What It’s Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 64: Chapter 64: Illusion

Translator: 549690339

Chapter Sixty-Four: Hallucination

Xiang Kun shook his head, tossing the tissue paper into the trash bin, then began the statistics work he usually did after waking up.

A slight increase in weight, a slight decrease in body temperature, not much change in the muscle dimensions of the upper body, a tiny increase in the thigh circumference.

Because he was not currently doing much pure strength training, but rather composite exercises such as climbing and sprinting which focus on speed, agility, reaction time and explosive power, the growth in strength, size and weight would be coordinated.

The recovery speed of injuries had increased by eight seconds, still steadily improving, and abilities of the senses such as vision, smell, hearing, could also subjectively be perceived to be improved.

He checked the time, 9:17 in the evening, not that late yet, so he changed clothes and went out.

As Xiang Kun walked down the street, he continuously made rapid judgments about passing pedestrians to verify the mutation results from this blood-drinking period.

The main focus of his training during this blood -drinking period was rapid processing and judgments related to sensory information, aimed at targeted brain training.

From his rapid assessments of several pedestrians on the street, there was indeed a noticeable improvement.

Xiang Kun stopped in his tracks, called a car on his phone, headed for a popular chain coffee shop.

At this hour, there should still be many people in this coffee shop.

After a little over twenty minutes, Xiang Kun stood in front of the coffee shop, pulling out his phone to start the timer.

Pushing open the door, he deliberately slowed his walk towards the ordering counter, taking 11 seconds before he finally stood at the back of the order line.

In the process, he had already assessed the preliminary situation in the coffee shop at that time.

The shop was almost rectangular in shape, and the ordering counter was in the middle where one could have an excellent view of the whole shop area.

The coffee shop had two small entrances on either side, apart from the main door; the restroom was located on the left side of the counter; 36 tables of varying sizes were spread out in the area, three waiters were bustling inside the counter, one outside was serving orders; there were 43 customers excluding him, 16 males and 27 females, including two boys who looked around 5 or 6 years old, and a younger girl among them; including him, five people were queuing at the counter.

Besides, within these 11 seconds, he quickly guessed the likely professions of five individuals:

The young male seated at the third table on his right, tapping away on his laptop, might be an IT professional. He was simultaneously browsing a technical website and writing code.

The tall, professionally dressed, beautiful woman standing in front of him in the queue was definitely an administrative staff from an office in this building, as he saw the access ID card still in her hand.

The three women seated on the couch on his left were housewives gossiping about some female celebrity while looking after their children.

Xiang Kun didn’t stay in the queue for long; before the only two people ahead of him had finished ordering and paying, he already turned around to walk towards the exit.

To an observer, he seemed impatient waiting in line.

Actually, Xiang Kun had already completed a quick “observation” of everyone inside the coffee shop and saw no further reason to stay.

The whole process since he entered the coffee shop had only taken him 1 minute and 52 seconds.

Of course, he hadn’t been able to guess the professions of all 43 customers, he could only determine 29, and he couldn’t assure absolute accuracy.

But for Xiang Kun at this moment, the important thing was not the judgment result — that was only a preset direction for the sake of training.

The important thing was the speed of judgment, or more specifically, the pattern and efficiency of how the brain processes sensory information.

Without a doubt, after this mutation, Xiang Kun’s brain had become a lot faster at processing and judging sensory information, especially the “multi-threading” ability of processing multiple sensory information or observing multiple targets simultaneously.

Before the mutation, Xiang Kun could also peel an apple while memorizing words, listen to Guo Degang’s comic dialogue while writing his graduation thesis and chewing gum, or even draw a circle with his left hand and a square with the right.

These things seemed like multitasking, but in reality, only very simple tasks could be accomplished, and more often a command was sent out, and then the body would automatically complete it based on instinct, for example: the brain would concentrate on one thing, while the body “automatically” made dinner, drew bathwater, took a shower, ate and so on.

Because these things didn’t require much attention to be done.

More complex tasks that needed focused calculation and thought by the brain couldn’t be executed simultaneously, even if they were forced, the efficiency was quite low. More tasks supposedly executed simultaneously actually consisted of the brain quickly switching between tasks in short intervals.

For a normal person wanting to simultaneously think about and process some information, it is possible only through a lot of practice to turn it into an instinctive reaction.

Judging from Xiang Kun’s training volume over the past few days, it was certainly far from enough.

But Xiang Kun possessed vampire-like mutations that allowed his body and brain to directly make adaptive changes.

It’s just like when some people have a low-configuration computer and struggle to play games. They scramble to upgrade drivers, optimize system environment, reset graphics card settings, drastically decrease the game quality, or even hope for the game developer to improve the program’s performance.

Xiang Kun’s mutation, on the other hand, directly upgrades the hardware based on the game’s requirements; if the CPU is subpar, upgrade the CPU, if the graphics card can’t meet the demands, upgrade the graphics card…

Presently, Xiang Kun can simultaneously observe the appearance, smell, and sound of two to three targets for analysis and judgement.

Undoubtedly, this resulted from targeted training followed by his brain’s subsequent evolution and mutation.

To be honest, the speed of this evolution has far exceeded Xiang Kun’s expectation. He initially thought he would need at least three to four

Blood-drinking Periods of targeted training to reach his current level.

Next, for Xiang Kun to continue his training on the brain’s handling of sensory information, a semi-enclosed public location is no longer suitable. He needs to increase the difficulty.

Rather than starting training immediately, Xiang Kun decided to return home to plan out this Blood-drinking Period in detail.

Upon returning home, as he was about to unlock the door, Xiang Kun involuntarily frowned, his gaze turning toward the staircase. There were four garbage cans placed there for residents on this floor to dispose of their daily waste.

Just before he left in the evening, he had thrown away the trash.

The trash contained the rabbit innards disposed of after his blood-drinking the night before, along with some other odds and ends.

However, Xiang Kun was very aware of the fact that the tissue he had been intently staring at for the past sixteen hours, attempting to move using telekinesis, was also lying in one of the bins.

Truthfully, even without discerning it from his senses, he knew that the tissue was there, since he had tossed it in himself. It would undoubtedly still be there before the property management cleaned it away the following morning.

But the unusual thing is, he could sense it.

Xiang Kun furrowed his brows, meticulously pondering this sensation. It seemed he could smell the tissue?

But that wasn’t right. The tissue shouldn’t possess any scent. If it did, it would be his scent, not the scent of merely the tissue itself.

The tissue’s scent was nothing special, nearly identical to other tissues. If he were to place a fresh tissue in front of Xiang Kun for him to compare, perhaps he could discern a minor difference.

But the truth was that the tissue had been discarded into a garbage bag- a tied-up garbage bag!

Moreover, the garbage bag was thrown into the garbage can, mingling with a pile of other intense-smelling waste!

By all accounts, he shouldn’t be able to smell it.

Even if he did smell it, he shouldn’t have taken notice of it.

Xiang Kun found this very bizarre. Could this be some psychological illusion, because he had stared at that damn tissue for sixteen hours, now harboring a certain “attachment” to it?

Thinking for a moment, Xiang Kun approached the bin again and found the garbage bag he had discarded before leaving.

Carefully opening the garbage bag, Xiang Kun easily located the tissue balled up, given that there wasn’t much in the bag anyway. The rabbit-related garbage had been properly sealed in many separate bags by him and had not contaminated the tissue at all.

He picked up the tissue, placed it by his nose, and took a deep breath. The smell was mainly that of various other waste materials; the tissue’s own smell was very faint. This was unlike what he had smelled while standing at the door.

What he smelled at the doorway was likely the scent of the tissue from his memory of staring at it the day before.

“It seems to be an illusion.”

Xiang Kun shook his head and tossed the tissue back into the garbage bag, packed it up neatly, and threw it back into the garbage can.

He felt that this was probably some sort of illusion brought on by his “overexertion” with that tissue. It should fade over time.

With this in mind, he could later expand on this issue, consult Xia Libing on WeChat, and see what she thinks.

After arriving home, Xiang Kun sat in front of his computer to tally and summarize the improvement of his sensory information processing ability following this Blood-drinking Period; this helped in refining his “Vampire Mutation Model” and planning out the training for the next few days.

When he felt his bodily functions beginning to be suppressed and realized that dawn was breaking, Xiang Kun suddenly thought of that tissue. And then, he somehow “sensed” again the tissue’s location — it was no longer in their residential area, but to the west of it.

Xiang Kun was stunned. He suddenly realized that this “illusion” might not be a simple “illusion” at all..

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