What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 583: Chapter 583: Taffy (Thank you, Guild Master “Eliminate Stallion Literature”)

Walking on the smooth, recently-constructed cement road in Chongyun Village, Mr. Liang was reminded of the description of the village in the investigation report Zhou Rui had sent. One word kept repeating – tranquility.

He didn’t pay it much mind then, but now, immersing himself in the environment, he realized how precise the adjective was.

Indeed, Chongyun Village felt strikingly different from other hillside villages.

Not only were its roads well-constructed, but the village itself also appeared incredibly neat and clean, something difficult to achieve even in towns, let alone mountainous villages. Take for instance the livestock, poultry, cats, and dogs being raised in the village. It was challenging to stop these animals from defecating on the roads.

Not all animals live in a centrally planned farm; many villagers, especially the elderly, raise their livestock loosely. While humans could be deterred from polluting, the same can’t be done for animals. An animal defecating on the road while being led to graze was not an uncommon sight. Even if someone was assigned to clean, they couldn’t keep the roads clean round the clock.

Through the air, Mr. Liang was certain that a diversity of freeranging poultry was present in the village; their absence of littering was abnormal.

After navigating invisibly around the village for a while, Mr. Liang discovered something astounding. Chickens and ducks seemed to avoid defecating on the cement road. They would do it far off the road, near grasslands or trees.

Mr. Liang found this astounding. Perhaps some livestock could be trained to defecate at fixed spots, but chickens and ducks had very short intestines that expelled their food in no time. They were always eating, always fertilizing, much like the birds. How was their excretion being controlled? It was highly unusual!

Driven by curiosity, Mr. Liang closely observed a group of freeranging chickens. To his surprise, they stayed far from the cement road. They sourced their food in grasslands and mud, or stayed within their own pen. Grouping together, they seemed oddly organized.

Originally, Mr. Liang suspected that the cement might contain some unique substance deterring the animals. A brief inspection, however, revealed that according to his senses and the field devices, the cement was of standard composition. It claimed no inherent pungent odors inviting the wrath of the livestock and poultry. The sense of smell of the chickens, ducks, geese, and other poultry was inferior to humans – let alone when compared to him. If he couldn’t smell it, they certainly won’t.

During his observation, Mr. Liang noticed that Chongyun Village held a very scarce number of various insects, whether terrestrial or aerial. They seemed to be avoiding this region.

The village was incredibly quiet; pure, fresh air filled the atmosphere. The various noises within the village were relatively less than at other places.

The wind that gently blew against him carried a hard-to-describe mildness and comfort, as if someone was softly blowing air with their mouth.

This gave Mr. Liang the illusion that the village was a whole entity – conscious and alive.

Mr. Liang didn’t delve into the roots of his different sensations or investigate the details closely. He believes, however, that these differentiating aspects must be linked to Xiang Kun.

He was uncertain for the time being, whether Xiang Kun’s peculiarity caused the peculiarity of the place or Xiang Kun, being peculiar, discovered this uncommon place and decided to stay here, even setting up his ‘Research Base’ here.

Mr. Liang stealthily entered Xiang Kun’s dwelling – a small building with a courtyard that he had rented.

The house was empty at this moment. Mr. Liang stood in the living room, closed his eyes and took a deep smell. He then moved to a corner and licked the wall, fully absorbing the sensation in the house. He confirmed that a ‘blood-eating creature’ had been here not long ago. Although it had been ascertained that Xiang Kun was a human-transformed ‘blood-eating creature’, this was the first substantial confirmation of this fact.

Mr. Liang didn’t stay in the house for too long. He soon left the village and moved towards Chongyun Mountain. He had received a video feed from a drone and had discovered Xiang Kun’s location – Baldy was wandering in the mountain as if he was looking for something.

Mr. Liang planned to first head into the mountains to see what Xiang Kun was up to before deciding whether to continue his covert observations or initiate direct contact.

Regardless, Xiang Kun’s research base definitely needed to be temporarily shut down. Tomorrow, Mr. Liang would have Old He utilize official resources to halt the construction of Xiang Kun’s base, finding some random pretext. The first phase of the construction that was already completed would also be temporarily sealed off to prevent any usage of the equipment.

This was for their own good.

From the mutation record file, Mr. Liang knew Xiang Kun had excellent vision, hearing, and sense of smell, all explicitly evolved for targeted enhancement. Therefore, when he was within five hundred meters of Xiang Kun, he started to control the noise he made while moving. The accompanying micro-drones also maintained their distance, never getting too close.

As for the recon drone in the sky, he didn’t think Xiang Kun would notice–even if he did, he probably wouldn’t suspect it was spying on him.

But to his surprise, as he gradually cut the distance down to a few dozen meters, Xiang Kun, who was next to a tree doing something unknown, suddenly turned to look directly at him.

Xiang Kun could see him! –Mr. Liang immediately deduced.

“Who’s there!” Xiang Kun barked as he cast a cobblestone in his direction.

The thrown cobblestone was incredibly accurate, squarely aimed at Mr. Liang’s location, but its speed wasn’t fast. Mr. Liang even thought he could reach out and catch it consistently. It seemed more like a probing gesture than an attack.

However, Mr. Liang chose to sidestep and dodge the cobblestone.

After throwing the cobblestone, Xiang Kun also began to move swiftly, not fleeing but rushing in the direction Mr. Liang had moved.

Clearly, Mr. Liang’s evasion was still within his sensory range.

Seeing this, Mr. Liang stopped avoiding and, maintaining his state of invisibility, moved to meet Xiang Kun.

Despite being invisible, Mr. Liang now looked significantly different from usual. He was wearing a helmet that covered his entire head. His whole body’s joints also had special coverings, with his left arm being thicker than the right. On his back, there was a bulging object that appeared as a backpack, giving off a high-tech feel. They seemed to blend seamlessly into his body, as if they were part of him and his head should naturally be a helmet.

However, this helmet and these components weren’t mere technological products. They were “Biological Components” meticulously crafted by the researchers in the secret department of “Divine Technology,” following Mr. Liang’s requirements based on the data and samples he had provided.

The difference between them and ordinary technological products is that only Mr. Liang could use them.

For others, they were unidentifiable unfinished products or junk. But on Mr. Liang, they became part of his body, extending and enhancing his abilities.

These “Biological Components” couldn’t only provide Mr. Liang with additional abilities, but they could also integrate tightly with his own body. During the integration, they could have the same body characteristics as him, such as invisibility, control flexibility, sensory level similar to his body parts and limbs. They could also progress, evolve, and enhance together.

He had a three-digit number of “Biological Components,” providing various types of abilities. Every time he faced possibly severe and dangerous battles, he would prearrange targeted “Biological Components” based on gathered intelligence.

However, most of the time, situations requiring his intervention didn’t need him to arrange “Biological Components”. Just like when dealing with John Cavendish before, that even after John had completed several phase transformations, Mr. Liang didn’t need to prepare at all; he could effortlessly defeat him.

On the contrary, dealing with that “Giant Raptor” and this time interacting with Xiang Kun, these two “blood-eating creatures” underwent fewer phase transformations than John did. However, Mr. Liang had already made detailed targeted adaptations of the “biological components” in advance.

This time, he not only carried several “biological components” on his body, but also had a few medium-sized drones carrying some other functional “biological components” on standby in the distance, fully prepared.

Because he knew almost certainly that Xiang Kun was the creator of the Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Wood Carving and the source of various Eight-armed, Eight-eyed illusions, with strong hallucination ability and emotional influence ability. So he wore this helmet-like “biological component” to block all visual, auditory, and olfactory information, perceiving these information after secondary processing through the functional modules on the “biological components”.

Based on his understanding of the various evolutionary abilities of “blood-eating creatures”, except for influencing by injecting toxins, most other hallucination-related or hypnosis-related abilities are influenced by sensory contact.

Although he didn’t know how Xiang Kun used the woodcarving for remote hallucination and dreamland interference, he knew it couldn’t escape these methods. As long as he prepared these defenses, he could basically immune to hallucinations and hypnosis.

Though using these senses would slightly diminish and delay, with the aid of the minute drones scattered around him, he believed that his senses were still advantageous compared to Xiang Kun’s.

After blocking Xiang Kun’s illusion abilities, Mr. Liang believed that Xiang Kun’s biggest threat to him no longer exists.

His original plan was to observe Xiang Kun at close range and determine what he was doing in Chongyun Mountain, then decide whether to reveal his identity directly. However, he was also prepared to be discovered and fight with Xiang Kun. In a way, he was showing Xiang Kun his path of evolutionary mutation, the expression and power of some of his “biological components”, laying the groundwork for a possible future interaction.

Soon, Xiang Kun, rushing like a wild bull, accurately collided with Mr. Liang, who was in an invisible state, carrying him six or seven meters away and crashing into a tree before spiralling out.

Xiang Kun immediately sprung up from the ground, again accurately locating Mr. Liang’s position and pounced over.

After this collision, Mr. Liang quickly assessed Xiang Kun’s physical strength and countered by engaging him in close-quarter combat, no longer dodging.

Both of their attacks were purely instinctive strikes and hammer blows, extremely fast and powerful.

Although he had seen Xiang Kun’s mutation data record files before, and therefore expected a certain level of physical strength and movement capability from him, Mr. Liang was still surprised when he actually came to blows. Xiang Kun’s body was stronger in terms of strength, speed, and reaction than he had anticipated.

Moreover, his fighting style was ferocious, with a reckless disregard for his own safety, which completely contradicted the “gentlemanly, rational, and composed” personality Mr. Liang had previously assessed.

However, considering that Xiang Kun had defeated the “Giant Owl” not long after turning into a “blood-eating creature”, he should have some combat experience, so Mr. Liang quickly made sense of this.

Of course, while Xiang Kun’s strength, speed, and reaction exceeded his expectations, he was still no match for Mr. Liang, even before he employed power-enhancing “biological components”.

Although Xiang Kun was the aggressor, he was the one left battered and bruised, his hands, arms, joints, and ribs all wounded, in a pathetic state, mainly because his physical durability was much weaker than Mr. Liang’s.

After momentarily forcing Xiang Kun to retreat, Mr. Liang revealed his identity and spoke in his signature voice, as rough and low as metal grinding against metal: “Xiang Kun, stop it, you are not my…”

But before he could finish his sentence, Xiang Kun had already rushed over again, this time with a short knife in hand, lunging to stab him.

What kind of suicidal move was this?

Without much thought, Mr. Liang prepared to raise his leg and give a direct kick, intending to kick Xiang Kun away.

Unexpectedly, after jumping, Xiang Kun threw the small knife in his hand at him. The wrist and arm movement was small and hidden, but the knife shot out like a bullet with an unnatural speed, reaching in front of him in a blink of an eye.

He could only dodge instinctively, but his shoulder was grazed by the small knife, tearing open a cut.

Before he could even regain balance, Xiang Kun pounced on him again, engaging in close combat, this time targeting his injured shoulder.

Even though Mr. Liang still felt that he had full control of the situation and held an absolute power advantage over Xiang Kun, he was annoyed by Xiang Kun’s persistent struggle. He also noticed that although Xiang Kun’s body strength was no match for his, and was weaker in terms of strength and speed, his recovery speed was surprisingly fast. Broken fingers he was sure were broken, had completely healed in six or seven seconds, this recovery speed was abnormal even among “blood-eating creatures”, exceeding his understanding, especially since this was recovery during combat.

So Mr. Liang no longer held back his punches, intending to temporarily disable Xiang Kun’s ability to move. After all, judging from his current ability to recover, it wouldn’t be easy for him to die.

When Xiang Kun moved in again for the close combat, Mr. Liang’s right fist suddenly turned into a sharp blade, piercing through his palm and continuing into his shoulder. Then, using his superior strength, he pushed him back, lengthened the “hand blade”, and “pinned” him to a tree.

But what he didn’t expect was that Xiang Kun would push forward with the palm that was pierced and stacked on his own shoulder, disregarding the expanded wounds and his palm being torn apart, his shoulder also took advantage of the enlarged wound to pull forward, narrowing the distance between them.

Mr. Liang immediately turned his other hand into a plier, accurately clamping Xiang Kun’s punching left hand.

But in the next instant, Xiang Kun’s bald head was abruptly thrust at his own, giving him a vicious headbutt.

With a thud, blood splattered from Xiang Kun’s bald head, looking extremely miserable.

While Mr. Liang’s helmet was not broken, his head was dazed by this heavy blow.

Although Xiang Kun’s head seemed to be in a worse state, it seemed to be completely unaffected, as he followed up with a headbutt right after, lifting his legs with no delay, and kicking Mr. Liang away.

Mr. Liang quickly steadied his feet without losing balance, and as he looked up, he saw Xiang Kun wiping his shiny pate, with the blood already gone, leaving a shiny forehead again.

So his recovery speed was his trump card?

With a dry laugh, Mr. Liang ran towards Xiang Kun. The sun was about to set, so he planned to end the fight sooner.

But just as he moved, he saw Xiang Kun flicking a coin from his hand.

The coin quickly flipped in the air, but his heart instinctively skipped a beat.