Yu Xian frowned the moment the first scene appeared on screen.
A youth who looked remarkably like him was holding a medical report, his expression steeped in utter despair.
Yet Yu Xian was one hundred percent certain that this youth was definitely not him. He switched the playback to triple speed. The video was a blend of fact and fiction—some clips were genuine footage of him, while others clearly were not.
Even though the person impersonating him looked nearly identical, Yu Xian could easily tell the imposter apart.
The plot progressed rapidly until it reached the grand battle between Edward and him. Yu Xian's brow furrowed at once, because this segment was entirely the footage he had filmed himself; whoever made this had ripped his original recordings and spliced them directly into the film.
After finishing the video, he closed the player, turned to Shui Yuetian, and asked, "Shui Shui, do you know who uploaded this video to the net?"
"No idea. It was posted anonymously," Shui Yuetian answered, shaking her head.
Looking at his own face on the cover, Yu Xian asked with a frown, "Then what do they stand to gain from doing this?"
"Plenty! That person crammed a ton of advertisements into the film. Didn't you notice?" Shui Yuetian said immediately.
Yu Xian closed his eyes, instantly cross-referencing every frame of the film against his own original recordings. Sure enough, there were plenty of ads tucked inside.
Original shop signs had been altered, the clothing of some passersby had been swapped, and many billboards on Earth had brazenly been replaced with Crescent Bay advertisements.
"Can we track them down through these brands?" Yu Xian asked.
Shui Yuetian shook her head. "Fish God, companies behind these brands outsource this kind of advertising to the Commission Guild, which then posts it as mercenary tasks. The problem is that the Commission Guild doesn't require real-name registration. Anyone can take on commissions there, so trying to pinpoint someone through the guild is practically impossible."
"In other words, it's next to impossible to track them down," Yu Xian said rather helplessly.
Shui Yuetian nodded. "Theoretically, yes. But there actually is a brute-force method."
"What brute-force method?" Yu Xian looked at her expectantly.
Lowering her voice conspiratorially, Shui Yuetian asked, "Fish God, you're from Earth in this universe, aren't you?"
"How did you know?" Yu Xian asked in surprise, seeing how certain she was.
Seeing that Yu Xian hadn't flown into a rage over having his secret exposed, Shui Yuetian breathed a small sigh of relief and replied, "Earth's existence has never been a secret to Crescent Bay. It's just that the Seven Races Alliance has a tacit understanding not to contact the humans of Earth. In fact, it's an unspoken rule among the myriad races not to proactively make contact with civilizations that lack Heaven Rank Transcendents.
"Later on, Crescent Bay grew increasingly prosperous. While Heaven Rank Transcendents did eventually emerge on Earth, it was simply too far away, and its resources held little appeal. On top of that, the higher-ups of the Human Clan—one of the seven races—wanted Earth to continue developing autonomously without being influenced by Crescent Bay's civilization. As a result, even though Crescent Bay and your Earth share the same universe, they have had zero contact."
"So that's how it is," Yu Xian said, enlightened.
Shui Yuetian asked with a grin, "Fish God, you probably know what I'm getting at now, right?"
"You mean... the person who uploaded this video to the net is actually from Earth, just like me?" Yu Xian ventured thoughtfully, looking at her.
It was the only logical explanation.
No other race would risk offending the Human Clan to pull off a stunt like this.
Yu Xian understood why Shui Yuetian had called it a brute-force method. It was a crude, cumbersome approach, virtually like searching for a needle in a haystack—hunting down humans who, like him, originated from Earth among the countless humans in Crescent Bay. Whoever fit the bill was overwhelmingly likely to be the one who uploaded the video.
While Yu Xian was deep in thought, a service robot arrived with their order.
First came the drinks. The robot placed a glass of crimson blood in front of Yu Xian. In an instant, his nose picked up traces of over ten thousand different kinds of blood within that single cup.
It truly was a river of blood—after all, at least ten thousand living creatures had bled to produce this one drink.
Unfortunately, the bloodlines of transcendent races all possessed bloodline gene locks. Yu Xian held zero expectations for the blood itself, though he could still absorb and store the energy it contained to add stat points to Little Nora. If Little Nora grew stronger, he naturally became stronger as well.
"Fish God, give it a try! Lots of vampires say this is delicious," Shui Yuetian said eagerly, looking at him with excitement.
Yu Xian nodded, picked up the glass, and took a sip. Flavors burst across his taste buds in an instant, accompanied by fragments of alien memories flashing incessantly through his mind.
He set the glass down, his expression calm. "I might be a bit different from other vampires. This flavor... doesn't suit my taste."
Ordinary vampires were creatures of darkness and the undead, remarkably close to demonic fiends. By nature, they were gloomy and sinister, relishing the sight of others in pain and delighting in torturing living souls.
Yu Xian had once been classified as a creature of darkness as well, but after countless evolutions, he had diverged entirely from the vampire mold, becoming a new race unto himself.
As a Shiny Vampire, he was not a creature of darkness; rather, he was closer to a light-attuned fiendkin.
Consequently, drinking blood saturated with its original owners' agony left Yu Xian feeling uncomfortable and displeased. He had no affection for it whatsoever.
"As expected of the Fish God! You really are totally different from ordinary vampires," Shui Yuetian said, immediately introducing the food. "Then try this dish. It's called the All-Races Medley. It's similar to what you humans call Buddha Jumps Over the Wall—no, wait, more like the Manchu-Han Imperial Feast! It gathers the diverse cooking styles of all myriad races and piles them into a single dish."
Looking at the miniature mountain of food stacked in the center of the table, Yu Xian forced a smile. "Guess I'll try it, then."
He had already spotted something buried in the dish that looked suspiciously like a human thigh.
*It couldn't really be a human leg, could it?*
Among the culinary traditions of myriad races, there was no telling if some viewed humans as food.
Even though humanity held vast power and influence within Crescent Bay, they couldn't protect every human everywhere. At the very least, humans outside Crescent Bay did not fall under their umbrella of protection.
Yu Xian picked up his chopsticks, but in the end, he couldn't bring himself to dig in. Instead, he asked, "Shui Shui, that couldn't possibly be a human leg, right?"
"Of course not! This dish is actually vegetarian. Besides, one of Crescent Bay's unspoken rules is that consuming sentient life is strictly forbidden. Humans are sentient beings, so how could they ever be served as food?" Shui Yuetian quickly clarified.
Of course, that rule applied strictly within Crescent Bay; once one entered the Abyss, it was a completely different story.
Just then, an uproar broke out near the shop entrance. Yu Xian turned his head to see the pig-headed beastman he had swatted away earlier, now standing outside the door flanked by a whole gang of pig-headed beastmen.
Catching sight of Yu Xian, the beastman immediately turned to a burly, copper-red pig-headed thug beside him and barked, "Big bro, that's the country bumpkin who hit me!"
*So he ran off to call for backup.*
Yu Xian had assumed the fellow realized the gap between their strengths and scuttled away in disgrace.
Instead of fleeing, the creature had gathered his buddies to gang up on a poor, weak country bumpkin like him. Yu Xian had to admit—these city folk really had no sense of fair play.
Chapter 227