Chapter 24: Blood Magic Failure
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Vivian was persistent. She squeezed out another drop of flesh blood and applied it onto the back of Hao Ren’s hand. Lily joined them curiously as they fixed their eyes on the drop of blood expectantly.
The blood emanated a golden red halo as it wriggled on the surface of the skin for a few seconds before collapsing quickly on its own and disappearing before their eyes.
"It looks like its being absorbed." Hao Ren flinched and scratched the back of his hand. He was shocked as the blood on his hand had come to life. He managed not to shake it off, knowing that Vivian, the vampire would not harm him. "I felt nothing—just a little itchy and cool sensation in the beginning."
"That’s normal because the body temperature of one from the Blood Clan is a few degrees lower than a human’s." Vivian looked at her finger. The tiny bite wound had already healed itself. She was hesitant for a moment after which, she took another bite and squeezed out another drop of blood. "Let’s try this once last time then, I’ll need to conserve my precious life fluid."
"C’mon, it’s just a teeny-tiny drop of blood," Lily, as mischievous as ever, seized the opportunity to mock her.
"A drop of blood is still blood!" Vivian hit back. "Back in the days when I was not yet adapted to human food, I fed on fresh blood. I was always being watched by monster hunters while I was out for blood. I was so broke and couldn’t even afford to keep a blood slave—I even had to save my vital fluid during that time of the month just to make ends meet. You have no idea how the seamy side of life is unless you’ve lived it..."
Hao Ren could not take it anymore. He butt in before things got out of hand. "Alright, alright, we can picture it in our brains. Stop wailing about your miserable past so openly. You might expose my weaknesses..."
"Landlord, how about waiving a month’s rental for me?" Lily jested.
"...I was talking to Vivian, mind you."
Amid the brouhaha, Vivian tested her blood on Hao Ren again, murmuring some ancient incantations. Hao Ren felt the chill and stink of blood again. The blood wriggled for a moment on his skin before disappearing just like before.
"The connection’s lost." Vivian frowned. "This has never happened before. The Blood Clan have have a live link with their blood, sort of like a communication link. The link stays connected as long as the blood isn’t actively cast away."
"Then what?" Hao Ren scratched his face. "Can I still count on you?" he asked.
"Maybe we should try Lily’s blood?" Vivian’s eyebrows waggled as she turned her eyes on Lily. "Her blood may work."
"A werewolf’s blood?" Lily was surprised by the suggestion. "I didn’t know that my blood could be of use."
"No, I mean haven’t you heard the Chinese saying, ‘A black dog’s blood can break the power of evil spells’?"
The two super girls were at it again, fighting like cats and dogs. Meanwhile, Hao Ren looked on with no intention to break up the fight. He only said, "You break it, you pay for it." He was referring to the things in the house and his old table.
Those six words did wonders; the ruckus stopped.
Hao Ren looked at his hands—they were no different from any other hands. He was curious as to how the vampire’s blood could be absorbed by his skin. The outcome was unlike any magical power depicted in the vampire movies. It seemed like it could not even be compared to human blood. Of course, movies were not the right places to dig if one wanted the truth but, as far as the Blood Clan was concerned, the magical power was as real as it got. At the very least, human blood would normally never come to life and wriggle on its own.
"The Blood Clan’s mark is not working in this case." Vivian looked at Hao Ren as if she had more tricks up her sleeve. "You’ve got to trust me this time. Be ready for the magic of Blood Clan— without blood as a medium!"
"Show me what you’ve got." Hao Ren giggled.
"You’re quite a nice guy," Vivian flipped her hand open as she rattled on. "Most humans were not as compliant as you are unless they were simpletons. When I was in Europe 300 years ago, people over there would rather die than give in to my blood magic. They were such pig-heads!"
Hao Ren muttered as he wondered whether Vivian had forgotten how vampires terrorized humans with their magic.
Vivian signaled Hao Ren to sit still while she drew something in the air with her finger. Hao Ren gaped because for the first time ever, he was about to witness true magic. He was amazed at the sight of her finger moving swiftly and forming a bloody-red trail of light. She wrote row after row of strange, illegible words; she would wipe off what she had written before continuing on to the next row. As she was doing that, Hao Ren suddenly became skeptical. He found that her so-called magic of the Blood Clan was nothing more than a text memorizing gimmick. He did not feel any magical power apart from the eye-catching special effects.
Her finger moved faster as she wrote. She kept wiping off the sentence before starting the next one, again and again, it went on. Hao Ren was cheesed off and could not hold back. "Are you done yet?"
"Wait a minute, that one isn’t right. I have to rewrite it..."
Hao Ren was speechless.
Only then, it began to sink in. The reason behind her repetitive writing and wiping was simply because she was making mistakes!
"That’s not right either," Vivian had not noticed that Hao Ren was already annoyed. She kept on writing for a while before shaking her head. Then she said, "It couldn’t possibly be a mistake. I have revised the sentence three times in three different structures... Landlord, do you feel drowsy, peaceful or relaxed?"
"There is a peaceful feeling in my heart but, I guess your magic has got nothing to do with it."
"You, the big dog over there…" Vivian turned to Lily. "Freeze."
Vivian waved her hand and the bloody-red trails of words were transformed into a cloud of fog. Lily fell, snoring on the table as the fog engulfed her.
"...That was intense. Her defense is rather weak," Vivian frowned again as she spoke to Hao Ren. "I have no idea why my blood magic doesn’t work on you."
Hao Ren was wide-eyed. He stared at his own hands in disbelief. "Am I something I don’t know? Am I immune against magic by default?"
"Yeah, I guess so because your nerves are damaged and you’re a slowpoke."
"Hey, mind you, you still owe me some money."
"Jokes aside, immunity against magic isn’t possible as far as I know. I’m sensitive to all living things and I can sense that you’re definitely just a normal human being. You weren’t even immune against the chill I created! You may get your answer from Raven 12345 when you see her. Anyway, as far as your agreement with her goes, I sense that there is something fishy going on. There could be changes by the time you return. Until then, you shall use my amulet."
After all the commotion, things were back to square one as blood magic was nothing more than a juggling act. All he had was a piece of amulet—the Eight Trigrams, which was a mystic tablet Vivian claimed to have originated from Mount Wutai...
Vivian gave the Eight Trigrams to Hao Ren; it was one of the amulets in her vast collection of mystic items. Her concern for him had touched his heart.
However, did the Eight Trigrams work?
Chapter 25: About The Other Kind
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
For three consecutive nights, Hao Ren did not have a bad dream and he firmly believed that the Eight Trigrams Vivian gave him had nothing to do with it.
First of all, he knew for a fact that the tablet of Eight Trigrams was not an amulet but a tool to map Feng Shui energy. Second of all, he found a small print at the edge of the trigrams. It was the name of the manufacturer, which appeared to be from the Sichuan province.
However, he kept mum about it.
Although he was relieved by the absence of bad dreams, the mystery of the wolf fur still hung over his head. He had a feeling that unusual creatures could be watching him in the dark. Nevertheless, he was an optimist and decided to meet Raven 12345 again to talk it over. Until then, he resolved to let nothing bother him.
In fact, he had attempted to look for Raven 12345 a couple of days ago but he did not manage to see the weird Goddess.
Hao Ren followed the same route—he took a bus to Bastard Barrio and reached the telephone pole with the Chinese medicine bill on it. He was then teleported to the inverted mansion somewhere in another dimension. So, he figured that since he could come back to the mansion the same way he did the first time, it was not a dream. However, he did not manage to see Raven 12345. There were only a few blue, foggy figures patrolling the property. It was obvious that they were slaves working for Raven 12345. The blue, foggy figures seemed to be highly intelligent creatures but they spoke no human language. Naturally, there was no communication between them.
One of the blue, foggy figures then handed Hao Ren a note. It was from Raven 12345. She said that she went on a business trip to the Centaurus constellation for a few days. If she found the trip enjoyable it might be a few years before she would be coming back.
Right after that, Hao Ren was ushered out of the mansion.
"She’s being absurd."
He browsed some magazines in the living room with the air-conditioning on full blow. His mind was still on his last trip to the Bastard Barrio office of the Space Administration. The trip left a bad taste in his mouth. He could not wait to see Raven 12345 to clear all his doubts. He felt like he was being engulfed by a thick fog. He had lost all direction, and just did not know where to start. Raven 12345, the nutty Goddess, was the only person who could help clear his head.
Her obsessive compulsive disorder would have driven him crazy if not for his good emotional intelligence.
While Vivian and Lily were around, he had the opportunity to learn a thing or two about them and ‘the other kind’.
‘The other kind’ was a term Hao Ren randomly chose to refer to Vivian and Lily the day he met them. They both seemed to be comfortable with it.
It was not possible to trace back the origin of ‘the other kind’. They existed alongside human civilization and there were various records as well as legends about them. They were brutally persecuted by the church during medieval times as well as by the Chinese dynasties. Their stories were then incorporated into literature and folklore. For people living in this modern age, creatures like vampires, werewolves, monsters and spirits of the dead are merely fictitious characters in horror stories and thrillers .However, they appeared in the flesh and were seen by various eye-witnesses during the earlier periods.
‘The other kind’ were treated as a threat to humanity. Though there was no account of the earliest conflict, the war between ‘the other kind’ and humans began long before recorded history. In spite of that, stories of friendship did exist. During the Caveman era, they were depicted in the drawings of monsters, Gods or half-beast, half-human creatures on the cave walls. Some of them were results of creative exaggeration and humans with structural birth defects due marrying their cousins. The rest were truly ‘the other kind’.
They were a part of early human history; their role was that of the antagonists.
Vivian was from that early era but, her memory was messed up probably because she was a bit long in the tooth. Nevertheless, she still recalled bits and pieces; one bit which Hao Ren heard about was that of Zeus—God of the skies and thunder.
During the early ages, ‘the other kind’ had many unfair advantages over human kind; they had super perception, longevity, nine lives and were also highly intelligent. The rise of human kind’s absolute rule however, had driven ‘the other kind’ into becoming monsters of terror. Despite that, there were exceptions. The exact cause of their fall was not clear but there were three possible reasons: firstly, as human kind became more civilized and developed, they started developing various tools as well as weaponry, becoming more united and powerful. The widely scattered creatures were no match for humans on their own. In the end, they were defeated one by one. Secondly, their downfall was due to some mysterious entity and thirdly, the emergence of monster hunters.
The third factor was also the most impactful.
Monster hunters had a partial human lineage but no one could accurately tell their exact origin. Their emergence saw a worldwide hunt for ‘the other kind’. The term ‘monster hunter’ did exactly exist in the beginning. It was only coined by the European Council during the medieval period and popularized thereafter. The European continent was the last place on earth still ravaged by ‘the other kind’ then. Most of them had already been wiped out from the rest of the world by the human-monster hunter alliance. Terms for various species which constituted ‘the other kind’ and the term, ‘monster hunter’ were finalized during that time in Europe.
From being kings of the world to fugitives, ‘the other kind’ were edged out from the world’s history.
This alternate history completely destroyed Hao Ren’s worldviews.
He then started to show more interest in the two super girls in his house.
Lily was a relatively young werewolf—dozens of years at most. She was all brawn and no brains She did not have much stories of werewolves to tell. Vivian on the other hand, was on the opposite end of the spectrum; she was from the prestigious Blood Clan who had lived as long as the existence of human civilization. Oddly, she barely remembered her own stories except bits and pieces of them. Also, she slept anywhere she felt like. She was unlike her kind which were hell-bent on terrorizing humans. She spent most of her time battling her own bad days. Suffice to say, as far as vampires went, she was the black sheep of the Blood Clan.
To human kind however, she was a human-friendly girl.
All in all, she fell between two stools.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
10 Power
stone You may also Like
Paragraph comment