Seven in the morning.
The sun was already quite warm.
Having nothing better to do, Yu Xian began practicing his newly acquired ability.
Standing sideways to Qingniao, he kept his eyes on a tree not far ahead. A bubble formed at his fingertip, and with a flick of his will, he shot it forward. In an instant, it drilled clean through the trunk.
With another thought, the bubble circled around and bored a smooth, neat hole through a boulder.
The bubble was completely unaffected by gravity and carried no momentum of its own. Its speed depended entirely on how quickly Yu Xian's thoughts moved, while its striking power depended on how much force the bubble itself could withstand.
Yu Xian pushed the bubble faster and faster. Once it reached an unknown multiple of the speed of sound, it suddenly popped and vanished.
"The energy membrane forming the bubble couldn't endure the air resistance anymore, so it burst?" Yu Xian murmured thoughtfully.
It was not that the bubble could not go faster, but rather that its energy membrane could not withstand the drag. If the membrane possessed infinite hardness, Yu Xian could easily make it move at sub-light speed—or even the speed of light.
Next, Yu Xian created two more bubbles. This time, he reduced their hardness and increased their elasticity.
He pressed down on the surface of one. It had indeed become far springier. However, because he was not actively maneuvering them, the two bubbles remained fixed to their spatial coordinates, making their bounce exceptionally concentrated.
In short, they were delightfully bouncy. Perhaps they might serve some unexpected purpose under the right circumstances.
*What if I increase the stickiness?*
Another sudden inspiration struck him. Although his Blood Energy had mutated, the properties he had previously developed had not disappeared; in fact, they had grown even stronger.
He formed an intensely adhesive bubble and touched its surface with a finger. Sure enough, his finger was glued fast immediately.
He pulled back hard, but even after exerting all his strength, he could not break free. Unless he was willing to slice off his finger, his entire body was stuck firmly to the bubble.
In truth, breaking the hold was simple enough: one only needed enough force to destroy the bubble. Once it shattered, movement was restored.
The problem was that not many people possessed that kind of strength. It would take at least an Eagle rank or above to potentially break it. If Yu Xian prepared several bubbles in advance to lock down an opponent's leverage points, he could likely restrain even some powerhouses at or above the Eagle rank.
Just then, a bird landed on a nearby tree, watching the two of them intently.
With a mere thought from Yu Xian, a bubble arced around and stuck right to the bird's back, carrying it back into his hand.
Looking at the struggling bird, he asked, "Qingniao, if aberrant worms have already taken host in birds, does doing this still have any point?"
"Trust headquarters. The think tank has certainly accounted for every possibility. If they made this decision, there must be a good reason for it," Qingniao replied casually.
Yu Xian sent the bubble flying into the distance and nodded. "Yeah, I understand. It's just my first time taking part in such a major operation, so I'm a little overly nervous."
He then continued training his ability, making the bubbles spin or attempting to reshape them.
As the sun climbed toward the zenith, the heat grew more intense. Qingniao eventually took out a parasol, opened it, and sat watching Yu Xian train under the blazing sun.
"Salty Fish, are you really a vampire?" Qingniao could not help asking as she watched him bustling with energy in broad daylight.
Yu Xian nodded. "Of course."
"Do you drink blood?" Qingniao asked.
Yu Xian nodded again. "Of course I do. I drank blood just yesterday."
Pangu's Blood was blood too. Since he had drunk it, he was not going to deny it—even if drinking Pangu's Blood had felt terrible. Pangu's memories were far too painful; he even suspected that Pangu might still be trapped in an endless loop of dreaming about splitting open heaven and earth amid primordial chaos.
*Right.*
Yu Xian suddenly remembered that he still had plenty of silver in his storage ring.
He took out a piece of silver, opened his mouth, and drew it into his body as casually as if he were sipping soy milk.
"..."
Watching Yu Xian's actions, Qingniao felt a distinct sense of unreality.
What kind of absurd vampire was this? Basking in the sun and eating silver—the sight was utterly bizarre.
"By the way, how old are you?" Qingniao asked, struck by a sudden thought.
"Seventeen," Yu Xian replied. "How about you?"
"I'm twenty-four. Come to think of it, doesn't a vampire who receives the Embrace stop aging physically at that exact moment? Won't you be seventeen forever from now on?" Qingniao asked after giving her answer.
In truth, whether Embraced or wild, vampires had their bodies frozen at the age they were turned.
Yu Xian smiled and nodded. "That's true. So no matter how many years pass, and no matter who asks, I'll always be seventeen."
"..."
A suspicious expression crept onto Qingniao's face. Had his answer just now been the truth or not?
At that moment, Yu Xian froze, suddenly struck by a very important question.
He looked toward Qingniao and asked, "Qingniao, naturally born vampires grow up, right?"
"Indeed. Even though vampires have a very low reproduction rate, there are still natural-born ones. They're born as babies, and they can't stay babies forever, so they supposedly stop growing once they reach a certain age," Qingniao said with a nod.
Upon hearing that, Yu Xian's mind instantly pictured a future where he still looked just like he did now, while Nora had grown into a tall, mature young woman.
Standing together, they would look like an older sister and younger brother—or maybe even mother and son...
*I wonder what Nora will look like when she grows up.*
*Will she still be as adorably blank as she is now?*
While his thoughts drifted, the Heart of Pangu within his chest gave a sudden thud.
Shaking off his scattered daydreaming, he pressed a hand to his chest and thought with anticipation, *I should be able to awaken my first divine ability of Pangu tomorrow.*
It would be ideal if he hit the jackpot on his first try and drew the Pangu Immortality Divine Ability right away.
Of course, if he did not get it on the first attempt, the Pangu Herculean Divine Ability would be perfectly acceptable too.
*Well...*
Even if it was not the Pangu Herculean Divine Ability, the Pangu Void-Rending Divine Ability sounded pretty good as well.
While he was envisioning the future, deep within a cavern in the mountain range, several personalities of Zhou Tai were controlling different bodies, sitting together in grim and solemn deliberation.
"It seems we're surrounded," Zhou Tai Number Two said.
Zhou Tai Number Three was unusually serious. "This is truly troublesome. The other side has probably figured out our weakness."
"Then let's slaughter them all! Kill every last one of them!" Zhou Tai Number Five sprang to his feet in excitement, his voice thick with murderous intent.
Zhou Tai Number Two frowned. "The priority right now is finding a way to get the original body out. As long as the primary body doesn't die, none of us will die."
Even though the Boss had been replaced by an aberrant worm, their existence stemmed from the Boss's illness. Thus, they all shared a single root: the aberrant worm version of the Boss. If that aberrant worm was slain, all of them would perish.
Naturally, they had never revealed such a massive vulnerability to Chen Qingsong, nor had they ever spoken of it aloud in the past.
None of the Zhou Tais could understand how the humans had managed to figure this out.
Chapter 37