Chapter 18: Abnormal Changes
Volume 2 – Bloom of the Other Shore Flower, Chapter 18: Abnormal Changes
The name of this place, Blazing Canyon, seemed very familiar.
Qianye searched his memories for a quite a while before finally remembering where he had heard of this name.
Blazing Canyon wasn’t very far from the Yellow Springs Training Camp. Many Crystal Lizards inhabited the canyon, and these six-legged crawlers could grow up to five meters in length and were genuine monsters. The crystals on their body were one of the key ingredients for making origin guns.
The graduation requirement for the Yellow Springs Training Camp had been to hunt a Crystal Lizard and collect its crystal. To normal students who were only given a dagger, killing a huge rank two lizard was easier said than done. The graduation exam was also one of the Yellow Springs Training Camp’s hurdles with huge death rate.
On the other hand, Crystal Lizards were carnivorous, so Blazing Canyon was the training camp’s best place to dispose of all different kinds of bodies.
Once he remembered Blazing Canyon, Qianye suddenly stiffened and instantly shouted as loud as he could, “No! I haven’t died yet, I’m still alive! Let me down!”
He suddenly sat up and found that it had actually been a dream. Even after this many years, he would wake up from a nightmare every night. Sometimes he wouldn’t even be able to tell if it was reality or just his imagination.
Qianye scanned his surroundings, realizing that it was still deep in the night and that he was still at the garbage dump. A bone-thin wild dog was biting his feet, straining to drag him away.
Qianye grabbed a random piece of scrap metal and forcefully threw it. The scrap landed right on the wild dog’s nose, causing it to whine and escape with its tail between its legs.
Qianye moved a little, feeling only pain throughout his body. His chest was especially sensitive to movement; every time he moved even the slightest bit, he felt pain in his chest like it was splitting apart. He first inspected injuries throughout his body and discovered that his left shoulder was broken. More than half of his ribs were broken, and his body had a lot of various injuries.
Unexpectedly, his injuries were much lighter than he had thought. The broken bones had automatically grafted together and had miraculously begun growing back. His open wounds no longer bled, and many small cuts had already closed.
Within his body, Qianye felt a vigorous life force flowing rapidly. Other than his bones not having completely healed, his body was already in a condition healthy beyond belief. In addition, his thirst for blood that had sprung up halfway through the previous battle had virtually disappeared already.
Qianye suddenly felt two deep wounds on his neck, his expression instantly stiffening.
How did he get bit by a vampire again?
However, he immediately calmed down once more. What was the difference between getting bit once or getting bit twice? He had been tainted for a long time. However, a smell from his fingertip made Qianye’s heart drop again.
It had a light, pleasant fragrance and seemed very familiar. It was Nighteye’s fragrance!
From this, all of his questions were answered. Nighteye was not only a vampire, but a vampire of extraordinarily high rank.
Nighteye’s special ability was actually able to hide all of the unique traits of a vampire. She looked no different from humans and even had normal body temperature.
Whether Qianye directly searched her body or observed her battle techniques, he had never been able to identify her as an actual vampire from her responses. This ability really brought unusual thoughts to one’s head.
He had actually cooperated with a high-ranking vampire to kill a vampire noble and an elite werewolf? Qianye’s thoughts were unusually complex at this moment. He didn’t know whether he should be happy or regretful.
Nighteye was the first partner he had cooperated with since arriving at the Evernight Continent. When Nighteye had returned to the garbage dump in the last battle, Qianye’s heart had thumped vigorously and he had even been extremely emotional. Before Qianye was struck away, he had seen Nighteye in a highly dangerous situation, being surrounded by werewolves and vampires.
Even though he had confirmed that Nighteye was a vampire, Qianye could not bring himself to hate her. There was no other reason for that but her action of resolutely returning to help him fight enemies that were too strong for them to beat.
“Since she was able to suck his blood, she should have been survived, right?” Qianye thought.
Icy-cold wind blew past, bringing a constant rotten smell. Qianye shook his head, clearing his mind of these messy thoughts. He suddenly felt that his wrist had something unusual on it. He lifted it up to see and there were actually two teeth marks!
Qianye wrinkled his brows as he reached over and wiped it with his other hand. A sweet aroma wafted from his fingertips. However, no matter how sweet-smelling it was, it couldn’t change the fact that another vampire had left this mark from sucking his blood.
It was actually, Blood Banquet? This phrase popped into Qianye’s head.
Blood Banquet was a particular ritual performed by vampires.
In reality, true vampires would never randomly choose to bite people. During battle, they had a larger thirst for blood because they wanted to recover their strength and injuries, just like how humans used various military stimulants to boost their combat ability.
Normal vampires viewed ingesting blood as a sacred thing, as their way of communicating with their ancestors. It was their private time to inherit more blood power.
Blood Banquet was equivalent to humans’ social interactions in salons. It represented intimacy between the participants, amicability in their relationship, and trust between them. As for the main dish in a Blood Banquet, the human must fulfill the vampire’s desire for delicious food. The human’s blood must taste exquisite, and the human must also be strong or have a special identity.
Qianye suddenly raised his head, looking at the blood-red moon, and smiled as he spoke to himself, “I actually have qualifications to be the main dish in a Blood Banquet!”
Being the main dish wasn’t too weird. The weird thing was that he had actually lived through it.
He silently stood for a moment, before beginning to carefully survey his surroundings. Qianye had trained this skill for many years, which had allowed him to avoid many hidden attacks on the battlefield and survive in dangerous situations.
Not far from him lay many werewolves’ bodies. Amongst them was one with extremely long limbs. That unique characteristic actually belonged to a Shadow Wolf!
These werewolves had an obvious difference in strength compared to those Qianye had initially seen. Nevertheless, they all died there, and not even one skull remained intact. The blood-stained dirt, the broken bones, and the melted matter of brains revealed the cause of their death.
Another point of suspicion was that a few werewolves were already in a shriveled state, evidently devoid of any blood. This was definitely not a common sight. Everyone knew that vampires never drank the blood of werewolves, although not because of the taste, but because of their beliefs.
In addition, the remaining smell of blood actually gave Qianye a familiar feeling. He walked to the werewolves’ bodies, knelt down, and carefully observed them. The werewolves’ arteries had been bitten open, but what remained weren’t the holes left by vampire fangs, but rather the marks of a human’s bite.
Qianye immediately realized that he had sucked the werewolves’ blood dry himself.
No wonder he did not feel any bloodthirst even though it had been so long. His bloodthirst had already been activated while he was unconscious. This was the first time Qianye had ever drank so much blood since the accident. Even though the matter hadn’t been an issue this time, Qianye thought he would probably no longer be able to suppress his blood of darkness soon. Maybe the next time his bloodthirst took control would he his last.
At this thought, Qianye unconsciously reached for his Red Scorpion Army knife, but felt nothing but air. It was only at this moment that he remembered that all of his gear should have fallen down when he was struck in the air by the elite werewolf.
Qianye planned to look for his army knife. When preparing for the moment of ending his own life, he still wished to use his army knife from Red Scorpion.
At this moment, his eyes fell on the cane in the tight grip of a werewolf’s body. On the tip of the cane was an Eternal Sundial. Qianye automatically converted the time given on the dial’s calendar and became startled. Three days? He had only been unconscious for three days, no wonder the blood moon had yet to fade.
Qianye suddenly realized that after waking up, his body felt like it had some abnormalities. He first reached over and dialed the Eternal Sundial, confirming that it had not been broken. After this, he used a simple inner vision technique to view the condition of his body.
As suspected, everything was abnormal.
With the passage of only three days, the blood moon had not yet ended, but Qianye did not have the unbearable, scorching feeling that came with each reaction of his blood of darkness. If the reason that his bones had started reconnecting, his organs were already half healed, and his external injuries had virtually finished healing was that he had sucked enough blood, then that all showed that the blood had increased his rate of recovery to an extremely abnormal level.
Qianye thought for a moment that he had basically become a blood thrall, but his conscious stayed clear and his thinking remained normal.
Qianye immediately found a hidden area, and sat cross-legged to propel his origin power. He ran the complete Army Healing Chant to inspect his body internally.
The force of origin power in his body had already met with the boundary of rank three. A clear outline of the origin node in his right hand appeared. Its barrier could be broken through at any time. Once the barrier of this level was broken through, the origin node on the right hand would ignite and one would truly reach the level of a rank three Fighter.
However, at that moment, along with the movement of the origin power within his body actually flowed condensed strands of dark red power. This was blood energy generated from blood of darkness.
Originally, the blood of darkness in Qianye’s body was not controlled at all as it randomly flowed within his meridians, breaking down and assimilating the surrounding flesh and blood. Wherever it flowed past, it would bring bursts of burning pain, and once the heat accumulated to a certain point, it would burn severely enough to cause one’s consciousness to gradually slip away and be replaced with an incomparable thirst for fresh flesh and blood. Qianye had fought such conditions off for almost a year, and could not be more clear on the destructive force of these strands of power.
However, at that moment, that cluster of blood energy that bordered on pitch-black still circulated, but without any feeling of discomfort. If he wasn’t observing himself internally, Qianye almost would have felt that it was power from his own body. Two additional unique colors actually appeared on the almost pitch-black blood energy. One was a faint purple within the deep red color, and the other actually was a strand of pale gold.
Qianye’s consciousness moved slightly, stopping his Combatant Formula. The force of his origin power gradually slowed and the blood of darkness actually became similarly peaceful. Qianye couldn’t help but feel that it was unbelievable. He tried to control and propel the blood energy. A moment later, his entire body trembled as the blood energy wildly entered his heart, and then slowly flowed out. In the end, it even condensed into two mysterious runes, and some information instantly flowed into Qianye’s mind.
Vampiric body type.
Eye ability: Dark Vision.
The two runes actually belonged to two vampiric powers.
Vampires’ bodies automatically moved their blood energy to continuously fortify themselves, increasing their rate of recovery. In addition, after having fed on a large amount of blood, the body’s rate of recovery would once again increase. This was yet another advantage that belonged only to vampires.
Eye Ability: Dark Vision was a power that many vampires were born with. The ability to see during the night was more effective than human night vision devices.
Qianye was baffled as he observed the changes within his body, but no matter how he used his inner vision technique, he couldn’t find anything else. Within his blood flowed two completely separate streaks of balanced power, the white streak belonged to Daybreak origin power, and the dark red mix of three colors was blood energy, a type of Darkness origin power. The two streaks of origin power with opposing attributes co-habited the blood in peace, as if it were completely natural.
However, Qianye at least knew one thing. If the blood of darkness no longer created that corrosive heat, then he would no longer have any thirst for blood and flesh. Maybe it also meant that he would be able to keep his consciousness and sanity forever? The two additional powers also made Qianye full of hope.
Fate finally revealed a hint of a pleasant smile to Qianye!