What It's Like Being a Vampire

All afternoon, right up until dinner, Xia Libing sat in front of her laptop, watching the comedy videos in the folder Xiang Kun had previously bookmarked, almost re-watching all the videos.

She even asked Xiang Kun to find some more similar comedy videos, to exclude the effect of having seen the previous videos before.

After hearing Xiang Kun’s “analysis” and “advice”, Xia Libing did not imitate her previous laughter, she simply tried to provoke that emotional experience again.

However, for the whole afternoon, Xia Libing couldn’t laugh again.

Without the guidance of Xiang Kun’s “Emotional Assimilation”, she was indeed unable to generate any “funny” or “happy” emotions from these comedy videos, which were short as dozens of seconds or as long as tens of minutes.

Even those few videos that had made her laugh so heartily when she had watched them with Xiang Kun, now made her feel nothing when she watched alone.

She constantly recalled the feelings she had when watching these videos with Xiang Kun.

But even though she could recall those feelings and emotions, she could not reconnect those with the videos in order to generate those emotions when she watched the scenes again.

This feeling was very disjointed, like seeing a baked chicken wing in front of you, but you just can’t seem to reach it, every time you reach out, the position seems off, as if it’s not even in the same spatial dimension.

Sometimes she tried to correlate the previous emotions with the current video, sometimes she tried to find the funny points in new videos, sometimes she compared the time points when Xiang Kun was laughing in the recorded video, finding the corresponding clips and analyzing why those scenes and sounds would make Xiang Kun laugh, even asking him very seriously why he was laughing.

Knowing that the perception of emotion was very important to Old Xia, just as important as exploring the cause of mutation for him, Xiang Kun fully cooperated to answer all her questions when Old Xia tried various methods to regain that joyful emotion.

Other than that, he was also considering whether there were any other ways he could assist Old Xia.

Especially since he had just ingested that mutated parasite, he could perhaps develop or derive some abilities to assist or guide in the formation of emotions.

But that would be something to consider in the long run.

In the short term, there were other ways he could “support” Old Xia, such as… cooking dinner.

Xiang Kun made Old Xia’s favorite “Crispy Pig’s Elbow” for dinner. After completing the second “Emotional Assimilation” in the afternoon, he ordered the pig’s elbow and other ingredients through the local supermarket’s fresh food ordering app.

He didn’t buy much, but everything he bought was what Old Xia loved.

Adding the rabbit meat that was processed after the last blood drinking episode in the fridge, the dinner was certainly sumptuous.

At seven in the evening, Xiang Kun set the dishes on the table one by one and called Old Xia to the dining table. Before she started to feast, he advised:

“When you’re eating, try to experience the difference in perception between this delicious, satisfying hunger emotion and the funny, particularly joyful emotion you feel when I’m ’emotional assimilating’ you. When you’re eating, I’ll also go into a ‘Super Sensory State’ to sense any changes in your cognitive information.”

Xia Libing nodded seriously, then went and washed her hands, resettled at the table and started on the feast.

When being affected by Xiang Kun’s “Emotional Assimilation”, Xia Libing couldn’t compare how she felt when she was eating, and similarly Xiang Kun couldn’t enter “Super Sensory State” to sense cognitive information when he was immersed in emotions.

Only when Old Xia’s emotions are “spontaneously” happening can they both conduct “checks” via the two states separately.

So, from noon straight through to late at night, from lunch to dinner then to supper, Xiang Kun and Old Xia were both digging into the “subject” of “Emotional Perception”.

Although they didn’t make any substantial progress, Old Xia still hadn’t found a way to perceive those emotions without relying on Xiang Kun’s “Emotional Assimilation”, but her cognition of emotions like “joy”, “funny”, “hilarious” had formed a relatively clear concept, which could be seen as progress.

After one in the morning, Xia Libing went to bed after washing up.

But this doesn’t mean that their day is over, it’s just the beginning of another “topic”, but this “research location” is in the dreamland.

They were going to try to invoke a dream into Officer Xiao Zhao, to see why Mijoe was arrested and what happened afterwards.

Xiang Kun didn’t immediately trigger the dreamland with the “Emotion Infused Objects”. Firstly, he wanted to let Old Xia get some decent sleep; secondly, he was uncertain if their “Dream Invocation target”, Officer Xiao Zhao, was asleep at that time since they caught Mijoe that day. It was possible Officer Xiao Zhao was working late into the night on the interrogation. It was uncertain.

It was not until three o’clock in the morning that Xiang Kun entered Old Xia’s dreamland. After Old Xia “awoke” in the dream, he invoked a “Dream in A Dream” through the black circle graffiti left on Officer Xiao Zhao’s dormitory window sill.

Truth be told, Xiang Kun was somewhat worried that Officer Xiao Zhao might not have returned to his dormitory or if someone else was in his dormitory, thus not being able to invoke the dream in the target.

However, the outcome proved his luck… or Old Xia’s luck was quite good. The “Dream in A Dream” that was invoked was indeed from Officer Xiao Zhao.

What was even luckier was that the “Original Dreamland” invoked in Officer Xiao Zhao was his scene of interrogating Mijoe with his companion—evidently, before going to bed, what he was most concerned and focused on was Mijoe’s case.

Of course, Xiang Kun was also very clear that the scenes and dialogues displayed in the dreamland were just Officer Xiao Zhao’s subconscious understanding, filled with subjective judgments, not necessarily the reality he actually saw and heard.

But, with Old Xia as the “psychological ‘engineer’” and “dreamland ‘editor’”, these were naturally not a problem.

With Old Xia’s guidance in the dream and Xiang Kun’s full “technical support”, the “lengthy” dreamland finally ended.

Xiang Kun opened his eyes and breathed a long sigh of relief after exiting from the dreamland perception.

Under Old Xia’s guidance in the “Dream in A Dream”, Xiang Kun obtained a lot of vital information about Mijoe, thus establishing many assumptions and speculations.

These assumptions and speculations could help him further discern the secrets of “Divine Technology” and the mysterious “Mr. Liang”, including their behaviour patterns.

However, at that moment, Xiang Kun, who had just finished perceiving the dreamland, was most impressed by the final scenario where Old Xia getting Officer Xiao Zhao to remember and re-experience the “funniest thing he had ever experienced” in order to make him forget the the memory lead by dream.

Xiang Kun guessed that the main reason Old Xia made this dreamland guidance was because they had watched many funny videos in the afternoon and evening which had no effect, they wanted to see others’ experiences and feelings.

To Xiang Kun’s surprise, Officer Xiao Zhao’s “funniest experience” was his confession to a girl he liked when he was in high school.

Officer Xiao Zhao and a tall girl in a school uniform with a blurred face in the dreamland stood alone on the edge of the green area of the school playground.

Officer Xiao Zhao was nervously reciting his confession.

The confession was simple, nothing fancy, even a little old-fashioned; it involved liking her since when, why and whether she would be with him, etc.

When he finished, the noise from the people on the distant playground suddenly seemed very distant in the dreamland; the whole environment fell silent.

Xiang Kun, though lacking experience and theoretical knowledge about love, could tell through his understanding of human nature and the psychology of ordinary people that as the high school Xiao Zhao recited his minute-long, old-fashioned confession, the fact that the girl had stood still without leaving meant she was at least not repulsed by Xiao Zhao.

Was this not a vague atmosphere, indicative of puppy love? Did it not reek nauseatingly of romance and acts like a constant reminder of sweet memories?

Could it be that Old Xia’s “Dream in A Dream” hypnosis and memory recall had made an upset?

However, at the next moment, a long and melodious fart sound suddenly sounded in the dreamland.

It seemed that due to holding it in for too long and tensing to not relax, the fart sound was surprisingly long, lasting and even melodic.

Turned out, the long fart at the end of the declaration was the core of this dream memory.

Even after Xiang Kun exited the dream perception, recalling the scenario inside the dream he still couldn’t help but laugh uncontrollably.

He didn’t know how Officer Xiao Zhao’s unique confession ended, it wasn’t revealed in the dreamland.

But from the vividly recollected fart noise in the dreamland, it was clear what Officer Xiao Zhao’s main memory in this confession was.

As for Xiang Kun, who experienced all this through dreamland perception, he was laughing uncontrollably after the dreamland ended. Officer Xiao Zhao’s “miserable confession” was the funniest thing amongst all the funny videos he had seen that day.

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