茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

Chapter 98: Shocked to Retrograde

Before this blood-drinking session, Xiang Kun, as planned, had spent several hours establishing connections with a few items.

The first was two cobblestones the size of quail eggs. Apart from wanting to see if he could enhance his ability to control vomiting after swallowing them other than looking at the connection, he was also planning on using it as a standby “remote weapon”.

Initially, Xiang Kun had wanted to associate a blade, believing that it wouldn’t be hard to establish a connection with a straightforward metallic blade. Given his experiences with “Coin 1”, if he manages to establish a link, there wouldn’t be much difficulty in becoming a “Modern Xiao Li Feidao” considering his current arm strength.

However, if he were to use something like a blade and ended up hurting someone, he’d find himself in plenty of trouble even if he were in the right.

Comparatively, it would be easier to explain a stone. Although its lethality was significantly reduced, he also didn’t believe that he currently needed a flying knife. If there were chances in the future to encounter mutant creatures like the “Giant Owl”, he’d be better off getting a high draw weight hunting Compound Bow.

The other item he had associated was a plastic corner block taken from a level-three Rubik’s Cube.

He wanted to see whether or not establishing a connection with a part of a whole would have any or much effect on his control over the entirety of it.

However, this plastic corner took him a good hour and a half to observe before the bright light flashed in his eyes, indicating he had established a connection successfully.

At 6:30 in the evening, the expected hunger arrived, and Xiang Kun went to the kitchen to bleed a rabbit.

The rabbit this time was bigger than the previous ones. He had withdrawn more than 200ml from just one rabbit.

This amount of blood naturally wasn’t sufficient for Xiang Kun. He still felt hungry after drinking it. However, he wanted to “change his taste” this time, so he didn’t continue taking rabbit blood. Instead, he processed chicken and duck blood – he was also preparing ingredients for the new recipes he planned to try.

What puzzled him after drinking rabbit blood and then chicken and duck’s blood was that it tasted somewhat off. This wasn’t just a gustatory perception, but also a physical reaction. During the time he was consuming chicken and duck blood, he clearly noticed his body’s “exhilaration” and “satisfaction” weren’t as high as they were after drinking rabbit blood.

What was going on?

Xiang Kun vividly remembered that there wasn’t much difference between the chicken blood he had initially drank and the rabbit blood he consumed later. Or it could be said that there didn’t seem to be any substantial, noticeable difference between all the blood. Previously, when he was exploring the deep mountains following the memory of the “Giant Owl”, he hunted some beasts and birds of prey and tasted their blood. However, it didn’t taste much different from the livestock and poultry he had bought from the city.

The only substantial difference was the blood of the mutant creature “Giant Owl”.

Yet, looking at his current situation, could it be that because he had been drinking the blood of a certain animal for a long time, his digestive system was more attuned to that animal’s blood?

Furthermore, he was sure that it wasn’t because the blood of the recently bought Belgian Rabbits was more exceptional than the previous rabbits. The sensation brought about by the last batch of common rabbit’s blood wasn’t any different from this time.

The difference was only with the chicken and duck blood.

While pondering over the distinctive taste of rabbit blood, Xiang Kun tidied up the rabbit, chicken and duck meat and put them in the refrigerator. After a quick clean-up, he lay in bed.

He didn’t dwell more on the issue, deciding instead to consider it after he woke up.

At 8:13 the next evening, Xiang Kun woke up within his predicted timeframe.

After taking a bath and drying his body, Xiang Kun glanced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Following over a month of mutation and targeted training guidance, his physique was significantly different from a month ago.

When Zi Cheng said he looked like Dwayne Johnson, he barely resembled Dwayne Johnson in terms of external muscular dimensions and size, even if the height difference was disregarded.

If seen in long clothes, his looks could even seem slightly slim to others.

However, he was certain that if one were to cut off a piece of muscle of the same volume from him, Dwayne Johnson or anyone else for that matter, wouldn’t weigh more than him.

He even suspected that his muscle fibers might be radically different from normal people.

Xiang Kun touched his head and couldn’t help murmuring to himself, “Why don’t I have any hair?”

When the mutation started, he didn’t care about having hair as he was dealing with matters of life and death. Compared to that, having hair was insignificant.

But now, after over a month and having gone through numerous mutations, he couldn’t help but start wondering, why exactly did it have to be hair?

It’s not because he cared about his appearance, but he vaguely felt that from this point, he might be able to link to the cause of his mutation? Or some characteristics of this source of mutation?

After all, after his mutation, he got new teeth, new nails, new skin, everything had grown anew – except for his hair.

Strangely, the rest of his hair, such as eyebrows, nose hair, and leg hair, remained.

Oh, his beard is now growing very slowly. In the past month, he’s shaved only thrice, whereas he used to shave every morning before.

After thinking for a while to no avail, Xiang Kun stepped out of the bathroom, onto the weighing scale, and as expected, broke the 100KG mark, now reaching 100.3KG.

But judging by his appearance, he believed no one would think that he weighed more than 170 pounds.

After routinely testing and recording various changes, Xiang Kun fed the rabbit, changed the food and water for the canary, and then picked up his phone to check unread WeChat messages.

There were messages in the group chat with Tang Baona and the others. Old Xia was going to Haixi Province in a few days, and they were planning a gathering at Old Xia’s house this Friday. They asked Xiang Kun to play “chef” and cook for them.

Xiang Kun thought about it, replied with an OK emoji, and immediately stirred up the three women.

Tang Baona: “I knew it, Xiang Kun’s WeChat must have delays!”

Yang Zhen Er: “And here I thought when you saw we wanted you to cook, you would play dead and not respond!”

Xia Libing: “Let me know what ingredients you need in advance.”

After chatting a bit more in the group, Xiang noticed a few unread messages from Officer Chen. Upon checking, they read:

“What happened when you got cornered at the entrance of your district?”

“One of the young participants was apparently quite frightened, to the point of going to the police himself.”

Xiang Kun was puzzled. What’s going on? He thought the “young man” Officer Chen was referring to was the earring-wearing teen who he had “intimidated” before, but that happened on the 7th, and it’s the 11th today.

And why would they report to the police? It was clearly him who brought a knife to corner him, and he didn’t even fight back.

But since Officer Chen was only texting and not calling, it seemed that the matter was not urgent.

Looking at the timestamps, the messages were sent this afternoon around 5. He responded with a confused emoji, then asked: “What happened? I didn’t do anything. I was the victim.”

After a while, Officer Chen replied with a big laugh emoji:

“I only heard about it today. A few days ago, a policeman from ** District Police Station received a report from a young man who was panicking and claiming that someone was stalking him, trying to kill him. But when asked for specific information, he spoke incoherently, sometimes saying that he was the one that held a knife to someone, and other times saying that he met the same person when he went to buy cigarettes.”

“The cops initially thought he was high on drugs and took him in for a urine test. After he was a bit more calm, they interrogated him again. But according to him, he was the one who joined in to corner someone. But when they met the person again, he thought that the person was going to kill him, but couldn’t explain why.”

“Eventually, the cops found his parents and handed him over. Turned out this kid hadn’t stepped out of the house since then, and even asked his parents to help him sign up for a repeat class to prepare for college entrance exams next year, thinking that he would avoid meeting that person at school.

“I heard about this incident today when I was at that police station for official matters. From the description, I knew that the person he was talking about was you.”

“Tell me, what did you do to scare a street punk like him, to the point that he dared not go out and instead chose to repeat and go back to school?”

Xiang Kun could not help but smile wryly, replying, “I didn’t do anything. That day they cornered me at the entrance, and I just used Brother Chen’s name to scare them off. Later, I happened to meet one of the boys at a convenience store, but I didn’t even talk to him, let alone have any physical contact. How could he be so frightened?”

He, of course, knew why the teenage boy with the earring was so scared, but he was also a little surprised that the effect of his “intimidation” could be so strong.

He originally thought that after he left, the boy wouldn’t see him and would return to normal. In fact, he made sure the boy’s heartbeat, breathing, and other data returned to normal before he left, but he didn’t expect the kid to run to the police afterward.

Xiang Kun guessed that this might not all be the result of his “intimidation”.

The earring boy might have been frightened by his own imagination, leading to this outcome.

Fortunately, it seems that this matter didn’t cause him any trouble..