What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 59: Recognizing a Woman by Her Scent

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Chapter 59 – Recognizing woman DY Her Fragrance

Xiang Kun returned to the kitchen and picked up the camera that had been recording non-stop for twenty-four hours, which he had placed there before.

He had initially bought this camera to film the four rabbits that he had injected with his blood and saliva. But it seemed like there wouldn’t be any changes occurring. The two cages housing the four rabbits had originally been placed on the kitchen countertop. When Xiang Kun was cooking, he moved the cages aside, but he didn’t turn off the camera.

Checking the camera angle, he noticed that it had captured majorly the area where he was cooking.

So, he returned to his bedroom, grabbed his laptop, opened the surveillance images and saved his recorded footage of the past several hours. He played back the video footage.

Despite the mediocre clarity and awkward angles of the camera footage, after all, it wasn’t originally intended to shoot Xiang Kun; it still provided a basic insight into his cooking process.

According to the video, Xiang Kun began by turning on the music and started cutting the rabbit meat. Initially, he just bobbed rhythmically to the music, shrugging his shoulders and tapping his feet.

However, with the progression of time and the start of the second song, he was becoming overly self-engrossed, kind of like as if he were in a dance hall. With a pot in his left hand, a spatula in his right, he even incorporated them into his rhythm. He was unaware of the ingredients and rabbit meat sprinkling all over his floor, and at the pinnacle of excitement, he even attempted Michael

Jackson’s moonwalk—with a heartrendingly poor performance of course.

This sight, devoid of any recorded sound in the video, appeared even more bizarre.

It almost made Xiang Kun feel like facepalming.

If it was before the mutation, occasional states like these wouldn’t have felt strange to Xiang Kun. After all, he was conscious and aware of his actions.

Occasional immersion into certain emotions and states, intense focus, and obliviousness toward one’s surroundings and extraneous information are quite normal.

When he was engrossed in online games, comics, TV shows, or novels during his childhood, this state was possible too.

But this situation occurring after the mutation had him deeply alarmed.

He was clear of the deep interplay between the body and mind, where they are unified rather than divided. Physiological changes could affect the psychological state, and similarly, psychological changes would manifest physiologically too.

Xiang Kun’s body had undergone drastic mutations over the past month that he now doubted his own humanity.

This degree of mutation would surely affect his psychological state too.

However, compared to physical changes, psychological changes were much harder for him to be aware of.

Xiang Kun listened to the songs he’d just heard again. He was sure that it was neither the songs nor the act of cooking that had led him to such a state of heightened concentration and self-forgetfulness where he didn’t even hear the doorbell.

The reason he could attain such a state was that his body had adhered to his “desire” to enter that state.

He pondered at length about his mental changes from the discovery of his mutation up to now.

Whether it was the initial worry and fear of the disease and approaching death, the subsequent curiosity and excitement about the body’s enhancements after mutation, or the various emotional fluctuations after finding the Giant Owl, he had always repressed and controlled his emotions. He tried to consider and deal with matters reasonably and lucidly.

All this was borne by him alone, without confiding in anyone.

Even though he wasn’t fond of socializing and needed to work, which necessitated daily interactions and communications with others, he had now consciously self-isolated much more than before after mutation. He was extra vigilant against all impulses and voluntarily suppressed them.

Maybe due to the repression over this period, both his body and mental state needed release?

On reflection, the most unforgettable, satisfying, and best moments in the past month were the two encounters with the Giant Owl.

Rather than instilling fear in him, the momentary brush with life or death excited him.

This excitement had always made him worry and he had deliberately repressed it, lest he lost his mind and turned into a violent, blood-thirsty monster.

Apparently, mere repression was inadequate. He needed to find a way to vent his emotions. Otherwise, he risked an unconscious transformation…

In the next two days, Xiang Kun would spend his daytime in a café or a KFC. According to his revised plan, conducting sensory information evaluation training.

At first, he couldn’t resist his curiosity and probed his targets excessively, continuing to gain information through other senses, even after ascertaining their professions.

But after deliberately controlling himself to shift targets once a judgement was made or giving up and moving to another target if he couldn’t reach a conclusion in 10 seconds, and prioritizing speeding judgement, his condition improved significantly.

Now, after walking into a store, he could observe the store environment and promptly decipher the professions of less than 10 customers within two minutes.

Though through his attempts, the success rate of his judgements was about 50%—which meant that on average, he could only recognize the professions of 5 out of 10 people. It was still a significant improvement.

Once his judgment speed improved further and the success rate increased, he could start training to gather and judge information pertaining to multiple targets simultaneously, and hone his brain’s ability to process information on “multiple threads”.

When night fell, Xiang Kun went to the secluded hill where he had previously found the dead mouse.

He temporarily found a way to vent:

He took off his shoes, ran barefoot and shirtless, and sprinted from the foot of the mountain to the top with all his might.

The direction he was charging in had no path. To climb the mountain, he needed to scramble up using his hands and feet under night vision mode.

Although he is now powerfully built, in excellent physical condition, and has superior stamina, when he gave his all to climb to the top of the mountain, he ended up in quite a state, his body injured all over from bushes, thorns, and tree branches.

When he reached the top of the mountain, he did not make any stops or rest, instead, he took a different route and sprinted downhill at full speed.

Sprinting downhill was even more dangerous and challenging than going uphill.

Xiang Kun had to focus his attention fully, controlling his body balance attentively, relying on his night vision abilities and his own reaction speed to dodge tree trunks, branches, rocks, and all kinds of obstacles on the way.

A moment of negligence could result in rolling downhill or crashing into a tree.

The first time he sprinted downhill, he barely ran a few steps before tripping and falling, rolling on the ground. Thanks to his strong physique, he didn’t roll too far and was able to get up using a nearby tree trunk for support.

The second time was even worse. He ran to halfway down the hill, and at his fastest speed, failed to dodge in time and crashed directly into the trunk of a large tree.

He fell apart and almost passed out, lying on the mountain for more than twenty minutes until all his injuries had healed before getting up. If it had been a normal person, they probably would have been sent to the

These past two nights, he would sprint up and down like this three times before heading home.

Indeed, this nearly suicidal method did give Xiang Kun a hint of the feeling he had during his fight with the Giant Owl.

Of course, even for Xiang Kun, this method was somewhat risky. If he failed to dodge while charging downhill and happened to hit some sharp-ended branches broken off and happened to stab his head, he might even lose his life. After all, he didn’t know if his brain could heal in time after suffering a fatal injury before he died.

But precisely because of this, during the sprint downhill, his attention was highly focused, and his musculoskeletal system and visual abilities were all operating at full speed, showing his excited state.

The morning of the 22nd, Xiang Kun received a WeChat message from Tang Baona, asking if he was free to play cards at her house in the evening.

Since it was something he had agreed to long ago, Xiang Kun didn’t hesitate. They decided on a time, and he arrived at Tang Baona’s house at 7 0’clock in the evening.

Since Xiang Kun started to realize that there might be some issues with his mental state, he thought that it might be beneficial to have some social interaction.

The residential area where Tang Baona and Yang Zhen’er lived was clearly in a different league from Xiang Kun’s neighborhood.

Not only was the location much worse, but the environment and facilities in the entire community were much better.

While passing by a real estate agency on the edge of the community, he noticed the average selling price of the houses posted on the large glass windows – all around 100,000 per square meter. Moreover, they were all large luxury suites starting from 140 square meters, each costing tens of millions of dollars.

If it had been the old Xiang Kun, seeing this information would cause him to sigh and feel envy and longing, thinking about working hard, fantasizing about his company going public and making big money so that he too could live in such a house.

But now, his thought was:

“It’s too crowded around here, there are too many security cameras…”

Upon arriving at Tang Baona’s house, the door was opened by Yang Zhen’er. But when entering and changing his shoes, Xiang Kun froze.

He saw a pair of basketball shoes placed next to the shoe cabinet at the entrance. These shoes were the just-released LEBRON17, which he had just looked up a few days ago.

As these shoes were widely available, there’s not much to be surprised about if they appeared anywhere.

However, Xiang Kun recognized a familiar scent from the shoes and caught the smell coming from inside the house, which confirmed to him that it was the same as the ponytail beauty he saw at Man Coffee two days ago, whom he had designated as “Girl 5”.

“Hm? Teacher Saitama, are you interested in these shoes? You also like LBJ?” Yang Zhen’er noticed Xiang Kun’s reaction and asked with bright eyes.

“Oh, a friend of mine likes them, that is, the boyfriend of Miss Tang’s sister’s classmate,” Xiang Kun casually replied.

“I see! You really beat around the bush, I almost didn’t get it! You’re talking about Sister Han’s boyfriend!” Yang Zhen’er said while inviting him in.

“Correct.” Xiang Kun nodded, changed his shoes and walked in the door, turned around the entrance, and indeed saw sitting next to Tang Baona in the spacious living room, the pretty girl from Man Coffee two days ago, “Girl 5”..

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