What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 405: Poker-Faced Joker

Xiang Kun knew that although Xia Libing couldn’t perceive the dreamer’s various sensory information and emotional fluctuations in the “Dream in A Dream” she initiated, like she could in a first-level dream, her grasp of various details in the dream was much stronger than in reality.

After all, in that “Dream in A Dream”, she had the highest “administrator rights” and could enter “developer mode”. The information received by the dreamer in the dream, the behavioral patterns, and the environment they exist in can all be decided by her. This allows her to have more intuitive understanding.

Just as he was thinking this, Xiang Kun heard a noise from the bedroom— Old Xia had also woken up.

As Xia Libing walked out of the room, yawning and retying her loose hair, Xiang Kun couldn’t help but furrow his brows, “Why didn’t you keep sleeping?”

According to his sensory information, Old Xia should still be very tired, her body in a state of exhaustion. After the “Dream in A Dream” ended, she should normally continue to sleep deeply.

Moreover, not long before going to bed, he had made a late-night snack for Old Xia, so she wouldn’t be awoken by hunger.

Clearly, this was Old Xia forcing herself to wake up after ending Officer Xiao Zhao’s “Dream in A Dream” and returning to her own first-level dream.

After sitting down across from Xiang Kun at the dining table, the first thing Old Xia asked about was indeed the memory of Officer Xiao Zhao’s confession in the “Dream in A Dream”.

“Why is it funny to fart during a confession? Because of the contrast? Because an event that does not match the atmosphere in a rather formal setting easily makes people laugh? But under what circumstances do people feel embarrassed, under what circumstances do people feel pain, angry, and what circumstances are funny? How do we differentiate that?”

“This is actually not so easy to differentiate. Human emotions are not entirely singular, many emotions are closely linked.” Xiang Kun said, “And sometimes, the same thing can be perceived differently by the person involved and the observer. Even different people involved could have completely opposing emotions. The perception and feelings of an event might differ between when it happened and afterward. Like Officer Xiao Zhao’s confession dream, maybe at that moment when it happened, he was so embarrassed that he wished he could bury himself, but…”

Halfway through, Xiang Kun suddenly sensed that something was wrong. Although Old Xia had difficulty in perceiving emotions, she herself held both a master’s degree in psychiatry and psychology and had been researching these issues for years. She must have known everything he just said, even more comprehensively, deeply, and systematically than he did.

Also, judging from past experiences of playing with Old Xia, Yang Zhen’er, Tang Baona, their WeChat conversations, and the notebook that recorded more than 900 behavioral patterns, Xiang Kun could tell that Old Xia had long known how to master the line between humor and rudeness. Although she couldn’t laugh or feel joy herself, that didn’t prevent her from being an excellent deadpan comedian in essence.

Just when Xiang Kun was puzzled, Xia Libing, who had been discussing seriously with him, suddenly stuck out her tongue and made an “Einstein’s funny face”.

Xiang Kun was staggered, and then instantly understood Old Xia’s intention—She hadn’t gotten up from sleep to argue and analyze theory with him, she was conducting a direct experiment.

Old Xia likely had a new idea after seeing Officer Xiao Zhao’s “funniest experience” in the “Dream in A Dream”. She wanted to create a “funny incident” to make Xiang Kun laugh, triggering his emotions, and then reverse feel Xiang Kun’s “Emotional Assimilation”. This way, she could merge herself into the “funny incident”, just like Officer Xiao Zhao remembering his fart during a high school confession.

Seeing that Xiang Kun had no reaction, Xia Libing retracted her funny face. After looking expressionless for a few seconds, she raised two fingers and pushed up the skin at the corners of her eyes, making a funny face that mimicked a fox.

When Xiang Kun still didn’t react, Xia Libing returned to normal. After being expressionless for a while, she pinched her cheek with one hand, pursed her lips, and pushed up her nose with the other hand, turning her eyes, making a very impactful funny face.

Finally, Xiang Kun showed a smile and gave Old Xia a thumbs-up.

Once Xia Libing regained her composure, she looked at Xiang Kun and shook her head: “You weren’t laughing just now because you found it funny, but only to humor me. Is it because the face I made was flawed, lacked contrast, or because of the current conversational atmosphere?”

“None of those,” Xiang Kun explained helplessly, “If you usually pull a few faces out of the blue, I would probably be in stitches laughing. But just now, I had already sensed beforehand that you were deliberately acting serious, possibly because you had some other purpose. So when you pulled a face, my attention was all on why you were doing it. I was also thinking about which part of the comedy video we watched yesterday afternoon your action came from…”

Xia Libing nodded: “Understood. I was too deliberate.”

She then asked again: “On a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being not funny at all and 10 being the funniest, how funny was Officer Xiao Zhao’s confession?”

“9,” Xiang Kun replied.

After that, Xia Libing didn’t spend more time on this topic and started talking about the information they got tonight from Officer Xiao Zhao’s “Dream in A Dream”.

With Old Xia’s “professional guidance”, Xiang Kun found out that Officer Xiao Zhao and his partner happened across Mijoe and her entourage when they went to the Zi Huan Mountain region where they discovered the body.

It just so happened that his companion had assisted the Yangcheng Police with a case investigation and had seen Mijoe’s information before. He recognized her, so he notified the branch where Officer Xiao Zhao was located. They intercepted the car Mijoe was in and took them back to the station. This was the scene Xiang Kun and Old Xia saw when they detoured on their way back from the airport.

When the Yangcheng team arrived that night, Mijoe was very cooperative, provided a very clear account of the Guo Tianxiang case, and brought to light some information that the Yangcheng Police hadn’t noticed or found before.

Officer Xiao Zhao and his companion were also allowed to participate in the interrogation.

Their original intention was to uncover Guo Tianxiang’s whereabouts or possibly the larger case hidden behind Mijoe through the identity of “Chen Tianhua”.

However, the station leader suddenly gave instructions, effectively endorsing the identity of “Chen Tianhua” from an official standpoint. Apart from the information related to the Guo Tianxiang case, they weren’t to probe into any other related information and defined Mijoe’s identity as a witness helping with the investigation.

As a result, Officer Xiao Zhao concluded that Mijoe likely had an official identity and speculated that she might be an undercover agent for the police. Guo Tianxiang may have noticed her identity before and hence disappeared. Now, Mijoe assumed the identity of “Chen Tianhua” and infiltrated Citong’s “Taiyu Laboratory” to investigate something.

However, Officer Xiao Zhao immediately overturned this speculation because if Mijoe were an undercover officer, even if she weren’t from the Yangcheng Police but another provincial or municipal police department, they would already have been informed since Guo Tianxiang had disappeared for so long. So even if Mijoe was undercover, she was probably not from the police.

When they encountered Mijoe’s group in Zi Huan Mountain, they were sampling from an area that had been struck by lightning. Officer Xiao Zhao had a hunch that the official department Mijoe belonged to may be specifically set up to investigate incidents like the strange thunderstorm in Zi Huan Mountain or the burning aircraft. They might also know about the bodies he discovered.

If that’s the case, was Mijoe staying with Guo Tianxiang for the same reasons as the male victim who killed his two female companions and then killed himself in Zi Huan Mountain?

Do Mijoe and her department also know about the existence of the multi-armed monster?

Xiang Kun was quite impressed by Officer Xiao Zhao’s speculations. Even though both the process and the results were half accurate and half fanciful, given that Officer Xiao Zhao had limited access to real information and was constantly influenced by his and Old Xia’s “Dream Invocation,” it was quite impressive that he could make such “guesses”.

From the information Officer Xiao Zhao learned about Mijoe, Xiang Kun and Old Xia made several judgments about “Divine Technology”.

Xiang Kun knew very well, Mijoe was originally a “hacker” who scraped others’ privacy for extortion before she started working for Guo Tianxiang. She didn’t have any official identity.

However, if her “Chen Tianhua” identity can be endorsed by the authorities, that means many things “Divine Technology” is doing are officially permitted.

It’s easy to understand that the government is aware of the existence of the “organization studying mutated creatures” and provides support behind the scenes.

But what Xiang Kun was curious about was, why isn’t it a government department dealing with these matters directly, but rather “Divine Technology”?

Through his previous investigation, he is certain that Divine Technology’s secret department is not a shell used by the government, but truly operated by Divine Technology.

This is corroborated by the dreams of Fang Pingfang, Zhou Rui, Li Shibao, and others, as well as their personal information.

If it’s just for the sake of confidentiality, the authorities could set up a secret department by themselves. There is no need to rely on a private technology company to carry out these matters.

There may be deeper reasons behind it.

If this can be clarified, perhaps it can be understood why the public knows nothing about mutants, why the government hasn’t publicly researched and investigated mutants, and why it seems like the world doesn’t know about the existence of mutants on the surface.

On this issue, Xiang Kun and Old Xia had a long discussion and proposed some conjectures, but there are still no definitive evidences, and further investigation is required for verification.

Xiang Kun said: “The people behind Divine Technology probably want to use the power of the police to openly investigate Guo Tianxiang’s whereabouts, while they make up for the lack in secret. After all, domestically, there is no stronger force than the police to track someone down. This indirectly proves further that Divine Technology has ties with the government. They can ensure that once Guo Tianxiang is controlled by the police, there are means available for them to make contact.”

Xia Libing asked: “If the police re-investigate Guo Tianxiang’s movement track at the pedestrian street, will they discover your existence?”

Xiang Kun shook his head: “They shouldn’t. Even if they know about my existence, they cannot identify me.”

The previous police investigation into Guo Tianxiang’s whereabouts only showed that Guo Tianxiang and Mijoe disappeared after going to Liushi, without knowing his specific movements in Liushi.

Although Mijoe knows about Guo Tianxiang’s actions at the pedestrian street in the afternoon, she is clear about what Guo Tianxiang was doing at the time, so when investigating Guo Tianxiang’s whereabouts, she wouldn’t check the past tracks.

But now, Mijoe told the police about the information she knew, except for the vampire-related content, the police may very likely re-examine Guo Tianxiang’s actions on the afternoon of October 8th on the pedestrian street when investigating his whereabouts.

Old Xia is worried that the police investigation might disclose Xiang Kun’s existence.

Xiang Kun had already speculated about this possibility many times. Since he was accidentally caught by Officer Chen via a surveillance system during his midnight patrol, he has been particularly careful about surveillance. The time when he met Guo Tianxiang, not only did he disguise his appearance, but also kept an eye on the location of the surveillance cameras along the way. He was able to ensure mostly that his face was not being captured.

Only three places might make the police aware of his existence. First, the waitress at the restaurant where Mijoe and Guo Tianxiang ate, where he had asked to see the surveillance footage on the grounds that a companion had lost something. Second, the security guard at the parking lot, where he had used the excuse of catching a cheating husband to view the surveillance footage. The people at these two places knew the distinctive characteristic of the “dreadlocks”, hence the directed inquiry.

The third one is Zhang Jinan, a local person contacted by Mijoe through the dark web, who had been “intimidated” by Xiang Kun in his home. Although he didn’t see his face, he must be aware of his existence.

This time, when Mijoe told the police about the case related to Guo Tianxiang, she didn’t mention the online “fishing” process and naturally did not mention Zhang Jinan either, so this point could be ignored.

As for the restaurant waitress and parking lot guard, Xiang Kun is also not very worried, because this happened on October 8th last year and four months have passed. Many people’s memories may have started to blur, and most businesses have already cleared their surveillance footage. Even if the police really question the waitress and those security guards, the focus would be on Guo Tianxiang, and they may not mention Xiang Kun, the “later investigator”. Even if they knew, without the corresponding surveillance footage for comparison, it would not be possible to investigate his identity, and thus posed no threat to him for now.

After listening to Xiang Kun’s explanation, Xia Libing nodded. Then, he suddenly puffed his cheeks and went, “bú~~~~~”.

Xiang Kun was taken by surprise, but quickly recognized the unique humming sound and the gradually rising pitch. He remembered the confession by Officer Xiao Zhao in the recent “Dream in A Dream”, and realized what Old Xia was imitating.

Seeing Old Xia being serious, as if nothing has happened, after he was done with his “bú”, and the strand of hair bobbing slightly on his head that wasn’t tied properly, Xiang Kun couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

Old Xia’s unabashed goofiness brought about a great atmosphere. Xiang Kun found the situation more and more humorous, the more he laughed, the more he wanted to laugh until tears were about to start streaming from his eyes.

For a moment, the room was full of cheeriness.

Star City.

At around 4 in the morning, just before sunrise, Liu Shiling rolled off the bed and ran to the corner of her room. In front of Custard Pie on the sofa cushion, she squatted down and gently stroked its head, her face full of worry.

“Custard Pie, what’s really happened to you?”

Custard Pie slightly lifted its eyelid and looked at its young owner. Its chubby body, however, did not budge and did not respond with a “meow” like usual. It seemed to have drifted off to sleep again.

Liu Shiling brought over Custard Pie’s favorite dried food, as well as other cat snacks, even her own favorite snacks, in an attempt to lure it.

“Custard Pie, come and eat, it’s all yours, only for today! You can eat as much as you want! If you don’t eat, if you still don’t eat… I … I will eat them all up!” said Liu Shiling threateningly.

But the usually gluttonous Custard Pie just continued lying down, as if sleeping was the top priority.

Tears welled up in Liu Shiling’s eyes: “Custard Pie, are you going to die? You must not die…”

Woken up by the noise of Little Fatty Girl moving snacks and speaking to the cat, Shiling’s Mom wore a robe and stood by the bedroom door. She looked at her daughter and the cat in a somewhat helpless manner.