What It's Like Being a Vampire

Xiang Kun checked the time. It was almost one o’clock, and Zi Cheng was still gaming cross-legged, but he’d put on his headphones, clearly thinking that Xiang Kun was asleep and didn’t want to disturb him with the game sounds.

At a glance, he saw that Zi Cheng had switched from playing as a jungle character to a support role, following a jungling Arthur around the map.

Basing on what he was saying and the voices coming from his headphones, it was clear that the one playing as Arthur was Yang Jie.

They didn’t need to look at their game screen, simply by listening to their conversation, Xiang Kun could tell that their game wasn’t going smoothly.

After resting for a while, Xiang Kun closed his eyes again. This time, instead of entering the “Super Sensory State”, he sensed the “Black Circle Graffiti” torn from a notebook in QiCheng city, at Mi’s place.

This “graffiti” was a “marker” that Xiang Kun made after observing the environmental information around a certain pencil drawing that he had established an “Emotional Infusion” connection with while in the “Super Sensory State”.

This “marker” didn’t directly transform all the observed information from the “Super Sensory State”, but only a very very small part that he could “understand”, combined with the normal state and information observed in “Super Sensory State”.

For example, the feedback information from different people under different emotions, like the status of some electronic devices under different working conditions, or feedback information on different architectural space structures, and so on.

These “markers”, in a sense, were more like assembly languages that Xiang Kun summed up based on the sensory feedback he could “understand” only during “Super Sensory State”.

However, he currently could not use this language for “programming” but only for decoding and summarizing.

To others, those circles and curved lines on the paper would merely look like aimless “graffiti” or an incomprehensible “artistic creation”.

While in QiCheng city, after Xiang Kun found Mi’s whereabouts and confirmed her residence, he folded one of the “graffiti” into a uniquely shaped paper airplane and left it on the balcony of her master bedroom, making it look like someone accidentally threw it there.

According to his cognitive model, which was established through the memory fragments of Guo Tianxiang and the analysis of Mi’s various items, she had an instinctive interest in novel things with “technical content”.

So, if she discovered the paper airplane Xiang Kun folded on the balcony, there was a 90% chance she would keep it for further investigation.

Because the unique folding method of this paper airplane was “invented” by Xiang Kun. Specific weights placed at different places allowed it to fly more steadily, farther and longer, which seemed very unique at first glance.

Of course, if Mi disassembled the airplane, she would undoubtedly notice the “graffiti” on the paper.

Normal people might just think it was random doodles, but given Mi’s personality, she would likely notice the consistency within the doodled patterns and lines, prompting her to keep and perhaps even ponder upon the drawing.

At that time, the objects that had established an “Emotional Infusion” connection with Xiang Kun were only the papers filled with black circles. Single sheets of this paper were somewhat large and couldn’t be torn into smaller pieces or damaged in any other way. So, it was challenging to place them into hidden spots inside objects like the positioning paper strips. Therefore, Xiang Kun attempted this method, trying to get her to voluntarily keep the paper close to her.

Of course, this was also an experiment that Xiang Kun deliberately wanted to carry out.

He wanted to see if the cognitive model he’d established through limited information could effectively predict someone’s behavior pattern without direct contact.

Looking at it now, Mi did indeed keep the black circle graffiti close to her, even bringing it to work and the secret Research Base of Divine Technology.

This shows his deduction and prediction of Mi’s behavior was accurate.

Although Xiang Kun knew that after he completed the black circle graffiti, those papers had the same effect as “Emotion Infused” items, they truly became “Emotion Infused” items, creating a direct sensory connection with him, only after the blood-drinking mutation on the day before yesterday.

Last night, he had sensed the black circle graffiti once and indeed successfully triggered Mi’s dreamland, seeing her dream.

However, in that dreamland, Xiang Kun felt something was odd.

The dream itself was fine. It was about Mi sitting in front of a computer, cracking a system. There were four screens hanging on the wall in front of her, and power cables were scattered all over the floor, along with snack wrappers. Nearby, there were several 2-liter bottles of soda.

Her emotions were focused, devoted, yet exhausted, with a touch of doubt and confusion. It was very similar to Xiang Kun’s feelings when he was in the “Super Sensory State” paying close attention to the feedback from his surroundings.

But what Xiang Kun found strange was that throughout the entire dream, he didn’t find any emotional projection from the “Emotion Infused” items.

In the past, whenever he triggered someone’s dreamland by sensing an “Emotion Infused” item, he would always see corresponding emotional projections in the dreamland.

Emotional projections are not directly related to what his “Emotion Infused” items look like, instead they are directly related to his thoughts, feelings, and experiences while performing the “Emotion Infusion”.

No matter if it was the minions, Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Wood Carving, Rabbit Meat, Saitama Sensei, the old man teaching calligraphy, or even his own image, emotional projections were varied, but they always appeared. As soon as they appeared, Xiang Kun, who was sensing the dreamland, would definitely know about it.

However, in Mi’s dream, from start to finish, he couldn’t sense the presence of any emotional projection.

Plus, he had this feeling that he didn’t see the full picture of the dreamland.

Could it be that to see the emotional projections in the dreamland, he also needed to enter the “Super Sensory State”?

But how could he enter the “Super Sensory State” in someone else’s dream when all his knowledge and feelings are from others?

The previous sensing of Mi’s dreamland left him with many questions, that’s why after estimating that Mi had fallen asleep today, he proceeded to sense her dreams again.

Last time he was more interested in Mi’s dream itself, although the rabbit wood carving and the bone did not end up in QiCheng City, but somewhere else. But after listening to Mi’s conversation with “Mr Liang”, he knew that this female hacker, who had previously helped Guo Tianxiang “fish”, was in the secret division of “Divine Technology” and had also dealt with many confidential matters.

But now, during his second attempt to trigger Mi’s dream via sensing and entering it, Xiang Kun was more interested in exploring his own “Emotion Infusing” object.

This time, as soon as he began sensing, he triggered the dreamland again and entered Mi’s dream.

In the dream, she was sitting in a corner of a restaurant, focusing on a bunch of surveillance screens on her notebook computer.

With just one glance, Xiang Kun immediately recognized that he was witnessing the situation when she was tracking him with Guo Tianxiang.

However, since all her attention was focused on tracking Xiang Kun, Guo Tianxiang, who should have been at her side, was not manifested in the dream.

Xiang Kun did not pay much attention to the process of this dream, but instead started trying to enter the “Super Sensory State” within the dream.

But the prerequisite for the “Super Sensory State” is that his perceptual abilities are much stronger than ordinary people, even having a “Sixth Sense” that ordinary people do not have at all. He can clearly perceive changes in the atmospheric electric field, perceive some environmental information that ordinary people cannot perceive, and integrate these perceptions to enter the “Super Sensory State” by temporarily abandoning the normal five senses.

In other people’s dreams, Xiang Kun’s perceptions are based on the perceptual information of others.

It’s like you are remotely watching a movie on someone else’s screen, the movie is a 500mb high-compression format, it is the image decoded from the other person’s integrated graphics card, no matter how high your configuration is, it’s useless.

So after thinking for a while, Xiang Kun gave up the idea of directly entering the “Super Sensory State” in Mi Qiao’s dream, and instead focused all his attention on her various perceptual details, approaching from aspects such as images, sounds, touch, smell, etc.

Xiang Kun began trying to “transform” these perceptions into various information under the “Super Sensory State” in a reverse manner, of course, only part of it he could “transform” and “compile.”

But when he began to think like this, Mi Qiao’s dreamland suddenly underwent a huge change. All the surroundings disappeared instantly and turned into a space composed of various lines and circles, which kept changing and moving constantly.

Xiang Kun immediately realized that this is the manifestation of the perception part of the dream that he could transform and compile under the “Super Sensory State”.

No, this description is not accurate, it’s different from the perception under the “Super Sensory State”.

Under the “Super Sensory State”, those pieces of information cannot be described by traditional senses such as vision and hearing. But now these pieces of information are directly “visible”.

They are not translated into corresponding information under the “Super Sensory State”, but are that kind of special signs that Xiang Kun himself summarized.

In this state, Xiang Kun found that his perception angle is no longer fixed with the dream owner Mi Qiao but can move freely.

Xiang Kun understood, this is the emotional projection form of that “Black Circle Graffiti”, it cannot be perceived with traditional senses, and is hidden in another layer of the dream. Only those who know how to “decode” can enter.

This discovery made Xiang Kun very excited because it can further help him perfect the compiling of Mi Qiao’s perceptual information.

As long as the sample is enough, he believes that soon, he can summarize a set of cognitive models that can translate Mi Qiao’s perceptual information under the “Super Sensory State”.

By then, he can appear around Mi Qiao through the “Black Circle Graffiti” after entering the “Super Sensory State”, then observe her perceptual changes, thereby knowing her seeing, hearing, and feeling, it is as if Mi Qiao has become his remote “camera”, and it’s a “camera” that can collect various sensory information.

If this collection method is further expanded and the sample range is expanded to the entire human group, then Xiang Kun may be able to obtain a more comprehensive environmental information in the future by interpreting other people’s sensory feedback under the “Super Sensory State”.

This is much easier than directly “decoding” the surrounding environmental information. The amount of data and difficulty are not in the same order of magnitude, and it’s more conducive to understanding, equivalent to a shortcut!

Just as he was thinking, Xiang Kun suddenly found that he seemed to be able to control the circles and lines under the “pseudo-Super Sensory State” in the dream, affecting their shapes and movement states.

Xiang Kun immediately understood that this “pseudo-Super Sensory State” in this dream was built on the basis of various perceptions and emotions in Mi Qiao’s dream.

And he can turn it around, by influencing the information under the “pseudo-Super Sensory State”, to affect Mi Qiao’s dream perception and emotions.

Because this dream was originally established by the “Emotional Infusion” item, the Black circle graffiti, it can be said that it is a part of this dream platform and system, so it’s not difficult for Xiang Kun to affect Mi Qiao’s perception through the “pseudo-Super Sensory State”. It’s not as difficult as in reality, where he must establish a “Super Sensory State” of some items, before he can make some targeted, tiny influences.

After a while, Xiang Kun, who had left the “pseudo-Super Sensory State” in the dream, once again examined the dream from Mi Qiao’s perspective, and found that the laptop screen in front of him had turned into a two-meter-long strip, and Mi Qiao’s typing fingers had also become two or three ten centimeters long, which was very bizarre.

But Mi Qiao under the subjective perspective did not feel any strangeness, she still used her stilt-like fingers to type on the keyboard and click the mouse.

Xiang Kun knew that this was the result of his influence under the “pseudo-Super Sensory State”.

But now he is not familiar and comprehensive enough with the coding of those information, and is not capable of making too detailed modifications. He believes that after several experiences, he should be able to use Mi Qiao’s existing dream scenes to perform more complex edits, perhaps making her see specific images and hear specific sounds.

After exiting Mi Qiao’s dream, Xiang Kun stretched contentedly.

He had realized before that those “signs” drawn from sorting out the feedback information under the “Super Sensory State” would have a special effect, but he didn’t expect it to be such a special effect.

Now those papers with “Black Circle Graffiti” are like hacker software that can invade other people’s dreams.

And no one is aware of the existence of this “hacker behavior” now.

He glanced at Zi Cheng who was still playing games on the other bed. Judging from his serious and bitter expression, their battle situation didn’t seem to have changed much.

In the early morning at over three o’clock, in a high-end residential area in QiCheng City.

Mi Qiao sat up from the bed, rubbed her eyes, and went to the bathroom.

Sitting on the toilet, she looked at her own hands, turned them over and over, thinking about the dream she had before, and felt a bit inexplicable.

In that dream, her laptop screen was stretched into a long strip and looked like a floor mirror, and her fingers grow much longer, like two giant crabs.

Thinking about that picture now, it is a bit funny and a bit scary.

Why would she have such a dream? What does it predict?

Mi Qiao shook her head, wondering if she had been thinking about vampire-related things all day, causing her to dream of herself mutating like that?