What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 21: New Sensations

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Chapter 21: A New Sensation

Xiang Kun opened the window and the sounds from outside instantly grew louder and clearer. Their sheer volume and variety made him uneasy for a moment, even causing his ears to ring.

Not only the sounds but also an array of strong, irritating smells intruded upon his senses, almost making him cry and his nose run.

Quickly, Xiang Kun closed the window again, frowning: Had the enhancement of his hearing and sense of smell gone too far?

If all his senses were this sensitive, wouldn’t living in a city be torture?

Luckily, his worries did not last long. After forcing himself to adapt for a while, Xiang Kun discovered that the impact of his hyper-sensitive hearing and smell began to fade swiftly.

Only when he focused his attention on either his hearing or smell did the plethora of sound and scent information become clear again.

Like after the second time he drank blood, his hearing had already improved to some extent. If not for a certain night when he closed his eyes on the rooftop and suddenly heard sounds he thought were inaudible, he might not have noticed.

The human brain tends to filter and even block out sensory information, only accepting what is wanted and needed.

Compared to improvements in strength, vision, and Lung’s Capacity, an enhancement in hearing and smell is hard to quantify and record or would require specialized equipment.

Xiang Kun sat in his room, eyes closed, trying to focus all his attention on his hearing—taking in various sound information.

With his greatly improved hearing, the sound information Xiang Kun could procure had drastically changed his perception of time. It wasn’t as simple as amplifying all sounds. A myriad of chaotic sound information filled his brain. For a moment, he was overwhelmed with differentiating the sources and attributes of these sounds—creating a feeling of sensory overload.

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After an unknown period, Xiang Kun suddenly felt dizzy and had the urge to vomit. He hurriedly opened his eyes and took a deep breath, dispersing his attention.

Could it be that he was still not accustomed to the enhancement of his hearing?

But rethinking the sensation he had experienced, he quickly realized it might not be because of his hearing but rather due to his brain being overwhelmed by excess sound information.

The human brain is virtually always lazing around. Of course, this laxness is, in fact, a form of self-preservation.

The senses are constantly gathering information, but this information will always be “chosen” based on necessity. Most times, what we see, hear, smell, and feel is far more than what we think.

It’s like those pictures with visual blind spots. People often overlook strange points at first glance. Only after seeing the hint do they realize they had actually noticed these strange points all along, but their brain simply ignored them.

And now, even though Xiang Kun’s senses had evolved, and he was receiving information in multiples of what he used to, his brain’s capacity to process this information didn’t seem to have evolved enough. After all, while training before, he never received so much sound information at once.

So he took a break, then switched modes and focused his attention on single sounds.

…

Amid the honking cars, shouting voices, and music outside, Xiang Kun lifted layer after layer and made choices until he found the sound closest to him…

Drip-drop, drip-drop. Was that the sound of his bathroom faucet dripping water? No, that was from next door.

A clamor of noises surged through the water pipes, it was the sound of wastewater flowing down from the upper floor after someone had flushed the toilet.

The crisp sound of gunfire? Was it the young man upstairs playing a shooting game or watching a movie at home?

He faintly heard someone talking. It seemed like a female voice, but it was too muffled and indistinct to understand the content.

…

Xiang Kun stepped out of his room. With narrowed eyes, he walked down the hallway, descended the stairs, following the female voice.

This ability to pinpoint the origin of sounds was something he had been diligently training over the past few days. It seemed the results were satisfactory.

A few minutes later, Xiang Kun finally found the source of the female voice. It wasn’t within his building, but in the convenience store diagonally across from his place. It was the shop owner’s daughter talking on the phone.

Standing on the opposite side of the street, Xiang Kun was more than ten meters away from the convenience store, and the daughter was on the second floor. She was not even in his line of sight—blocked by a wall.

But Xiang Kun could hear the girl’s conversation clearly.

At this moment, it felt as if the whole world had been muted, except for her voice.

But maintaining this required a high level of concentration from Xiang Kun. Once he relaxed his focus—for example, when the shop owner came out to greet him—the girl’s voice became fuzzy. Because sounds of all sorts and sizes from other directions immediately claimed his attention.

Nonetheless, for the time being, Xiang Kun was genuinely amazed at his improved hearing.

It far exceeded his initial expectations.

After all, when training his physical strength previously, the two times he drank blood resulted in a boost still within the range of normal humans. Apart from his insane recovery speed and stamina, his absolute strength did not exceed what a normal person could achieve.

But now, after just five days of training, Xiang Kun’s hearing surpassed normal humans. He didn’t believe that any ordinary person, regardless of the amount of training, could reach this level.

However, Xiang Kun speculates that perhaps there wasn’t much enhancement in his senses of hearing and smell, but rather his original sensory organs had not been exploited to their full potential.

Xiang Kun continued to roam in the night, like he had done the previous few nights, testing his newly improved hearing and scent perception—both the result of targeted training and mutation.

If at the discovery of his initial series of bodily mutations, Xiang Kun felt fear and worry, then now, he was mostly filled with curiosity and thrill.

After realizing he had no immediate threat to his life, he adopted a more positive and proactive approach towards the changes his body was undergoing—even though there were inconveniences. Since he was going to mutate anyway, why not mutate in the direction he desired?

These days, Xiang Kun had been venturing out every night. He had grown familiar with dozens of streets nearby, but walking down them that night felt completely fresh and exciting. It was the same feeling he got when he first set foot on these streets a few nights earlier.