What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 629: Chapter 629: When the Bell Rings

As time entered November 2020, it had just become winter according to the lunar calendar, but bizarre weather was frequently appearing around the world.

In many places, there was an unusually high temperature that was several degrees higher than the average for the same period in past years, making people unsure whether it was summer or winter.

In some places, even tornadoes, super thunderstorms, hail and other abnormal weather occurred, numerous unseasonal, irregular destructive weather events were frequently appearing. Thankfully, the areas affected were mostly sparsely populated places.

But even in densely populated areas of the continents, there were all sorts of anomalies, such as persistent high temperatures and dry weather that resulted in frequent fires.

Originally, because of the warm winter caused by El Niño last year, many people were guessing that there might be a La Niña this year, resulting in a rare cold winter in recent years.

But nobody expected that this year would be hotter than the last.

Of course, there were all kinds of theories on the Internet, stating that it’s not yet the time for true cold weather, so the occasional high temperature is normal.

However, as time went on into late November, more and more strange weather began to appear all over the world, and densely populated cities began to be “attacked”, some cities even directly suffered large-scale thunderstorm attacks, damaging many electronic devices. Moreover, these extreme convective weather phenomena had not been predicted by the meteorological department, it was as if the well-established weather prediction technology that humans had developed over so many years had all of a sudden malfunctioned.

However, in reality, several major countries had obtained special information through satellite remote sensing technology, knowing the abnormal global climate change’s source came from Antarctica.

From mid-October onwards, the temperature in some parts of Antarctica began to rise sharply, glaciers began to melt faster, and the various countries’ Antarctic expedition teams and other related personnel, who were just about to investigate the situation to find out what was causing these phenomena, received orders from their respective institutions to evacuate immediately.

Of course, initially not everyone was willing to leave, many people wanted first to investigate the situation, at least to understand what’s causing the massive temperature increase in Antarctica, but the following series of anomalies and dangers, made everyone realize that if they didn’t leave, they wouldn’t be able to survive, let alone investigate the cause of the temperature rise.

What was happening in Antarctica was not just a peculiar rise in temperature, but a variety of other phenomena. After the Antarctic researchers were evacuated from the research stations, a large number of black objects appeared that seemed to be a mixture of mineral and plant elements that could engage in material and energy exchanges with their surroundings and grow like vegetation, constantly spreading over the Antarctic continent.

However, what was strange was that once they appeared, the temperature in Antarctica no longer rose but instead fell sharply at an equally unusual pace, even lower than before the temperature increased.

As those black objects’ occupied area got larger and larger, related images and photos quickly circulated on the internet, and some strange thermal imaging photos taken by satellites were used for explanation by TV programs and internet media influencers.

So gradually, more and more “end of the world” discussions appeared on the internet, all kinds of gods, legends, reasons for the end of the world, and even theories about alien attacks and the awakening of ancient creatures were endlessly brought up, it was a dizzying array.

In fact, since early October, when abnormal temperature drops occurred simultaneously across the eastern hemisphere, similar discussions had appeared on the internet.

However, as the impact of the abnormal weather at that time was relatively minor and lasted only a short while, the similar “end of the world”, “doomsday” discussions didn’t cause much of a stir and quickly disappeared from the internet without attracting much attention.

However, in reality, Alice had been pulling some strings behind the scenes to intentionally reduce the chances of these discussions being searched and appearing on various social media platforms and interfered with the devices and operating systems of some people with ulterior motives, preventing them from releasing related information for a short period of time, and thus quickly stopping the spread and impact of these messages.

But now, because the weather changes were just too strange and severe, and there were inexplicable phenomena in Antarctica, all kinds of information was pouring out, various media platforms followed up on reporting, various experts came out to refute rumors and explain, it was too overwhelming.

Seeing this information, everyone had more or less similar thoughts, after all, there were too many movies like “2012”, “The Day After Tomorrow” etc. from the past, regardless of the level of education or belief system, there was at least some speculation, fear, and worry about the end of the world.

If Xiang Kun had let Alice interfere and mislead from a data point of view before someone broadcasted the strange phenomena in Antarctica, or images or videos of the spreading and expanding black substance, and prevented these “bombshell news” from spreading at the source, it would have been a lot easier.

But Xiang Kun didn’t do that.

At this point, unless Alice directly cut off the global network and all kinds of media, forbid any information from being transmitted, or carry out large-scale, severe falsification, using fabricated information to guide public opinion and public attention, was there a chance to suppress this wave of global panic.

Naturally, Xiang Kun didn’t do that either.

Because his original plan was to tackle the issue from the real root – from the abnormality itself.

Although, looking at the current frequent abnormal weather and drastic changes in temperature, it may seem like the end of the world is coming.

In fact, these changes had been intensifying since mid-October, but at that time, Xiang Kun and Alice were constantly using the “super-connected object matrix” they had deployed and connected in human-inhabited areas worldwide to exert reverse influence and limit the abnormal climate change, minimizing its impact.

If they could directly reduce the influence and duration of abnormal weather changes like they did in early October, naturally, they could mitigate people’s panic, decrease the attention it drew, and then confine the solution to Antarctica, making it much easier to keep the situation under wraps.

But Xiang Kun’s attempt to limit this ultimately failed. The climate anomaly was destined to intensify, and the ensuing panic from this globally impacting, severe weather change was virtually unavoidable. It was not something that could be kept secret by merely restricting the anomalies in Antarctica.

Therefore, Xiang Kun changed his strategy, from containment to diversion.

…

Xiang Kun was clear about why the global weather was undergoing such a drastic and abnormal change.

The root of it all lay in Antarctica, or to be precise, in the “Ultimate Predator” soon to reconstitute its physical form in Antarctica.

Xiang Kun’s previous plan was a success. He lured out the “Ultimate Predator” by fulfilling its blood requirements through Mr. Liang in a short amount of time. During its consumption and transformative period, they used “Dreamland” to format its primary consciousness, analyze and build its mental model, allowing Alice to reverse influence and damage its function of controlling other organisms’ specific factors, effectively paralyzing it.

Based on projections by Xiang Kun and Alice, the most likely scenario would be:

The “Ultimate Predator” getting outmaneuvered by them, losing control over the specific factors within other organisms, but clinging to life. Judging by the “Ultimate Predator’s” past behavior, it would struggle fearlessly but have limited impact, just buying time until Xiang Kun’s “super-connected object matrix” completely covers every corner of the globe, encasing it thoroughly and eliminating the threat entirely.

However, after the plan was successfully executed, a low probability situation occurred:

During the “paralysis” process, the stability of the “Ultimate Predator’s” high-dimensional factors was severely impacted. Already at the peak of its transformative phase, it was forced to the brink of collapse, unable to avert the imminent meltdown by feigning death. Consequently, it attempted a desperate final strike.

It might be that this impeding collapse state led the conscious of the “Ultimate Predator” into a frenzied and bloodthirsty mode. It rejected the lifeline Xiang Kun left through Xiao Luobo, not choosing to connect to Xiao Luobo’s “super-connected object platform” to dilute its transformation limit. Instead, it chose to gather its own form through the “high-dimensional factors” distributed within a large number of organisms worldwide.

After being outmaneuvered by Xiang Kun and Alice, the “Ultimate Predator” could not activate the specific factors within other organisms to control or influence them, but the characteristic of these specific factors was materializing through the “Ultimate Predator’s” “high-dimensional factors,” which connect consciousness despite space distance. This is why the connection between the “Ultimate Predator” and the specific factors within other organisms still exists.

When facing the threat of a transformative collapse, the “Ultimate Predator” chose Antarctica—the “vacuum” of Xiang Kun’s “super-connected object matrix”—as the site to establish its physical existence.

Indeed, having been “paralyzed” by Xiang Kun, the “Ultimate Predator” decided to take a high-risk move, using a more comprehensive form to battle for physical existence, or rather, attempt to take everything down with it.

While not able to actively control the specific factors within other organisms, it could, however, drive all “high-dimensional factors” to return through “mutant’ instinct” due to connection with the “high-dimensional factors.” It forced a transformation that did not involve blood consumption or transforming stages to establish a larger, stronger, and more tangible entity.

If we were to draw an analogy, Xiang Kun had taken from it the power to “control the body,” leaving it only with the ability to perceive the body whilst maintaining the capability to think and remain conscious. Now, it stimulated its”passive capabilities,” discarded its original body, and created a new physical form directly from the “brain” re-growing limbs or other body parts.

In fact, if Xiang Kun did nothing, the “Ultimate Predator” would self-destruct not long after attaining its physical form. The reason it could stimulate the instinct of the high-dimensional factors to help it re-condense into a physical entity was because it had chosen destruction.

It’s like a construction company deciding to go bankrupt and close up shop. As soon as the news breaks, all the external construction crews would naturally rush back to settle their wages before disbanding.

The purpose of gathering would be for a complete dispersion.

But the issue lies in the process of “condensation” itself – it’s already a disaster for the entire world.

Not only would it create a massive amount of energy exchange, but the influence of the high-dimensional factors would also reach across the world, affecting countless ecological communities.

Consider a colossal mountain of books, stacked layer upon layer, neatly and perfectly arranged to ensure stability.

If each book had a bookmark, removing one, several or even hundreds of them individually wouldn’t impact much. But if all bookmarks in every book were to be simultaneously pulled out through connecting thin lines, even if the whole mountain didn’t collapse, it would inevitably be severely affected, being distorted, skewed or even causing a local displacement and dispersion of books.

The “Ultimate Predator” is like someone pulling out all the bookmarks from all the books at the same time.

Xiang Kun’s “Super-connected object matrix” and “Super sensory Item System” are analogous to some of the individual books or layers in a stack of books. They can be moved to mitigate the effect of the book tags being drawn, allowing the book stack to remain as it was originally arranged as much as possible, even when all the tags have been drawn.

This is why it’s not that the “Ultimate Predator” or Xiang Kun can immediately manipulate global climate change through high-dimensional factors or control the weather everywhere, the vast natural system is too complex for either Xiang Kun or the “Ultimate Predator” to precisely control and influence. All of this is merely the “side effect” of the “Ultimate Predator” consolidating its own entity, while Xiang Kun simply nudges things along.

The chain reaction caused by the bookmark was too big and, unfortunately, the book shields and layers that Xiang Kun had set up were not enough. Their error-correction capability was insufficient, so he had to give up when the impact grew too great.

After Xiang Kun abandoned the idea of counteracting the influences or correcting the weather, as the “Ultimate Predator” continued its consolidation process in Antarctica, apocalyptic weather phenomena would frequently occur around the world, and even more bizarre situations could ensue.

This would be a terrifying process, but according to Xiang Kun and Alice’s deductions based on the changes in super sensory information, the impact could still be recovered from. Besides, through previous counter-pressures, he had already let citizens worldwide experience “mild” anomalous weather. There was a warning, a preparation, and the loss would be lesser.

The key issue is what to do after the “Ultimate Predator”‘s main body is fully formed.

Even though this is a situation with a low probability of occurring, in devising a plan to combat the “Ultimate Predator”, both Xiang Kun and Alice have contingency plans.

For Xiang Kun personally, the most conservative and secure way to handle the situation is to wait for the “Ultimate Predator” to disintegrate and perish on its own- after it presents its entity this way, it will disintegrate in a very short time, and the high-dimensional factors will dissipate. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

The problem is, once the “Ultimate Predator” fully forms, it certainly won’t be content to just dissipate. It will inevitably do something before it dissipates, be it further intruding into the ocean, attempting to reach other continents, causing massive destruction before it perishes, or directly stirring up the global climate through its influence at the South Pole, melting glaciers, raising sea levels, all leading to catastrophic disasters.

In these circumstances, Xiang Kun wouldn’t be able to protect himself by merely passively waiting for the “Ultimate Predator” to collapse. He must take action, obliterate it thoroughly before it can cause massive destructiveness and catastrophic disasters, soon after it takes shape.

In the middle of October, when the “Ultimate Predator” first began to take shape, Xiang Kun had a premonition of this situation. That’s why, when he saw Old He in Tongshi Town, he told him that there would be a “global spectacle”.

With the current level of human technology, humans were still incapable of dealing with the “Ultimate Predator”. Even if several powers jointly took action and dropped nuclear bombs on Antarctica without considering the consequences, they would only be able to blow up the large entity that the “Ultimate Predator” formed into dust, they wouldn’t be able to truly annihilate it. It would regroup quickly and it might even develop new material characteristics due to the attack by the nuclear bombs or other thermal weapons, becoming even more dangerous.

The problem isn’t about the insufficient might or power of human weapons but that we are in the wrong direction.

Like relentlessly punching water, slashing water with a knife, smashing water with a hammer, how violent the force used doesn’t matter. The water would be splashed around, but fundamentally, it wouldn’t get hurt.

In the end, human society knows too little about the existence form of the “Ultimate Predator” and the characteristics of high-dimensional factors. Even Mr. Liang, at his current state, doesn’t have the means to effectively combat the “Ultimate Predator”.

In this world, the only one capable of stopping the “Ultimate Predator” was still Xiang Kun.

For Xiang Kun, the real difficulty isn’t wiping out the “Ultimate Predator” or winning the battle of Antarctica, but how to control and take over its massive stash of high-dimensional factors after completely eliminating the “Ultimate Predator” and causing its consciousness to entirely dissipate.

If we were to compare their stages of transformation, the “Ultimate Predator” was a colossal glacier in the ocean, whereas Xiang Kun was merely a boat. The volume of the glacier above the water alone was countless times bigger than the small boat, let alone what was underwater. So, while the tiny boat could easily shatter the iceberg, their sizes were still vastly different.

Not even Mr. Liang, whose transformation has made a great leap in recent months, fulfilling the blood source requirement of the “Ultimate Predator”, has yet to reach the stage where he can swallow the “Ultimate Predator”, the gap was just too vast.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

If we consider high-dimensional factors as construction workers, Xiang Kun’s construction team has only twenty workers. They have various high-tech equipment, automated management, and operation with AI assistance. They can do the work of several traditional large construction teams and are continuously developing and applying new technology and equipment.

But now, he suddenly has to reorganize a construction team of tens of thousands. His original workers have to train and take over, twenty people against tens of thousands. The difficulty is obvious. If it’s a team vs team scenario, his team of twenty or so, with sufficient equipment, could win by numerous methods, whether it’s a battle of wits or a physical fight. But to integrate the opponent’s skilled workers into the team is way more challenging.

That’s why, for Xiang Kun, the best way to handle the “Ultimate Predator” is to let it disintegrate on its own.

The ultra-massive high-dimensional factors which have accumulated would dissipate if need be, and concerning Xiang Kun, there is no problem of whether it should be considered a waste or not.

His “construction crew” is not like those of other “mutants”. They no longer increase productivity by adding more people. The dimension of their development is already different.

Yet if Xiang Kun proceeds to deal with the “Ultimate Predator” and personally destroy it, then, according to the nature of high-dimensional factors, they will certainly belong to him, merge with his consciousness, and connect with his original high-dimensional factors. This is inevitable.

Although Xiang Kun has made up his mind to deal with the “Ultimate Predator”, right now he can only wait.

Wait until it’s fully formed, wait until the properties of the High-Dimensional Factors have been fully expressed.

It’s not that Xiang Kun is overly concerned with “martial ethics” and unwilling to interrupt the formation process of the “Ultimate Predator,” rather it’s impossible to interrupt. This is the inherent characteristic of high-dimensional factors.

No matter what he does at this moment, or how he manipulates the parts of the “Ultimate predator” that have already formed in the Antarctica, it would not affect its ultimate formation. It would only expose himself for no reason, attracting unnecessary attention.

…

In mid-December, various weather abnormalities occurred more intensely and frequently. The giant black monster in the Antarctic had also slowly formed. It was unclear what it was, but judging from its movements, it seemed to be a sentient life form, causing even greater panic.

All continents, countries, and regions worldwide were affected by abnormal weather. Whether it was remote wilderness or densely populated cities, whether it was land or ocean, mountains or plains, there were no exceptions.

Superstorms, hail, heavy rain had all become commonplace, people slowly accustomed to the fear.

In Twist City.

Ye Zijun and her shooting assistant, Xiao Ding, were walking on the streets, filming materials for their video program.

After their unique experiences in Australia, they had been quite frightened, and due to cooperating with the Australian police investigation, they had stayed for a considerable time. Luckily, with the help of some friends, they proved that the death of the young man had nothing to do with them, and they were the victims, which enabled them to return to their country smoothly.

Actually, they had noticed that the Australian authorities seemed not to want to delve into the matters within the abandoned underground passage. They were reticent about the young man’s real cause of death.

Originally, after this incident, they had planned to rest for a while in China, edit the filmed materials, and complete the post-production of the first half.

However, in early October, the entire Eastern Hemisphere’s temperature simultaneously showed a brief abnormal decrease. In mid-October, various abnormal weather phenomena appeared globally, and Western media began to publish various accusations against China.

They blamed China for having too many cars and too much exhaust emissions, too many factories and too much pollution. They claimed that China should be responsible for the global abnormal weather, completely disregarding evidence and facts. They directly applied double standards, making wild accusations without any hesitation. Even wild statements like “To protect the Earth, Chinese people should eat less meat” emerged.

Ye Zijun and Xiao Ding were angered. They thought of a topic, prepared to film some materials on the scene, make a video program, and slap them in their face using their own logic.

Once this topic was reported to the media platform that Zhao Feng had introduced them to, it was immediately approved. The interview funds were allocated and they embarked on their journey across the Pacific Ocean.

However, what they didn’t expect was that shortly after their arrival in a foreign country, the monster in the Antarctica was discovered, and all the media and the public’s attention were focused on it.

And due to various unpredictable severe weather conditions, especially the rampant superstorms and lightning storms at sea, most trans-ocean flights were suspended, and they were temporarily stranded in Twist City.

However, this allowed them to record various video materials during this special period, almost becoming the Twist City foreign correspondents for that media platform.

Today, they were, as usual, filming on the streets. They contacted a few international student friends in Twist City, preparing to make a program talking about everyone’s different psychological and living conditions under the current situation.

Normally, with Christmas approaching, the streets should be bustling and crowded. But the unexpected and fierce abnormal weather made everyone stay outdoors as little as possible, even cars were few and far between.

Just when they had finished filming a street scene, and Ye Zijun and Xiao Ding were packing up their equipment getting ready to move to a prearranged coffee shop, a clear bell rang suddenly from the sky.

Then another one.

And another one.

Everyone was stunned, looking up to the sky. The sky that they could see the sun just now was now covered with dark clouds. This kind of strange weather change had become something people had gotten used to during this period, but the bell sound made people feel uneasy.

The bell kept sounding at a steady rhythm, as if it was coming directly from the sky, from within the dark clouds. It was broadcasted indiscriminately to everyone’s location; grand, magnificent, inexplicably inducing a sense of urgency, and a fear of impending judgement rose in their hearts.

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