What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 65: A Torn Tissue

Translator: 549690339

“Chapter 65 A Tissue Paper

Xiang Kun closed his eyes, focusing intently on pinpointing the location of the tissue based on its faint scent, which gave him a surprisingly accurate direction.

This was highly unusual!

Like sound and light, scent also needed time to transmit.

Generally speaking, the transmission speed of a scent was much slower compared to that of light and sound.

However, scents in the natural world were more likely to cling and persist, which paradoxically made them easier to track.

But for a scent to persist, a certain baseline number of scent molecules needed to be present; otherwise, they wouldn’t be detectable by the olfactory system.

Xiang Kun’s sense of smell was far more advanced than that of ordinary people and even surpassed that of hunting dogs.

But the tissue was unscented to start with and had a relatively weak odor requiring fewer scent molecules to trigger a response in the olfactory system. Besides, the influence of other unused tissue odors within the room made it easy to be disturbed.

Generally, even if the tissue were hidden inside his house, relying on scent tracking alone might not lead him precisely to it.

But now, not only had the tissue been bundled into a trash bag, it had also been thrown into a garbage can, an environment rife with competing smells.

Judging by the time, it should indeed have been put on a garbage truck and driven out of the community by now.

Theoretically, there was no way for the scent from that tissue to travel all the way back to him.

Moreover, generally speaking, unless the smell source was potent, and the tracker was within the direct zone of influence, it was challenging to instantly determine the definite origin of the scent source based on the scent.

Just like when he tracked Miss Yang’s lost husky, he followed a trail of individual scented points, stringing them together to estimate its direction.

But now, the scent from that tissue in his mind was able to distinctly point out its direction, so distinctly that even Xiang Kun thought it was an illusion.

You must understand, the same garbage bag contained stronger odors, such as from the rabbit giblets. Yet these scents hadn’t seeped into Xiang Kun’s mind like the tissue’s.

“Should I verify it?”

Xiang Kun decided to set out right away, following the direction of the tissue scent in his mind, to see if he could truly find it.

Otherwise, if he waited a bit more and the garbage truck reached the waste treatment plant, even though the garbage wouldn’t immediately be incinerated, it would be piled up and ferment in the storage pile, making the search exponentially more difficult.

Before leaving, Xiang Kun hesitated but eventually swapped for a more casual long-sleeved shirt and trousers, donning just slippers.

He was prepared to rummage through the garbage if necessary…

After leaving the estate, Xiang Kun called a cab on his phone, and then directed the driver.

The guiding scent from the tissue wasn’t like an average scent-following exercise that needed to be trailed gradually—it directly pointed out its direction and location in his mind.

Under Xiang Kun’s direction, the car sped on until, after a dozen minutes, they reached an intersection and spotted the garbage truck waiting at a red light.

Xiang Kun could clearly sense the scent of the tissue—it wasn’t quite right to say he ‘smelled’ it anymore, it was more like he “sensed” it.

Checking the remaining red light time, Xiang Kun quickly paid the driver and got off, then started running towards the garbage truck.

Xiang Kun jumped onto the side-step of the garbage truck’s driver side, pressing close to the door. Through the half-opened window, he addressed the garbage truck driver who he’d startled.

“Guru! Sorry for bothering you, can we park unseen for a while? I left something crucial in the trash, let me search for it!”

“Get down now! It’s too dangerous! This is against regulations…” the driver shouted.

“Please, that item is crucial to me!” Xiang Kun pleaded, standing on the side-step. Then he placed the only eighty-something dollars he had into the console of the truck.”

I had no choice, these days you don’t need cash when you go out, and I didn’t have time to withdraw cash either…

“Driver, this is all I have with me, let me look through the trash and I’ll transfer two hundred to you via mobile payment to buy water-”

Seeing the traffic light turn green, the driver was helpless and had to drive past the intersection before pulling over.

“We can’t take the money, but you can’t take too long…” The driver reluctantly agreed with Xiang Kun and handed back his eighty-some dollars.

“Thank you! Thank you! I’ll be quick, I won’t delay you too long!” Xiang Kun hastily promised.

In fact, he had already very clearly “sensed” the location of that tissue paper.

Xiang Kun took a deep breath, held his breath, and jumped directly into the garbage truck. It took him less than a minute to find his trash bag.

Although the trash bag did not look different from other bags, Xiang Kun was absolutely sure he had not picked up the wrong one, without having to check. He could tell by the knot tied at the mouth of the bag and his clear “sense” of the tissue paper. He hopped off the truck, carrying the trash bag.

The garbage truck driver and the sanitation workers on board watched Xiang Kun, who was now covered in trash fragments and absolutely reeked, with rather complex expressions.

“That thing must be really important to you, huh? You should be more careful next time, don’t just throw things awav…”

Xiang Kun smiled and nodded. “Extremely important! Thank you so much, I’m sorry for the trouble!”

Watching the garbage truck drive away, Xiang Kun walked off, carrying his trash bag.

Even if he ordered a ride online, he doubted anyone would be willing to pick him up. They might even happily pay the cancellation fee instead.

So, he threw away his slippers and ran barefoot all the way home.

People on the street instinctively moved aside when they saw him, avoiding him far and wide, thinking he was some crazy homeless man.

An hour or so later, freshly showered, Xiang Kun, dressed only in shorts, sat down in his living room and looked at the crumpled tissue sitting on the table.

The clothes he had taken off and the other trash had already been thrown back into the hallway garbage bin. Only the tissue remained.

“Something’s definitely off.”

Considering that the scent in his mind caused by the tissue paper actually led him to the tissue, it proved that his previous sensations were not illusions.

Although the actual smell of the tissue now is not the same as the one that guided him, it’s in his mind.

Could it be that after his 16-hour focus on this tissue, his brain didn’t evolve telekinesis abilities, but instead developed a keen sense of attachment and tracking ability for this tissue?

The scent he had “sensed” from this tissue in his mind from last night till now, was actually the scent memory he had of the tissue from his 16 -hour session. That scent has always stayed the same since then, unlike the tissue’s actual smell.

But it was this scent memory that led him to find the tissue, and allowed him to pinpoint its current location. What the hell?

This concept was completely beyond Xiang Kun’s comprehension.

Without seeing, hearing, or smelling, how come he could still sense it precisely as if it was a guide?

Like he installed a biological GPS on it.

If everything in the universe has electromagnetic waves, could he somehow receive, perceive, and distinguish the ones emitted from the tissue? But that can’t be right, the distance is too far and the electromagnetic waves from the tissue would be too weak.

Could this be Quantum Entanglement? Super-Distance Sensing?

Shit! Up to this point, he had been considering whether to start learning from a specific field in biology or medicine.. Now, should he add Quantum Physics too?