What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 535: So You’re Called the Lord of the Forest? (Part 2 – Lower)

Joel stared at the astonished face on the cell phone screen for a long time, his thoughts in a whirl. He looked to his side, then back at the cell phone, then again to the side.

From the background and angle in the picture, it was clearly taken just now, in this very spot. But what’s with the face in the image?

Joel subconsciously touched his own face. For a moment, he almost forgot what he looked like. Could he have mistaken his appearance to be identical to that of John?

Or perhaps, the ‘John’ he has always thought of, has been himself all along?

But these thoughts were fleeting, and he quickly cleared his mind, looked again at the photograph, and confirmed that it was John who was captured, not himself.

What was going on?

Given his current environment, under the dim moonlight over his head, he could clearly see his surroundings and detect other organisms approaching by their sounds and smells.

He was sure there was nothing unusual around him, not even a bird, other than himself.

Another illusion?

Joel closed his eyes to think for a moment, then reopened his phone. The face in the photo was still John’s.

So he switched his phone to video mode, turned on the flash, and began recording his own face. After he finished recording, he turned it over to watch the video.

Seeing his recent actions of squinting, turning his head, nodding, all done by the ‘face of John’ on the video, Joel almost crushed his phone in disbelief.

Joel continued to experiment several times. No matter whether he used the front camera to take photos or videos, or used the front camera to shoot in the moonlight, he always saw John’s face. The facial expressions, actions, clothes, and background were all correct.

This caused Joel’s perception to become confused again. Could it be that he unknowingly reverted back to his younger looking face? And his younger self and John were actually similar?

Or perhaps he has remembered John’s face incorrectly, and it has been replaced by his own?

Joel once again saw doubt and uncertainty in his memories of himself. However, this was not entirely due to the photos or videos on the phone. For a long time, he has found his memories to be muddled. This is a consequence of living for an extended period of time and frequently entering long periods of deep sleep. Sometimes, after awakening from sleep that could span months or even years, he would forget memories from that period entirely, or confuse the order in which they occurred. It would take him some time to recover these memories.

But just as he was trying to justify things to himself and looked at his phone again, he was startled to find that his appearance in the photos and videos had changed back to that of the gentle old man.

Joel froze, feeling a chill out of nowhere.

Could the hypnotic suggestion he received have such a great influence, such a significant effect?

He suddenly thought of the white-dressed little girl he had seen on the real-time surveillance camera in the restaurant in Liucheng, and then the baffling instance where opening the phone map immediately pinpointed Wushu Mountain.

Perhaps he had witnessed many such illusions along the way, many ordinary and normal sounds and images he perceived might be his own brain’s deception, they’re all fake, all illusions.

Has he been hypnotized to such a deep level?

With this, what he saw and heard, how many of them were real?

Could the surrounding mountains and forests be illusions as well?

Normally, when one is aware that they are hypnotized, and know which are illusions, they should be able to escape from the hypnotic state to some extent. Why then was he still experiencing deep illusions which he couldn’t discern from reality?

Just as his thoughts became increasingly confused and his mood more tense, when his bloodlust and frenzy were about to become uncontrollable, Joel suddenly threw himself onto the ground, burying his face into the earth and wild weeds.

He sensed the direction he had come along, feeling the “Prosthetic Tissue Fluid” he had left behind in the mountains. Relying on the “Prosthetics” parasitic on various plants, he made a holistic judgment of the creatures in this forest, confirming once again that there were no “Blood Clan”, “Blood Beasts” or “Blood Plants” present.

The “prosthetics” produced by his “prosthetic tissue fluid” couldn’t provide him with the most intuitive sensory feedback, but it could give him a sort of “intuition”.

He believed that this “intuition” wouldn’t be wrong and wouldn’t be affected by hypnosis and suggestions.

This intuition gave him a little relief.

Then he turned his attention back to himself, he no longer delved into when and how he was hypnotized and suggested, instead he started thinking about how to respond and what the other party intended to do.

In his understanding, as soon as he arrived at Wushu Mountain, he should have encountered related “Blood Clan” or “Blood Descendants” or at the very least people who knew what was going on. Then he would anticipate if they intended to confront him or negotiate peacefully, in any case there must be a result.

However, what he did not expect was that it was so difficult to reach Wushu Mountain, and from there he was “led” to Chongyun Mountain. Despite going into mountains overnight, he was still in a fog and had found no answers to any questions.

Joel thought of the illusion he had just experienced. If the hypnotic suggestion he received led him to Wushu Mountain and Chongyun Mountain, then why did he experience an illusion of himself being portrayed as John on his cellphone after he arrived here?

He recalled the idea that had sprung in his mind before noticing the phone.

Was this illusion also reminding him that he got the wrong place and he was supposed to go to Wushu Mountain instead of coming to Chongyun Mountain?

“SHIT!”

“FUCK!”

Joel couldn’t help but curse angrily, he forcefully grabbed handfuls of his golden hair, forcibly suppressing his fury, took several deep breaths, and prepared to walk out of the mountain.

But before he had gone far, there was a sound of rustling grass behind him. He turned around abruptly and saw a flash of white darting through the trees.

Joel’s spirits surged, and he shouted on instinct: “WAIT…”

He pushed his physical functions to their limit, rushing towards the direction of the white figure.

Within only a few seconds, he had arrived where the white figure had appeared. He looked around but couldn’t find where the figure had gone.

He sniffed the air around him deeply, then faltered. He couldn’t smell anything left behind by any human or wild animal, let alone the scent of the “Blood Clan” or “Blood Beasts”.

What was going on?

Another illusion?

Joel got down on the ground and carefully examined the spot where he had seen the white figure. He found faint footprints, and from what he could tell, a pair of small, flat-soled shoes had made them, like those worn by a child?

He immediately connected the white figure with the little girl in the white dress he had seen on the surveillance video in the restaurant in Liucheng.

He rubbed his eyes vigorously, looked again at the footprints, and they were still there.

Yet, despite the absence of any scent, he began to doubt whether this was a real trace or just a hallucination of his own.

The footprints were few, suggesting that other than the fleeting glance he caught of the white figure, it seemed to have disappeared completely.

After thoroughly investigating the surrounding area for quite some time, Joel came up empty-handed, feeling both bewildered and doubtful.

Initially, he had managed to clear his thought, forming a strategy to disregard the delusional effects of John’s picture on the phone, and return to Wushu Mountain for investigation. However, the current situation had completely disrupted his train of thought again.

If the white figure he just saw was the hallucination of the little girl in the white dress witnessed in Liucheng, then it proved that his manipulated journey to Wushu Mountain and Chongyun village was related to the little girl.

But after pondering back and forth, he started to question again. He doubted whether his vision of the white figure, the traces on the ground, and the hallucination on the phone were merely results of mental conflict created by hypnotic suggestion. Did he see himself turn into “John” on the phone because he came here in the first place to look for “John” who had gone missing, and solve the “Blood Source” issue? He saw the white figure because his subconscious mind perceived the little girl in the white dress as the hidden enemy.

His mind was a whirl of confusion, bumping and spinning without end, until he couldn’t help but loudly curse at his surroundings.

This time, he not only cursed in English, but also in Spanish, German, French, and even a long rant in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Clearly, he was at the verge of losing control and going berserk, struggling to suppress the restless emotions induced by his boundaries being pushed.

Just when he made up his mind to disregard everything, leave Chongyun Mountain and head directly to Pengcheng City regardless of consequence.

The little girl in the white dress appeared again. This time, she was standing by a tree only ten meters in front of him tilting her head with a scalpel in her hand, staring at him blankly.

The moonlight filtering through leaves overhead cast a cold, speckled silver glow over the girl’s porcelain and delicate face, making her appear incredibly real, yet eerie and disturbing.

Joel felt his breath hitch again, and before he could react, the little girl in the white dress slipped behind the tree, disappearing once more.

He hurriedly pursued but just as he expected, there was no sign of the girl. Like she had vanished into thin air, there was no scent and no sound.

“Ah!——” In anger, Joel fiercely banged his own head against the tree.

….

Several hours earlier when Joel was being led by seemingly random information into Chongyun Mountain.

In the small courtyard in Chongyun village where Xiang Kun often held his “closed-door” blood-drinking sleeps, he and Xia Libing were seated in a room filled with multiple monitors, closely watching one of the screens showing surveillance footage, discussing something.

“Old Xia is indeed formidable. He successfully lured him over by using ‘reverse operation’. If I’d known earlier, I’d have suggested that he go to Pengcheng first to raise his alertness and then let him find out in a suitable way that John was actually in Chongyun mountain.” Xiang Kun said while stroking his chin.

However, Xia Libing shook his head: “If we really did that, the results might not necessarily be better.”

Xiang Kun thought for a moment, then nodded, “True, the best method would be to hide the clues within various details and let him uncover them one by one, then determine for himself that he should go to Chongyun Mountain. That would be the best. But alas, there was too little time and we couldn’t make all the arrangements, so we had to use this rather forceful method to ‘lead’ him here.”

At that moment, Alice’s voice emerged from the speaker: “Everything is under Alice’s control!”

Xiang Kun nodded noncommittally: “Yes, yes, you are the best and we owe it all to you.”

Although he sounded indifferent, he was genuinely pleased, even surprised, by Alice’s performance.

Since the large-scale deployment of “Super-connected Objects” at the beginning of May, with Alice’s assistance, progress has been extremely rapid.

Not only Chongyun Village, Chongyun Mountain area, Tongshi Town, border towns, mountain areas, and villages, but also most parts of Jianzhou City, the majority of the urban areas of Citong City, have all been equipped and associated with a large number of “Super-connected Objects”, thereby becoming, in fact, a “Super-connected Object Home Ground”. Even in other areas such as Pengcheng City, Yangcheng City, Shenhai City, and other places where Xiang Kun and his friends often move, there are adequate “Super-connected Objects” deployed and associated.

Even in the southwestern, northwestern land borders, and southeastern areas where illegal entry into the country is possible, Xiang Kun and Alice have arranged a large number of remote “Super-connected Objects” links through remote adjustments of “Emotion Infused Objects” combined with “Super-connected Objects”. This way, Xiang Kun doesn’t need to go around the borders to include most of the obligatory border locations into his “Super-connected Object Monitoring Network”—with Alice monitoring around the clock without rest through super-sensory information, she can instantly detect even scaled-down “mutants” passing through areas filled with “Super-connected Objects”.

He placed such a strong emphasis on border areas mainly because he knew of John Cavendish’s illegal entry method from Europe as well as the fact that those places are remote and also the routes that beast-like “mutants” use to infiltrate human settlements. He could, therefore, “monitor” possible “mutant” appearances and find research subjects.

Unexpectedly, the first “mutant” discovered by Alice through the border “Super-connected Object Monitoring Network” turned out to be “Earl Joel” from the same organization as John.

As for why Xiang Kun knew that it was “Earl Joel”, the story goes back more than a month ago.

After Alice discovered that John, beneath the Brilliant Fortune Building, once again clashed with another “mutant” and engaged in a desperate fight, notifying Xiang Kun who then activated his “super sensing state” to monitor the situation real-time and entirely observing a mutant being killed, their body tissues breaking down and dissipating, and their blood being seized by another “mutant”.

This battle was even more intense than the previous fight between John and the “mutated giant snake”, but in the end, John was the one who survived.

Xiang Kun sensed John’s dream again, but this time, instead of the abstract dream featuring the eight-armed, eight-eyed monster, it contained images of John’s time in Europe, in the “Red Rose” organization, and the most frequently appearing figure, Earl Joel.

Xiang Kun learned not only Joel’s appearance, personality, and some habits, but also realized that Guo Tianxiang was his cultivated “Blood Descendant”, prepared as his “Blood Source”. John came to China because Earl Joel had reached his stage limit and if he didn’t have a suitable “Blood Source”, his body would disintegrate and die — of course, according to the rules of the “Red Rose”, before his death, and once he confirmed that he could not break the limit, he should contribute his blood in a special way, becoming the nutrients for other members of the “Blood Clan” to sustain their long sleep.

However, it seems Joel doesn’t intend to follow tradition. He didn’t pin all his hopes on John to return in time and instead came to China by himself.

Xiang Kun knew from John’s dream that these old “Blood Clan” from Europe are incredibly cruel, inhuman monsters, each of them responsible for the death of triple-digit numbers of people.

Compared to the “mutants” Xiang Kun had encountered in the past, John, Joel, even Guo Tianxiang, pose a far greater threat to mankind than the “Giant Owl” or “mutated spider”.

Even though they still look like humans without much change, they are worse than insects when it comes to their actions.

Therefore, it’s only natural that Xiang Kun chose Joel as his “experiment” and didn’t feel guilty about it.

But the “experiment” he wanted to conduct wasn’t about locking Joel up for testing and observation.

Joel is currently in a unique state — he had reached the so-called “Stage Limit” and needs the blood of other “mutants” to breakthrough the limit.

Xiang Kun had already observed the cognitive information changes when a “mutant” body tears apart after being killed under the “super sensory state”, as well as the cognitive information changes when a “mutant” body mutates after seizing the blood of another “mutant”. However, he has not yet observed a “mutant” self-destruct due to reaching the stage limit.

Now, Joel has become an excellent “observable target”.

What he needed to do was to lead Joel into a state and environment suitable for observation, and then naturally enter a process of self-destruction after reaching the stage limit.

Without a doubt, the depths of Chongyun Mountain, which are already filled with “Super-connected Objects”, rarely visited by people, and where a vast surrounding area is under his and Alice’s control, suitable for implementing various “contingency plans”, is the ideal place.

So, from the moment Joel thought he had silently entered the country, Xiang Kun with Alice and Old Xia have started a “roundtable discussion” on how to lure Joel to Chongyun Mountain.

Including the “HELP J” rock scar, the restaurant bill beneath it, the surveillance video of John leaving the restaurant following the little girl Alice in a white dress, were all prearranged by them.

In fact, the clues “combo” they prepared for Joel were far more than these. If he headed to Pengcheng City or started investigating from other possible leads, a series of other information would be waiting for him to “discover”.

In the end, no matter what, he would be led to Wushu Mountain, and then to Chongyun Mountain.