When Xiang Kun returned to his city, it was half past eight in the evening. A strong stench poured out the instant he opened his apartment door.
It was as expected. His cage in the kitchen still housed three rabbits. There had been no one to clear the rabbit waste for around five days.
Xiang Kun opened all the windows and doors of the kitchen for ventilation. Then he went to the cage to examine the rabbits.
Before leaving, he had stuffed all the leftover vegetable leaves in his fridge into the cage and filled the drinking tray.
He had no time or energy to think about how long he would be gone for and whether it would be enough for the rabbits. He wasn’t keeping them as pets. They were food.
He thought the rabbits would have starved to death. To his amusement, although they were at the verge of death, they were definitely still alive.
Xiang Kun considered killing the rabbits right away and feasting on their blood. But he decided that he would keep to his usual schedule.
Moreover, he had the intention to carry out more experiments. There was more preparation to be done.
So, Xiang Kun cleared the cage and then found an “ancient” apple left behind by the previous tenant from the fridge. He cut it into thin slices and fed the rabbits.
Of course, he wouldn’t go buy food for the rabbits at this hour.
After a shower, he sat down in front of his laptop. He opened the document and documented what he had learned during the journey in the mountains.
Apart from that, he summarized according to his own understanding of the techniques in comprehending the chirping of birds described by Prof Li’s daughter.
He was pretty interested in developing this skill. With his extraordinary hearing capabilities, it should be easy to learn.
But he was more interested in Prof Li himself.
Prof Li had shown no interest in discussing supernatural mutations and vampires with him. However, Prof Li’s specialization and working environment qualified him as the most suitable person who could help Xiang Kun uncover the reason for his transformation.
Naturally, it might be nothing but wishful thinking. Xiang Kun wouldn’t reveal anything at this stage. He wouldn’t even contact Prof Li in the near future.
Xiang Kun was uncertain whether Prof Li was really willing to help him. There was always the possibility that Prof Li would immediately publish a paper on the huge discovery once he learned about Xiang Kun’s secrets and disregard any previous promises.
Unless they could forge a close relationship or their interests were aligned, Xiang Kun definitely wouldn’t allow his safety to hang by the thin thread of someone else’s morality.
Overall, despite spending almost an entire feasting cycle away, it was definitely a fruitful journey.
Furthermore, the time he had spent in the mountains was another form of integrated training. It had helped him better master the power he had obtained from the blood of the giant owl.
But the journey wasn’t perfect. The main aims were to find out how the owl had grown so big, to search for other mutated animals, and to investigate why the owl had left its original habitat for the city area.
He wasn’t expecting to achieve anything with the first two. But the fact that he had found nothing about the third was making him uneasy.
There was no seasonal migration for this type of owl. They usually wouldn’t leave their natural habitat and enter a densely populated urban area.
In that mountainous region, there couldn’t be any predators. Even if there were lions or tigers, they should’ve actually been afraid of the owl.
Moreover, from the behavior of the owl and the pieces of memory Xiang Kun had received, it was not difficult to tell that the owl knew how dangerous humans were. When it was in the urban area, it had tried its best to avoid humans and not get discovered. It had even deliberately buried the remains of its prey.
Hence, it was very unnatural for it to appear near the city.
If its appearance near Xiang Kun’s estate meant it had come for Xiang Kun, then it would have to fly to the garbage bins to find the rabbits Xiang Kun had disposed of in order to track Xiang Kun’s smell.
He would never be convinced that the owl could “sense” him from 50 kilometers away.
There had to be something forcing it to migrate.
It was not because of the environment or the presence of a predator… Could it be the lack of food?
This was also unlikely. After its mutation, the owl hunted for more prey of increasing size. Nevertheless, the mountainous area was vast. It was hard for it to run out of blood so fast.
Or…
Could the blood of a normal animal no longer satiate it, so it needed the blood of other mutated animals?
This was only Xiang Kun’s guess. There was no evidence in the mountains or the owl’s memory.
However, he felt that it was still the most probable reason and the one that made the most sense.
When he first smelled the scent left by the giant owl, his body had prompted him to pay more attention to it.
Perhaps it was their nature for mutated creatures to kill one another for their blood?
This alarmed him. Would there be a day when he would also need the blood of other mutated creatures in place of rabbit blood?
The second morning, he left really early for groceries. It was to prepare his feast and also his experiments.
He had already returned home at 9 AM. The first experiment would soon commence.
He used a single-use syringe with a capacity of 10 mL to extract some of his blood. He then injected the blood into two rabbits. He had searched online on how to give rabbits intravenous injections.
He filled another syringe with his saliva diluted with water and injected the content into two other rabbits.
He had brought home five rabbits today. On top of the three he had, there were eight rabbits at home. But the four he was using for experiments were the ones he had just bought today. They looked very lively.
He moved the four experiment rabbits into two separate cages and started his stopwatch while observing.
He wanted to see if his blood and saliva would infect other creatures and cause them to mutate.
After all, movies and novels always wrote that those who didn’t die from a vampire’s bite would turn into one.
He didn’t want to bite the rabbits. But if biting worked, then injecting his bodily fluids into the rabbit’s veins should do the same job.
However, the four rabbits showed little change except for being less vigorous after half an hour.
Of course, he didn’t plan to observe for only half an hour. He connected his computer to two cheap video cameras he had bought. He was going to record videos to closely observe the rabbits for a long period of time.
He then put the rabbits aside. He was going to start the second experiment.
He placed four glasswares on the table together with four stoppers.