Ken lay down to sleep at 8:07 p.m. on August 5th. Based on his previous records, he should have awakened sometime after 9 p.m. on August 6th.
But when he opened his eyes and picked up his phone to check the timer he had set before falling asleep, he froze.
32:15:34.
He had slept for thirty-two hours?!
A glance at the date and time display made it even clearer: it was already past four in the morning on August 7th.
Something was wrong.
Frowning, Ken closed his eyes and focused inward, carefully sensing the changes in his body after this round of blood-drinking.
Compared with the previous cycles—blood-drinking, deep sleep, awakening—the changes this time felt noticeably weaker.
Of course, the improvements were still there. His muscles were stronger, and his senses—smell, hearing, vision—had all been enhanced to a certain degree. Yet compared with earlier awakenings, especially the last one, when the world itself had seemed utterly transformed in a visceral, overwhelming way, the difference was unmistakable.
In other words, the mutation—or evolution—had slowed.
Was this related to the longer period of sleep?
Or was it because his intake had been insufficient?
After all, even after drinking 170 milliliters of rabbit blood, he had still felt hungry.
Moreover, the drowsiness that followed this feeding had been noticeably weaker than before.
The amount he drank this time was not significantly different from previous sessions. The one before that had been only 165 milliliters—less, in fact.
Which meant there was only one plausible explanation: his demand for blood had increased.
To verify that, however, he would have to wait until the next feeding. He had no intention of breaking his established rhythm now.
He glanced at the meat rabbit still being kept by the bathroom door and thought that next time, he would probably need to draw blood from two rabbits instead of one.
What followed was the standard post-awakening procedure. He weighed himself, measured his body dimensions, took photographs, tested changes in vision, hearing, and smell, measured breath-holding time, tracked wound recovery speed, and recorded his body temperature.
Since shifting away from extreme weight training toward endurance- and agility-focused workouts, the increase in his muscle circumference had slowed considerably. His weight, however, continued to rise steadily after each feeding. It had now reached ninety-four kilograms.
Standing just under one meter eighty, Ken looked solid if he wore a tank top or fitted clothes—his chest and lats were especially pronounced—but no one would guess he weighed nearly one hundred ninety pounds.
He believed that after changing his training style, although his muscle size was growing more slowly, the quality of his muscle had improved dramatically. If a piece of his muscle and that of an ordinary adult male were cut to the same volume and weighed, his would likely be significantly heavier.
As for wound healing, the recovery time for knife cuts was twelve minutes and twenty-three seconds—an improvement over the previous thirteen minutes, though not by a wide margin.
His body temperature had dropped again as well, from twenty-eight degrees Celsius to twenty-seven point six. Clearly, the decrease was not a one-time event, but a gradual decline that had begun with his very first blood-drinking.
Once he finished recording all the data, Ken checked his phone. Several new messages had come in on WeChat.
One was from a tenant, informing him that the apartment had been cleared on August 6th and was ready for inspection whenever he had time, after which the deposit could be refunded.
Another was from his mother, asking how his job and health were going. Since he had sent her a message before falling asleep to explain that he would be unreachable, she had not panicked or called him directly.
There was also a message from Zhu Ke'er—just a playful peeking emoji.
It was too early to reply to any of them. Dawn was approaching; it would be better to respond sometime in the morning.
After giving it some thought, Ken began drafting the training plan for the next five-day cycle.
Today, he would go inspect the apartment, clean it up, and then move in.
He had already discussed the situation with his current landlord. The rent for this month had been paid in full, giving the landlord a buffer to find a new tenant. Moving out would not be a problem.
Once he relocated to his own place, he would have far more private space, allowing him to conduct many kinds of training indoors.
That area, though developing rapidly and already well populated, still offered more secluded spots than his current neighborhood—places suitable for more "sensitive" forms of training.
He remembered that three or four kilometers from the residential complex, there was a small mountain and a sizable lake. A developer had once acquired land there, intending to build a high-end villa district—after all, it was nestled between hills and water—but for some unknown reason, construction had never begun.
Still, after moving, there was another issue Ken could no longer avoid.
Money.
On July 11th, when the company collapsed and he became unemployed, years of hard work evaporating overnight, he had felt frustrated, stifled, and bitter. For the first time in many years, he had gone out alone to drown his sorrows in alcohol.
At the time, however, he still had some savings. He did not believe he would be unable to find another job. With his technical skills, even if he wasn't highly sought after or lavishly paid, securing a position that allowed him to survive comfortably in the city should have been easy enough.
His original dream over those working years had been to help a company go public, obtain equity, see his assets skyrocket, perhaps even achieve financial freedom early. To live in a school-district apartment, drive a luxury car, marry a beautiful and well-educated wife, have several children, bring his parents to live nearby, and buy them a home of their own…
But now, everything was different.
When his body first began to mutate, his primary concern had been survival—whether this "condition" could be cured, whether it would kill him.
Yet now, nearly a month later—after five instances of blood-drinking, starting with chicken blood, and six rounds of mutation—the fear of death and the terror of bodily change had steadily faded.
In their place had risen an ever-growing curiosity, and an unmistakable sense of excitement.
There was no doubt that with each mutation, his body was gradually surpassing the limits of ordinary humanity, whether in sensory perception or other physical capabilities.
He desperately wanted to know just how far this mutation—this evolution—could go.
Whether he was becoming a vampire or some other unknown existence hardly mattered. What he could clearly feel was that the direction of change was toward greater strength.
Asking him now to return to work was unrealistic. On one hand, certain aspects of his condition made prolonged close contact with people risky; it would be too easy to expose himself. On the other, he simply had no motivation left to labor for wages. All his energy was now focused on understanding his mutations and learning how to guide them through targeted training.
And yet, living in a city required money.
Even without the cost of food, he still had unavoidable monthly expenses: water, electricity, property management fees, phone bills, internet, and countless miscellaneous costs. Added to that was the fixed and steadily increasing consumption of meat rabbits, and the mortgage payments he continued to make every month.
All of it required preparation.