茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

These details allowed Xiang Kun to refine his conjectures about the previous “mutated parasite’s” trail of movement and complete his cognitive model of it.

It could be basically concluded that the male victim in Zi Huan Mountain was one of the past hosts of the “mutated parasite”.

His plot of luring two girls into the depth of Zi Huan Mountain to murder them was also influenced and led by the “mutated parasite”.

Normally, either one of the two female victims would become the next host, allowing the “mutated parasite” to leave Zi Huan Mountain; or the male host would leave Zi Huan Mountain after “drinking blood” from the two girls.

Considering the parasite’s later parasitism pattern on the “vampire patient”, it tends to continually transform its hosts, so the latter possibility is greater.

But in the end, both the host and the two girls died in the cave, while the “mutated parasite” left Zi Huan Mountain a bit later by residing in the “vampire patient” who came mountain-climbing.

Most likely, something went awry during the “blood-drinking” process that made it change its plan.

As for what kind of problem it was, Xiang Kun conjectured based on the “mutated big bird” he had found in Zi Huan Mountain a few days ago laying in wait and standing guard, that it was probably because the host of the “mutated parasite” was targeted by the big bird — it just didn’t understand the survival pattern of the “parasite” and took the host as a “mutant”. The bird only realized after the “parasite” abandoned the host to escape and the host committed suicide, but still thought that the “mutated parasite” would come back, so it came to stand guard even after so long. It didn’t expect to encounter Xiang Kun and almost got captured.

Xiang Kun originally wanted to trace the point at which the host was parasitized by the “mutated parasite” according to the host’s identity information, and then deduce the mutation’s start point and process step by step.

However, when he wanted to search the internet for how much information the police had released about the Zi Huan Mountain case, he accidentally found a crucial piece of information that made him change his direction of investigation.

The night he just came back to Citong City, he and Old Xia took a stroll around the place where the “vampire patient” was arrested, and accidentally found a video shot by a nearby florist’s clerk of the “vampire patient” and his accomplice’s failed kidnapping and arrest process.

Through that video, combined with the information Old Xia helped him get in the “vampire patient’s” Dream-in-a-Dream, Xiang Kun had several guesses about the destination of the “mutated parasite”.

One of them was the passerby who, when the “vampire patient” was taken off the car, leaned on the window of the van to peer inside for a while — There was a chance the “mutated parasite” attached itself to him and left, and then parasitized when it reached a “safe” place.

To confirm whether the passerby had been parasitized by the “mutated parasite” or had become a “stepping stone”, first it is necessary to determine his identity and find his whereabouts.

The information revealed in that video was very limited, but Xiang Kun could still deduce some judgment conditions:

For example, the passerby was wearing slippers, casually dressed, holding a convenient store bag, and given the time, it could be inferred that he should be a nearby resident on his way home. From some other details, his possible occupation, age, character tendency, etc., could be inferred. He planned to use these premises and let Alice help with the search.

However, in Xiang Kun’s original judgment, the likelihood that the “parasite” attached itself to the passerby and left was relatively low, since the passerby only stayed near the car for a very short time, so this line of investigation was also a low priority.

But unexpectedly, he found the identity information of the passerby on the internet even before he had Alice conduct any search.

Moreover, this information was a wanted notice issued by the police.

At a glance, Xiang Kun recognized that the man in his forties on the police warrant was the passerby who poked his head into the van window in the video shot by the florist’s clerk.

According to the warrant, this man committed murder in Citong City in May last year and fled. Since the body was well hidden, it was only discovered more than half a month later, so the police could not control him in time.

However, Xiang Kun searched for further information and found that this man accidentally fell from a building and died in June during the joint arrest by police from two places in Yangcheng.

Xiang Kun looked up some media reports. According to the suspect’s family, he became somewhat delirious in March of last year. Even when the family tried to take him to the hospital for a check-up, he refused. In the end, he ended up divorcing his wife, quarreling with other family members, severing ties and losing contact. He also borrowed a lot of online loans and usurious loans. Everyone suspected that he had gotten into gambling or other bad habits.

Based on the timing, Xiang Kun deduced that the suspect was likely a victim of the “mutated parasite,” acting as its host, their behavior guided and influenced by it.

If that was the case, following the pattern of the “Vampire Patient”, the parasite must have left the host before they were arrested or died.

Thus, Xiang Kun set off for Yangcheng City to investigate the next day.

Normally, if the suspect who fell off the building was indeed the host of the “mutated parasite,” Xiang Kun and that parasite’s location nodes would be eight months apart, and the parasite may have long since left Yangcheng City.

Therefore, he didn’t originally hold high hopes for this trip to directly pinpoint the location of the “mutated parasite,” and was fully prepared for a fruitless blood-drinking period.

But often-times things don’t go as planned – flowers don’t bloom when cared for, but thrive when neglected.

The day after he finished investigating the location where the suspect fell off the building, he went to a cha chaan teng near a certain University in Yangcheng to try their signature stir-fried beef ho fun.

Because he had heard from Yang Zhen’er that she and Tang Baona would always go to this restaurant for the beef ho fun whenever they were in Yangcheng; the taste was incomparable to any other restaurant to this day.

Therefore, even though Xiang Kun didn’t need to eat, he went out of his way to taste it, curious to see what was so special about this particular dish.

With his current taste-buds and understanding of seasoning, he could easily infer from the flavor its basic seasonings and cooking method.

Of course, he might not be able to accurately recreate the cooking process, but Xiang Kun was confident that the flavor he would create would certainly suit Tang Baona and Yang Zhen’er’s tastes better — after all, he fine-tuned it based on their tastes, and surely no one in the world would understand their tastes better than he did.

As he was leaving the restaurant after trying the beef ho fun, Xiang Kun, out of habit, switched his vision mode to observe his surroundings, and unexpectedly detected a faint blue speckle on a passerby on the street.

Ever since he began purposely and specifically training to guide the evolution of various sensory perceptions, Xiang Kun developed the habit of keeping an ‘eye on six roads and an ear to eight directions’. Every time he arrived in a new environment, he would first gather sufficient sensory information, which had become his instinct.

Honestly speaking, when he first noticed the blue speckle, Xiang Kun’s initial reaction was — did ‘he’ make a mistake?

But he quickly confirmed that it was indeed a “mutant” embedded in a person’s body.

And there was a high probability that it was the “mutated parasite” he had been tracking all the way to Yangcheng — unless there was another “mutated parasite” in Yangcheng.

Xiang Kun did not dare to follow too closely, as the “mutated parasite” always managed to flee from its host before their predicament worsened, according to the experiences of the “Vampire Patient,” the deceased male inside Zi Huan Mountain, and the male stranger. The parasite was extremely sensitive to changes in the host’s circumstances.

It was very likely that it employed some special method to acquire sensory information that was beyond the original sensory capabilities of its host.

This was actually Xiang Kun’s greatest curiosity about this “mutated parasite.”

From a normal perspective, after this “mutated parasite” enters its host’s body, its sensory range would be confined to the host’s particular organs.

One possibility is that the “mutated parasite,” through its mutations, can share and access the host’s sensory information and has evolved the ability to process this information to judge the host’s environment. Xiang Kun, however, thought this probability was minimal, because the required information processing capacity would be too vast. For an organism that originally lacked sensory organs, evolving these abilities from scratch, even with blood drinking-induced mutations, would take a long time;

Another possibility is that it doesn’t directly acquire sensory information, but uses the emotional feedback from the host’s processed sensory information, such as “fear,” “panic,” “tension,” etc., to judge the situation. This would involve determining based on subtle changes in the host’s physical condition when these emotions arise.

But these cannot explain how it escaped from the gaze of the “mutated big-bird” on Zi Huan Mountain. Therefore, Xiang Kun speculated that the “mutated parasite” might have another unique special sensory perception, capable of surpassing the host’s sensory abilities.

If such a sensory ability truly exists, Xiang Kun wanted to understand what it was, which would presumably help augment his already superb sensory system.

Although Xiang Kun kept his distance, he knew very clearly that this “mutated parasite’s” current host was also tracking someone else.

Reflecting on the experiences of the known past hosts, Xiang Kun naturally guessed that this guy must be selecting a blood source under the compulsion of the parasite.

Observing the behavior pattern of another “mutant organism” aside from himself aroused Xiang Kun’s excitement. This opportunity was rare.

However, no matter what, if the controlled host were to attack other humans, he would never turn a blind eye and not help.

Fortunately, the host did not immediately plan to attack the target he was following. After tracking him to his residence, he turned and left.

Xiang Kun followed him from a distance to a small building in a city village and determined through sound that he lived in the room on the south side of the third floor.

Xiang Kun used his mobile phone to ask Alice to help him search for information related to the host – on the way back, the host had taken a call, the brief two-minute conversation included a lot of identities which could aid the investigation.

At around 6 o’clock, Xiang Kun identified from a dozen search results provided by Alice that the current host of the “mutated parasite” is a junior student named Fan Jiading.

Judging from the content he posted on social media, he did live streaming and made videos on various themes, ranging from games to spoofing life, and food.

But these posts stopped abruptly at the beginning of last month, no updated videos, no live broadcasts, even no new content posted on social media.

Alice even found a post by Fan Jiading selling cameras and other equipment on Xianyu.

Obviously, by that time he had been influenced and guided by the “mutated parasite,” his behavior severely affected.

Xiang Kun observed the surrounding environment, waited until the night passed at 9 o’clock, when there were no pedestrians around, before he quickly climbed up the exterior wall of the small building to the third floor outside Fan Jiading’s room and looked in through the window.

Xiang Kun found Fan Jiading was arranging items in his backpack, he saw a folding knife, rope, and tape, clearly preparing for the subsequent actions of today’s tracking.

It was not too late now, although this place is remote, there are still residents going out, so Xiang Kun did not dare to stay too long at the window, he squeezed the black circle graffiti into a ball and shot it into a corner through the window gap, then quickly and lightly climbed back to the ground and hid in the shadows between two buildings.

If Fan Jiading was going to act tomorrow, then the only time Xiang Kun could observe him was tonight, which is why he needed to set up in advance.

Xiang Kun stood in the darkness, leaning against the wall, closing his eyes and entering a “super sensory state.” Through the black circle graffiti he had just placed, he arrived next to Fan Jiading.

Through cognitive information perception, Xiang Kun detected that in addition to the “mutated parasite” that was “embedded” in the small of Fan Jiading’s back, there were also some other physical features that he has different from ordinary humans, but where exactly he was unable to describe for the time being.

This cognitive information gave him the feeling like the first time he observed a “vampire patient” in a “super sensory state,” it was initially indistinguishable from ordinary people, but it felt off. Ultimately this was because his ability to interpret cognitive information under the “super sensory state” was not enough.

And these differences were clearly due to the changes made by the “mutated parasite” to the host.

Based on the experiences of past hosts, Xiang Kun could basically judge that this “mutated parasite” was transforming the host as if it was a vehicle, making it more “efficient,” providing it with stronger abilities to help it acquire more blood sources.

It can also be seen that it is obsessed with human blood, almost every host’s demise was due to trying to acquire human blood.

But it obviously didn’t want to drain all the blood from one host and then switch to another, it seemed to have determined that “transforming,” “cultivating” a powerful host to help it seize fresh blood was the best approach, it kept on this track.

After forcibly jotting down part of the cognitive information of the “mutated parasite,” Xiang Kun exited the “super sensory state,” then picked up his mobile phone to contact Old Xia.

In addition to observing cognitive information through the “super sensory state,” after Fan Jiading fell asleep, Xiang Kun still needed to use Old Xia’s dream within a dream mode to recreate Fan Jiading’s true memory of being parasitized.

But after sending a WeChat message and waiting for twenty minutes, there was no reply.

Xiang Kun immediately realized that Old Xia was probably asleep. Otherwise, given the content he had sent, Old Xia would have replied instantly.

If it were a usual occasion, Xiang Kun would certainly not disturb Old Xia, allowing her to rest properly. However, if they were to prevent Fan Jiading from committing a crime tomorrow, tonight would be the only opportunity to deeply observe the host parasitized by the “mutated parasite”. If he wanted to capture the “mutated parasite”, he would need to remove it from its host.

If Old Xia was asleep now and she was awaken in the middle of the night, she might not be able to sleep later… Without her as a guide in the “dream in a dream”, Xiang Kun, if he induced the dream directly, could only carry out some dream editing, but couldn’t guide her subconsciousness psychologically, let alone carrying out deep dream hypnosis.

So after some consideration, he could only “cruelly” make a phone call.

Citong City, inside Xia Libing’s rented room.

Just as Xiang Kun had guessed, a certain ponytailed girl was sound asleep with her head resting on her laptop’s keyboard. The open Word document on the screen was continuously outputting a single letter.

The sharp ringtone of her cell phone woke Xia Libing. She picked her head up abruptly and reached out for her phone instinctively.

Her eyes were still blurred, and squares had been imprinted onto her smooth forehead from the keyboard.

After she answered the phone and listened to Xiang Kun for a bit, Xia Libing’s eyes quickly regained clarity.

Before she fell asleep, she had been looking at documents sent from suppliers of large laboratory equipment that she planned to order. If it was studying “mutant creatures”—particularly the “mutated parasite” she and Xiang Kun had previously tracked, there was no way she could fall asleep! After all, she could stay awake throughout Xiang Kun’s 25-hour blood-drinking sleep.

Xia Libing was somewhat surprised that Xiang Kun could locate the “mutated parasite” in such a short time.

After listening to Xiang Kun’s introduction of the host, Fan Jiading, and his thoughts, Xia Libing also proposed some of her own opinions, and they quickly devised an observation plan for the night.

Around two in the morning.

After Fan Jiading fell asleep, Xiang Kun and Old Xia entered his dream through the “Black Circle Graffiti” slipped into his room, which was connected to Xia Libing, via “Dream in a Dream”.

Honestly speaking, even the experienced Xiang Kun was a bit taken aback when he saw Fan Jiading’s dream for the first time.

The dream was set in a technological edifice, everywhere was filled with sophisticated electronic equipment and holographic projections, looking like a high-end sci-fi movie scene, quite a visual spectacle.

However, in the fog above the great hall were eight very rustic big yellow characters that did not fit with the environment at all:

“Chosen System Redemption Hall”

Looking at the holographic projections and introductions, for example, the one in front of Fan Jiading in the dream. Underneath the hologram of a muscular “Fan Jiading”, an introduction read, “Hercules-lv.3 (Cost: 2500 Chosen Points) (Effect: Elevating the Hercules skill to lv.3, significantly increasing the power of the Chosen Ones).” Xiang Kun instantly realized that under the guidance of the “mutated parasite”, Fan Jiading’s brain had conjured up the experience of being “parasitized” and his compelled behaviors to be similar to stumbling into a “system” in novels.

From previous hosts’ experiences, Xiang Kun knew that like the “Vampire Patient” who imagined being parasitized to be embraced by a high-born and handsome blood clan, and the deceased male of Zi Huan Mountain who imagined being parasitized as cultivation towards immortality, the “mutated parasite” only guides and compels the host to achieve its purpose. The specifics of how this is realised and how to convince the host solely depend on the host’s imagination.

Just like Guo Tian’s “Direct Eye Projection of Self-Fear” ability where one only needed to project the emotion of fear, and those affected would imagine and establish a comprehensive fearful hallucination.

The hosts affected by the parasite would, according to their different experiences, characters, knowledge, emotions, desires, create justifications for their own actions and establish a series of illusory systems for themselves, covering any holes.

As for allowing others to see particular contents and scenes, whether in reality or in dreams, Xiang Kun understands how difficult it is. Even he only managed to grasp some understanding after exerting great effort, being able to achieve it to a certain extent.