Two Hearts

Yu Xian felt as though he were trapped in the midst of primal chaos. He swung his arms and kicked his legs, trying to dispel the haze before him, but no matter how hard he flailed, it was useless. As soon as he swept away one patch of chaos, another surged in to take its place, endless and inexhaustible. Irritated, he began to lash out wildly, wishing desperately for an axe in his hands so he could cleave everything open in a single blow. Vampires actually possessed an ultra-rare talent: the ability to read a target's memories by drinking their blood. Aside from the Progenitor, only two vampires in the entire Blood Clan possessed it. It was an ability that could not be awakened simply by biding one's time. You either had it the moment you became a vampire or you didn't; it could not be developed after the fact. Yu Xian and Nora's blood-drunk cousin actually possessed a fractured version of this talent. That was why they suffered from blood drunkenness after feeding. In a hazy daze, they could vaguely pick up scraps of information from the blood, only to forget everything the moment they woke up. Yet when Yu Xian absorbed Pangu's Blood, that fragmented talent was forcefully completed. At the same time, he absorbed a massive influx of information contained within Pangu's Blood. His body, already entirely unlike that of an ordinary vampire, was now hurtling headlong in an even more abnormal direction. In the room, Yu Xian stood swaying from side to side. Suddenly, a blood-colored bubble surfaced from his head, detached from his body, and drifted in midair. Then one bubble after another emerged in rapid succession, all circling around him. Witnessing this, Jin Sheng cautiously stepped back. He knew Yu Xian was prone to blood drunkenness, but the last time it happened, Yu Xian had simply fallen asleep. Jin Sheng had expected the same this time around, but something seemed to have gone awry. At that moment, Yu Xian suddenly began waving his arms about in a disorderly frenzy, as if trying to banish something. An eerie scene unfolded. Strange images flickered across the surrounding bubbles. As Yu Xian swung his hands, the bubbles shifted from simple blood-red to a brilliant, kaleidoscopic swirl of colors. The newly emerged bubbles floating off him were especially dazzling, completely devoid of the gloomy, sinister aura typical of Blood Energy. Suddenly, Yu Xian leaned backward and tumbled right into a bubble, immediately falling into a deep sleep inside it. Borne by the bubble, he did not drop to the floor; instead, he drifted gently through the air as countless other bubbles revolved around the large one. "..." Jin Sheng was rendered utterly speechless by the sight before him. No matter how one looked at him, Yu Xian did not seem like a normal vampire. In fact, he now radiated an indescribable sense of the sacred. Jin Sheng waited for a good while. Seeing no sign of Yu Xian waking, he stepped forward slowly, his hand coated in a faint golden light, and gently touched one of the bubbles. The bubble felt peculiar to the touch. He had expected it to feel like glass, plastic, or a gemstone, but it actually felt like touching the spatial boundary energy unleashed by an active barrier formation. He began to apply more force. The bubble showed no deformation at all. Jin Sheng dialed up his strength bit by bit, gradually adjusting upward from Insect rank. Only when he reached Sparrow rank did a slight ripple disturb the surface. At Snake rank, the bubble finally began to distort. Jin Sheng's expression turned serious. He raised his output to Eagle rank, and the bubble began to tremble violently. A fraction more force would likely have burst it. He pulled his hand back, choosing not to test it any further. This ability possessed tremendous potential. If Yu Xian continued to grow stronger, it might evolve into an exceptionally potent form of group defense. Jin Sheng was deeply curious about what was happening to Yu Xian. If this really was akin to being drunk, what had he seen in his drunken dreams to produce such an eccentric ability? "Never mind. Let him sleep." Jin Sheng dismissed further speculation. Shaking his head, he turned and left the room. Outside, Zhang Shou stood guard by the door. Seeing Jin Sheng open it, he quickly stepped aside, his eyes darting curiously toward the interior. "Go on in, but Salty Fish is asleep. Don't disturb him!" Jin Sheng said. Zhang Shou nodded and stepped inside. Seeing Yu Xian encircled by kaleidoscopic bubbles and sleeping soundly inside one of them, an odd question popped into his head: Were these bubbles breathable? If air couldn't get through, wouldn't Yu Xian suffocate? *** A good night's sleep. Yu Xian woke feeling thoroughly refreshed, accompanied by a wonderful, indescribable sensation coursing through him. Sitting up, he belatedly realized he was suspended inside an iridescent bubble. What was more, the bubble felt remarkably familiar, reminiscent of how it felt to manipulate Blood Energy. *A little higher!* At the thought, the bubble faithfully began to rise. He steered it upward, then downward, and finally let it float in lazy circuits around the room. Once he was completely comfortable with it, he lowered the bubble to the floor and stepped out. With a thought, he recalled all the bubbles back into his body. He then raised his right hand, and a golden wisp of energy immediately surfaced at the tip of his index finger. Obeying his intent, the energy rapidly spawned a cluster of tiny bubbles that drifted outward in an instant, twirling through the air just as he envisioned. "My Blood Energy mutated... This energy seems to have acquired a spatial attribute." Yu Xian spent plenty of time reading various articles on the Qilin app and was no longer an ignorant novice in the supernatural world. While Jin Sheng had needed physical contact to assess the bubble's properties, Yu Xian, as their master, could directly perceive everything about them. These bubbles did not float on buoyancy; they were locked to spatial coordinates. Put simply, each bubble was anchored to a specific point in space. So long as Yu Xian did not move it and no outside force shattered it, it would remain fixed to those exact coordinates indefinitely. Recalling his dream from the night before, Yu Xian wore an odd expression. Had he tried to cleave open the heavens and earth in his sleep, only for his lack of strength to produce a massive heap of half-finished projects instead? Strictly speaking, each bubble was an independent pocket of space. If one rounded up, every single bubble counted as a tiny world. And rounding up even further, he had technically succeeded in creating heaven and earth. Well, all right. Even so, it was still far more than a tiny bit short of true world creation. After finishing his examination of the mutated Blood Energy, Yu Xian pressed his right hand against his chest. His heart was beating. Although the rhythm was much slower than that of an ordinary human—around thirty beats per minute—it was undoubtedly beating. That raised the question: what about his new talent? He carefully examined the changes throughout his body. Aside from feeling significantly stronger, he found no obvious new ability. It wasn't until he checked with his Silver Blood that he detected a second heart nestled inside the first. "I... have two hearts?" Sensing the heart within his heart, Yu Xian was completely dumbfounded. He focused his senses on that inner heart, eventually grasping what it did. A broad smile slowly spread across his face. Taking Pangu's Blood this time had yielded an enormous reward.