What It's Like Being a Vampire

Early in the morning, Zhou Rui and his squadmates split into two teams to investigate the mountains.

Fang Pingfang, Mijoe, and Gao Shu took equipment and headed to Wushu Mountain, while Zhou Rui went to Chongyun Mountain with Li Shibao and Ye Chong.

However, when passing through Chongyun Village, since the road in the village had just been repaired, their car did not drive straight to the foot of the mountain as before. At Zhou Rui’s suggestion, they took a few laps in the village along the newly repaired road.

Feeling a significant change in the village, Zhou Rui even asked Li Shibao to stop the car and asked Ye Chong to launch the drone they brought with them to shoot the overall situation of Chongyun Village from a high altitude.

“It seems that it has been more than half a month since we last went into the mountains, right? The changes are too dramatic.” Zhou Rui wondered.

Li Shibao, however, calmly said while watching the footage from the drone, “As long as there’s enough money, this speed is nothing at all. Last time we went into the mountains, the road into Chongyun Village was almost finished. Extending it into the village wouldn’t take much work. And installing those street lights and such is even simpler.”

Zhou Rui frowned and said, “The question is… what is this small village planning to do with such a large-scale construction?”

According to the footage from the drone, Chongyun Village had not only repaired the roads inside and outside the village in a short period of time, but there were also construction sites in many places, and their scale was not small.

“Does this have anything to do with what we’re investigating?” Li Shibao wondered, “It’s obvious that Jianzhou City is increasing its investment in the Tongshi Town area. Haven’t you noticed that when we went to Tongshi Town for dinner a few days ago, there were noticeably more cars and people on the road, and many stores were being renovated, becoming busier?”

Zhou Rui nodded and did not refute. He just held his tablet showing the drone’s footage and asked Ye Chong in the distance, “Chong, do you know what these construction sites are for?”

Ye Chong came over, looked at the places Zhou Rui pointed at, said, “Wait a moment,” and then checked on his tablet. He said, “The ones on the outskirts of the village are all breeding bases and farms under construction. The one near the village here should be a research base under construction, and it’s related to breeding and the Internet.”

Then, as if Ye Chong remembered something, he looked up at Zhou Rui, “If you call me ‘Chong’ again, believe it or not, I’ll shave your eyebrows off while you’re sleeping.”

Zhou Rui laughed and said, “Okay, I won’t call you ‘Chong’. I’ll learn from Hua Hua. I’ll call you Xiao Ye!”

If it had been a few months ago when they had just met, Ye Chong would certainly have seriously told Zhou Rui not to give him nicknames. But now… he just rolled his eyes and didn’t bother to say more.

Because they had spent a lot of time together during this period, they were very familiar with each other’s personality. Zhou Rui knew that he wouldn’t really get mad at a joke, and Ye Chong knew… if he didn’t let Zhou Rui call him “Xiao Ye”, this guy would definitely come up with other nicknames and certainly wouldn’t just call him by his name.

Next, they didn’t go directly into the mountains, but at Zhou Rui’s request, they went to the construction site of the so-called Internet and breeding-related research base.

As Fang Pingfang had instructed, their trip to Chongyun Mountain was Zhou Rui’s responsibility and he made all the decisions. So even though Li Shibao and Ye Chong felt that Chongyun Village was irrelevant to their investigation, they followed him around anyway.

As the off-road vehicle slowed down near the construction site, a tall and thin young man came over, waving, “You can’t park here, please park over there.”

Li Shibao still parked the car at a suitable place outside the construction site. As Zhou Rui descended from the car, he said, “We are just here to have a look and then leave; we won’t stay for long.”

The tall, skinny young man who had just taken over his brother, Liu Gaoshang, as the technician at the construction site, was staring blankly at Li Shibao and Ye Chong, who had just alighted the vehicle. He watched as they directly bypassed him and headed into the construction site, feeling somewhat helpless.

“Hey… this is a construction site, there’s really nothing to see!” Recalling his brother’s instructions, Liu Gaoshang quickly caught up and tried to stop the three of them.

Zhou Rui smiled and showed an identification card to him saying, “I heard that this place is going to have a research base. We are ‘researchers’ from Taiyu Biological Laboratory in Citong City. We are also doing scientific research and would like to take a look inside… ”

His identification card was authentic. The Taiyu Laboratory was backed by “Divine Technology”. Although neither of the six of them had ever been to the Taiyu Laboratory, it had always been their shield when they were investigating various incidents in Haixi Province. Many of their investigations were directly applied to the locals, which brought them many conveniences.

Upon hearing that they were scientists, Liu Gaoshang froze for a second, he was undecided. Although he and his brother had terrible grades growing up, under his brother’s influence, he held a high respect for those with high education and scientific researchers. The “Dr. Xia” who was always with Mr. Xiang and seemed to understand everything, reinforced their thinking that biologists are indeed very impressive.

“Are you part of the construction team? Do you know who is responsible for this research base?” As Zhou Rui spoke, he signaled Ye Chong to take some pictures, and also to bring over the drone to take a birds-eye view.

Just as Liu Gaoshang was dumbfounded and didn’t know how to respond, his brother, Liu Zhengyi, who had been on duty at the construction site all night and just changed shifts after eating breakfast, saw strangers on the site, he came over and asked his brother, “Who are these people?”

Zhou Rui and Ye Chong both dressed and looked scholarly. Liu Zhengyi treated them well, thinking that they might be friends of Mr. Xiang.

“They came from some Thailand Laboratory…” Liu Gaoshang quickly came over and quietly updated his brother. Of course, he did not clearly hear a lot of details and could only provide a rough idea.

However, as soon as Liu Zhengyi heard, he immediately judged that these three people were not there to see Mr. Xiang. They were not clear about the actual use of the construction site or who was behind it.

“I apologize, we are in charge of security here and outsiders are not allowed to enter. You can see that none of you are wearing hard hats; it violates the rules of safe production. Please kindly step away.” Liu Zhengyi said politely, but firmly. He stood in front of the three of them, gently gesturing with his both hands for them to leave.

Although Liu Zhengyi was not tall, he had a strong and sturdy physique. He had an unruly spirit that made Zhou Rui and Ye Chong subconsciously move out of the construction site’s gates. As for Li Shibao, he initially did not see the need to come here and check out the construction site, so naturally, he would not want to have any conflict with the Liu brothers.

Although Zhou Rui found the construction site to be quite strange and felt it did not seem like an agricultural research facility, he didn’t find the need to insist on entering.

If they really want to investigate something, they could send a drone to scout or directly apply for a permit from the sponsors. There was no need to argue with the construction site staff.

“Brother, we are conducting a study on ants. Being a local, can you please tell us, have you seen this sort of ant while living here?” Zhou Rui said while displaying a clear image of an ant on his tablet to Liu Zhengyi.

You see, it’s a flying ant, a male reproductive one. It’s a bit larger, shorter wings, and these veins on its wings…and these antennae…”

While Zhou Rui was introducing patiently and in detail, Liu Zhengyi chuckled, “Who would look so closely at an ant? If you want to find ants, you can look in the bushes nearby or in the mountains, there will be plenty.”

Zhou Rui smiled and again asked, “Have you seen any other strange insects? Or…birds?”

“I haven’t.” Said Liu Zhengyi very affirmatively, after a slight pause, he asked, “Why does your laboratory in Thailand study bugs and birds?”

Zhou Rui was taken aback, “Thailand? We’re not a lab from Thailand, we’re a local lab… Oh, did the brother just overheard us wrong? We’re Taiyu Laboratory, located in Citong City.” As he spoke, he took out his badge for display again, but when he was about to put it back, he found it had been gripped by Liu Zhengyi.

Liu Zhengyi scrutinized the credential, then took out his phone, searched the web based on the information on it, found the company’s number and dialed it.

Through the phone call, after confirming the authenticity of Zhou Rui’s credentials and identity, he finally let go, returned the credentials, and apologized, “Sorry, our village committee takes security very seriously, after all, we have had escaped convicts rampant here before.”

Seeing Zhou Rui and the others leaving the construction site, returning to the car, and moving towards the village again, Liu Gao raised some concerns, “Brother, the strange bird they mentioned… it couldn’t be that huge golden dove on Mr. Xiang’s car last night, could it? Is that bird a protected species? Did they come here to investigate Xiang?”

Liu Zhengyi scolded, “What giant golden dove? That’s a canary! An ornamental bird! Just a bit fatter than usual!”

Nevertheless, he picked up his phone and called Xiang Kun to inform him of the ongoing investigation by the trio. He didn’t suspect that they were after Mr. Xiang, instead he suspected that they might be working on the same project as Xiang and Dr. Xia, and might possibly be competitors. He remembered that after two escaped convicts had been struck dead by lightning in Chongyun Mountain, many outsiders had entered the mountain. Besides self-proclaimed web influencers and curious tourists, many were researchers.

On the other hand, upon returning to the car, Zhou Rui said, “Those two guys seem a little wary of us? But there is no reason to…”

As Li Shibao manipulated the off-road vehicle to turn around, he also said, “When you mentioned ‘birds’, the tall one glanced at the short one. They may not have been telling the truth.”

Zhou Rui seemed to be lost in thought, then he said to Ye Chong, “Help me contact the company or the institution behind that construction site. I want to see who’s building that research center.”

While executing the query as requested, Ye Chong asked, “Isn’t our investigation target supposed to be in the Chongyun Mountain area? Why are you so fixated on this village?”

Zhou Rui said, “Don’t forget, the first time I found the ‘Ghost Beard Ant’, was on the bustling pedestrian street of Tongshi Town. Although we later found some traces of suspected ‘Ghost Beard Ant’ activity in the Chongyun Mountain area, their main gathering and dwelling place might just be Chongyun Village.”

“Ghost Beard Ant” was the name Zhou Rui gave to the unique ants he had discovered.

“Do you still think that the ‘giant raptor’ we found in Wushu Mountain and the ‘Ghost Beard Ant’ have a direct relationship?” asked Ye Chong.

“Yes, I think so.”

Zhou Rui nodded with certainty, though he did not speak out more of his reasoning.

Besides the solid evidence he used to convince Dr. Fang, his team, and Mr. Liang, there was also a significant reason based on a recurring dream he had been having.

In the dream, he was continuously researching a character with his mentor, a character which was a “door” enclosing a “bird”, pronounced as “niè”, interchangeable with the character “”>".

In the dream, he thought the “”>" character represented Haixi Province, but because of various reasons, the abbreviation for Haixi province changed from “”>" to “閩”.

Although after waking up and searching online, he found that the claim of “”>" representing Haixi province was entirely far-fetched, and there was no record of it changing from “”>" to “閩”, this was entirely a hypothetical idea from the dream, and the mentor in the dream was teaching him nonsense.

But the strange character, a “bird” enclosed by a “door”, continually linked the “giant raptor” and its discovered “Ghost Beard Ant” together in Zhou Rui’s mind. The more he sought a connection between the two, the more his inquiry direction was solidified.

Moreover, Fang Pingfang, Chen Tianhua, even Mr. Liang all were persuaded by his various pieces of evidence. Although this evidence was more theoretical rather than verified, but they have accepted his speculation that the hypothetically fickle for the “giant raptor” boasted at Wushu Mountain, invisible insects hunted by the “giant raptor”, and the “Ghost Beard Ant” found in Tongshi were the same creatures at different stages of life.

Of course, he did not mention that recurring dream to others because he felt that this dream and the strange dream about rabbit meat he had in the Qinling uninhabited area were different. This dream should have been produced by his consciousness, without being influenced by external factors.

However, he didn’t realize that although he remembered the contents of the dreams when he was awake, he had never actively attempted to recollect the appearance of the mentor who taught him about the peculiar character in his dream.

Of course, he was unaware that the dream tutor, just like the man Mijoe dreamed of who was pushing her swing, was a paper man with a panda body and a face that looked like Jacky Cheung, looking just like an emoji.

…

As everyone in the courtyard had just finished breakfast, Liu Caifu brought three unknown people.

Liu Caifu said to Xiang Kun cheerfully, “Mr. Xiang, these folks are researchers from your hometown’s ‘Taiyu Laboratory’ in Citong City. They know about the research base you’re building here in the village, have great admiration for you, and wanted to meet you.” He continued in a lower voice: “I’ve checked their identities. They really are from the ‘Taiyu Laboratory’.”

Xiang Kun nodded with a smile, and then looked at Zhou Rui, Li Shibao, and Ye Chong, who were standing at the entrance to the courtyard.

This was their first time seeing Xiang Kun, but Xiang Kun, on the other hand, was already well acquainted with them.

Not only did he notice them when his drone flew over their heads, but Liu Zhengyi also voluntarily called to “report” after their visit to the construction site. Thanks to the “super-connected objects”, surveillance cameras, and Alice’s targeted invasion of the “Divine Technology” dedicated network scattered throughout the village, every move of the three, what they said, and what they did, were all under his watchful eye.

Zhou Rui and his team’s purpose in visiting Chongyun village and Chongyun Mountain, he was very clear about. In fact, this was all deliberately instigated and maneuvered by him and Old Xia.

After Alice took control of the vast amounts of data and dedicated networks of “Divine Technology”, and with “emotion-infused objects”, “super-connected objects” that had been placed beside Mijoe, Zhou Rui, and Fang Pingfang, Xiang Kun had already established full control over this investigative team through their communication information, electronic device records, dreamland inquiries, and tips.

Furthermore, the “Ghost Beard Ant” that Zhou Rui named, which are the second or third generations of “001” and “002” mutant ants, and the “mutant big bird” of which Xiang Kun also temporarily didn’t know its whereabouts, are all “bait” used by Xiang Kun to observe the detailed operation mechanism of “Divine Technology”, to help him answer various mysteries.

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