public devices aided by “Thai A”, all equipped with a search mode for “Blood-eating creatures”. As long as it shows up, using data calculation, he should be able to estimate its location, and together with a wide-range search and Mr. Liang’s personal involvement, the probability of finding its trace is not slight.

But precisely because he came up empty-handed, Mr. Liang was somewhat frustrated.

He speculated that the “bird” probably transformed again like it did on Wushu Mountain, potentially burrowing into the soil like an insect to hide.

It is even possible that it evolved a special ability during this time to better conceal itself.

In this case, Mr. Liang turned his thoughts to Xiang Kun again. Xiang Kun was on the plane at that time. If he was a “Blood-eating creature”, then the appearance of the girl in the white skirt was likely to be directly related to him. It could either be the manifestation of one of his abilities or an illusion used to distract the passengers from his other abilities. The reason why the “bird” put in so much effort to ambush the plane with a flock of birds was most likely because of him.

Behind all this, there might be some connection that “God Travel Technology” has not uncovered – it was abnormal for the “bird” to coincide the bird flock to hit the passenger plane with Xiang Kun on board.

Perhaps through the investigation of Xiang Kun, he could find a way to track down this “bird”.

Therefore, Mr. Liang once again focused on investigating Xiang Kun.

However, he did not go to Chongyun Village to contact Xiang Kun directly. Instead, he went to the residence where Xiang Kun initially rented.

Mr. Liang planned to first “retrace” the path of Xiang Kun’s transformation from an ordinary person into a “Blood-eating creature”, gather all the information he needed, and then determine how to deal with and dispose of him.

With the help of “Thai A” and the unique authorization from old He, it’s not difficult to investigate, after all, Xiang Kun didn’t frequently change his identity or move around like Guo Tianxiang.

According to Xiang Kun’s basic information, his life experiences were very normal and ordinary, all step by step, according to the rules, so there weren’t any exceptions or accidents.

Of course, unlike Qin Dong, Ji Hang, and others, Mr. Liang did not believe that such an ordinary background was fabricated simply because the current Xiang Kun was extraordinary. He knew that before mutation, any living organism, be it cats, dogs, fish, birds, bugs, or humans would be ordinary and normal, with no distinct characteristics.

All the changes should have started on July 11th, 2019, when the company Xiang Kun worked for went bankrupt, and he lost his job.

Because before that, according to the data analysis of “Thai A” on all Xiang Kun’s life-related data, including the usage records of his Alipay, WeChat, bus card, subway card, and various social media accounts, he peaked normally up until July 11th, 2019, and did not fit any of the characteristics of a “Blood-eating creature”.

But on the night of July 11th, he paid for his meal at a local food stall with WeChat, then called a taxi to go home. From then until July 14th, none of his personal accounts had any usage records, and there were several unanswered calls.

On July 14th, he made three WeChat payments, and according to the retrieved transaction records, one was at a small restaurant near his rental apartment, one was at a pharmacy, and the other was a personal payment.

Based on the information found by “Thai A”, the recipient of the third payment was a person who sold chickens and ducks at the local market.

In the days following July 14th, Xiang Kun basically did not have any Alipay or WeChat payment records for meals or groceries, until almost a month later when he started buying common food from supermarkets again.

Considering that later, Xiang Kun went to Tongshi Town and started cooking at his childhood friend’s restaurant, he was likely trying to practice cooking normal food to cover up the animal bones left by his blood-sucking habit during this time.

From all this information, Mr. Liang was able to re-enact in his mind Xiang Kun’s experiences of the initial few days of mutation.

He sneaked into the rented room where Xiang Kun used to live, which is still unoccupied. However, all traces of the “[the blood-eating creature]” were long gone. He picked up several items and tasted them with his tongue but got nothing.

Following this, Mr. Liang went to Xiang Kun’s purchased house. According to the information uncovered, Xiang Kun had finished paying off the remaining loan in advance in August of this year.

As to how he did so, Mr. Liang already knew. Xiang Kun is now one of the hidden bosses of “QianKun Technology”, directly leading the development of the most popular online multiplayer voice game, “Genesis of Voice”.

Mr. Liang strongly suspected that the reason Xiang Kun could develop such a revolutionary game, gaining financial freedom at once, was probably related to the mutation that happened to him.

The continuous mutation and evolution of Xiang Kun after transforming into a “blood-eating creature” may have been in his brain’s thinking and related to programming development. Otherwise, it’s hard to explain how he was able to create such a game suddenly. After all, according to the information Mr. Liang had gathered, Xiang Kun didn’t have a mature development team. Most of the core functionality and gameplay were all made by him alone. Currently, the technical staff of “QianKun Technology” and “Teng Jiao Interactives” are mostly doing some UI optimization and some related interactive functionality.

Honestly speaking, Mr. Liang had encountered many “blood-eating creatures”. However, none of those “blood-eating creatures” known to him, Academician Shen’s recorded “blood-eating creatures”, or even some overseas human “blood-eating creatures” that they knew of, none were like Xiang Kun, who continued to shine and excel in their original careers after transforming into a “blood-eating creature”.

From Mr. Liang’s understanding of the mutation mechanism of “blood-eating creatures”, for Xiang Kun to have reached this point, he must have a deep passion and perseverance in his work and in programming.

This improved Mr. Liang’s perception of Xiang Kun. In his view, after mutating into a “blood-eating creature” and managing to focus the mutation and evolution on cognitive thinking, and continue to make money and build a career through technological means, these people must have a clear and discerned grasp of things. Their values have not been washed away by the “blood-eating characteristics”.

Of course, based on the trend of Xiang Kun’s physical change around July 11th, Mr. Liang knew that he had also evolved physically.

However, the records of Xiang Kun in the police system made Mr. Liang realize that Xiang Kun is a man of justice and responsibility.

Incidents such as kicking off an armed assailant who was downstairs from his rented apartment, capturing a fugitive he encountered on the road, cleverly capturing a human trafficker he ran across, and taking action to restrain and call the police when he and his girlfriend encountered someone with ill intent, these all showed that Xiang Kun knew how to use his power properly and restrainedly. He dared to take action, knew when to pull punches, and followed social rules, proactively maintaining social order.

This improved Mr. Liang’s impression of Xiang Kun once more.

After entering Xiang Kun’s purchased house, Mr. Liang, knowing that nobody was in there, directly stuck his finger into the keyhole and used his variable “Mechanical Master Key” to unlock the door.

If there were other people in the corridor at the time, they would have seen Xiang Kun’s anti-theft door turning and opening by itself.

The invisible Mr. Liang made a round in the house, surveying his surroundings.

He found the remaining blocks of boxwood that Xiang Kun had previously used for wood carving, discovered the small carving knives and all sorts of tools, and found the Eight-armed Eight-eyed Wood Carving in the cabinet.

This wood carving was identical to the one that Feng Xiuye had brought to Old Man Du.

Mr. Liang had a feeling of expectation being met, as everything fell into place.

He looked towards the several mainframes in the bedroom, thought for a moment, and went to open the window. A moment later, a drone flew in.

Mr. Liang took the drone over to a mainframe, pulling out a data cable and connecting it to a USB port.

Soon, “Taia” found a file encrypted with MD5. “Taia” automatically used a rainbow table to crack the encryption, luckily it only took a few minutes to crack.

Then, to Mr. Liang’s surprise, he found that the file was a self-recorded data log of Xiang Kun ever since the first day of his mutation.

This was an unexpected bonus, as Mr. Liang no longer needed to infer Xiang Kun’s mutation process from various scanty clues, this guy already recorded all detailed data himself.

Seeing the record file with not only detailed data but also accompanied by pictures and videos, Mr. Liang, who was still in his invisible status, had a wide smirk and couldn’t help shaking his head and muttering to himself:

“A programmer transformed ‘blood-eating creature’ is really interesting.”

After seeing, from Xiang Kun’s records, that other than the first time he mutated when he drank chicken blood, afterward, he had consistently used rabbit blood to complete the Blood-drinking Period, and he would only start drinking blood when he felt hungry and stop when he no longer felt hungry, Mr. Liang had an even better impression of Xiang Kun.

However, when he saw that Xiang Kun had discovered a way to guide the direction of mutation and improve certain fixed abilities through training, similar to exercising, Mr. Liang couldn’t help but exclaim in surprise. Not because of the discovery itself, but because of the training implementation and results that Xiang Kun achieved straight after, which were amazing.

Next, he discovered that Xiang Kun’s Blood-drinking Periods were incredibly regular. They happened every five days, each Blood-drinking Period almost meant the same amount of sleeping time, and the increase in blood intake was progressive and very stable.

Mr. Liang felt a strange sensation as if the mutation itself and those “high-dimensional factors” that transformed Xiang Kun into a “blood-eating creature”, while changing Xiang Kun’s body, were also being tamed by Xiang Kun, falling into some sort of routine and habit. They were influencing each other.

“Interesting…”

In that file, Xiang Kun also recorded his consumption of other “blood-eating creatures”, including a “Giant Owl” and a “mutated spider”.

Xiang Kun also described the special connection he established with the wood carving he made, how he unintentionally used this wood carving to scare Tang Baona’s grandfather, uncle, and Old Man Du in their dreams.

He described how he discovered that this wood carving could be used while he was awake to guide people’s emotions and create illusions, and how he used this method to influence Qi Haoguo in Tongshi Town, secretly went to Burma, saved the kidnapped Xia Tianhuo, and incidentally prevented a riot in Myitkyina.

As Mr. Liang looked at the file recorded by Xiang Kun and cross-referenced it with the investigation data previously provided by Fang Pingfang and Zhao Feng on a tablet delivered by the drone, he was able to piece together and verify the true situation.