Vivian was not ready to give up. She squeezed out another drop of blood and smeared it onto Hao Ren's hand, then the two of them stared intently at it to see what would happen this time. Even Lily, who had been standing nearby, curiously leaned over to take a look.
The drop of blood, glowing with a golden-red radiance, visibly trembled on Hao Ren's skin and spread for a short while—only a few seconds, probably. Then, like a drop of water touching a hot iron, it rapidly shrank and vanished before all three of them.
"It looks like it was absorbed." Hao Ren scratched the back of his hand curiously. To be honest, watching that drop of blood squirm across his skin like a living creature had given him quite a fright. If he had not known Vivian meant him no harm, he would have instinctively flung the thing away. He had not paid close attention the first time, but now that he had seen it clearly, it was truly creepy. "I don't feel anything. It was a little itchy at first, and a little cool."
"Bloodkin have slightly lower body temperatures than humans. It's perfectly normal." Vivian stared hesitantly at her finger. The tiny wound she had bitten open had already healed to the point where it was barely visible. She gritted her teeth, as if making an enormous decision, and squeezed out one last drop of blood. "This... is the last try. I can't do any more than this. It hurts me to lose it."
Lily immediately seized the opportunity to mock her. "Look at how stingy you are. It's only one drop of blood."
"What's wrong with one drop of blood? One drop of blood is still blood!" Vivian slapped the table and stood up. "Back when I still wasn't used to human food, I survived entirely by drinking blood, you know? I was so unlucky that Demon Hunters targeted me almost every time I went after prey. I couldn't even afford to support a few blood thralls. When I was at my poorest, I couldn't even bear to waste my period blood. You've never suffered, so you don't know how precious food and money are. Once you've lived through hard times, you'll understand..."
Hao Ren could not listen any longer. Before the topic spiraled completely out of control, he hurriedly stood up to mediate. "All right, all right, let's not bring up the past. Vivian, watch what you say. This is supposed to be suitable for all ages—and don't describe your miserable life in such detail. I'm softhearted; I can't stand listening to it..."
Lily immediately perked up. "Then, Landlord, how about waiving one month of my rent?"
"...I was talking to Vivian. What does this have to do with you?"
After the three of them finished making a racket, Vivian finally remembered what mattered. She tried again, and this time, while smearing on the blood, she whispered several ancient incantations in an eerie tone. Hao Ren felt that cold, blood-tinged atmosphere appear around them once more. Yet the blood touching his skin behaved exactly as it had before: after wriggling a few times, it rapidly lost its force and vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye.
"The connection with the blood has also been severed." Vivian frowned. "This has never happened before. There's an established connection between Bloodkin and their own blood. Unless they deliberately 'discard' part of their blood, that connection can't be severed."
"What do we do now?" Hao Ren scratched his cheek. "I was counting on your blood to ward off evil spirits."
"How about trying Lily's blood?" Vivian turned to the werewolf girl. "Her blood should be able to ward off evil too."
"Huh? Werewolves can do that too?" Lily was even more surprised. "I'm actually that amazing!?"
Vivian gave a mischievous grin. "No. I heard some old people in China say that black dog blood can ward off evil..."
Then the two superwomen started wrestling in the living room again. Hao Ren had neither the strength nor the inclination to stop them. He could only sit blankly on the sofa and watch a vampire and a werewolf leap around in front of him. Whenever he really could not take it anymore, he shouted, "Hey, be careful! If you break anything, you'll have to pay for it—Lily, remember that you still owe me a coffee table, and Vivian, think about your wallet..."
That sentence had an immediate effect. The two superwomen fell silent at once and began deciding the victor with rock-paper-scissors...
Hao Ren lowered his head and stared at his utterly ordinary hands, unable to understand why they could absorb a vampire's blood. He had learned from all kinds of movies and novels that vampire blood was immensely potent to ordinary people. Sometimes, merely getting it on your body could dissolve bones and corrode flesh. Yet in his case, never mind any special effects—it was not even as impressive as ordinary blood. It had actually been absorbed directly? Although Hao Ren was now certain that the descriptions of vampires in movies and novels were mostly unreliable, the claim that "Bloodkin blood possesses special power" surely could not be wrong. For one thing, human blood did not tremble or crawl around on its own...
"Looks like the Bloodkin mark won't work." After fooling around with Lily for several minutes, Vivian finally remembered the matter at hand. She looked Hao Ren up and down but still did not give up. "If you trust me, I'll try using a Bloodkin spell. I'm a high-ranking Bloodkin, so I can cast spells without a blood medium—surely it won't get absorbed again without a medium, right?"
Hao Ren chuckled. "What's there not to trust? Go ahead and try."
"Most ordinary people really wouldn't trust us." Vivian spread her hands. "Someone as easygoing as you is actually a rarity. Unless they're idiots, how could normal people happily let us cast spells on them? More than three hundred years ago, people in Europe absolutely refused to submit when faced with my Blood Magic. I have no idea why they were all so stubborn."
Could this vampire girl have spent so long around humans that she's forgotten how normal vampires use magic against humans? Hao Ren wondered.
Vivian told Hao Ren to sit still, then used her finger to sketch strange, twisted characters in the air. Hao Ren's eyes widened as he watched. This was the first time in his life that he had truly seen what so-called "magic" looked like, so naturally he was curious and excited. Watching someone draw trails of bloody light in midair with a finger was genuinely eye-opening. But after watching for a while, he found it incredibly boring. Vivian merely kept drawing lines of text in the air while waving her hand to scatter what she had written before. Put simply, the process was nothing more than an incredibly grandiose form of copying. Aside from the special effects involved in drawing those blood-red characters... he could not feel any special power or see anything more spectacular.
Vivian's brows had already drawn together slightly. She wrote faster and faster, erasing what she had written before with increasing frequency. She was practically writing one line and erasing one line. She must have reached a critical stage in the spell, Hao Ren thought. At first, he did not dare make a sound, but after waiting for a long time without seeing anything new happen, he could not help asking in a low voice, "Um... is it done yet?"
"Wait a moment. I might have written it wrong. I'm correcting it..."
Hao Ren: "..."
So she was erasing things because she had written them wrong! Is there anything this vampire girl can do properly?
"Something's not right." Vivian failed to notice the subtle expression on Hao Ren's face. After modifying the runes several times, she finally stopped and shook her head in confusion. "This shouldn't be wrong in theory. I've already tried three effective formulations, but there's been no reaction at all... Landlord, do you feel especially sleepy? Particularly calm? Or unusually relaxed?"
"No." Hao Ren rolled his shoulders. "I do feel pretty calm, but that probably has nothing to do with your writing."
"That Big Dog over there." Vivian turned to look at Lily. "Don't move."
As soon as she finished speaking, Vivian waved her hand and blew the blood-red characters into a sheet of constantly trembling mist. The mist drifted past Lily, who immediately flopped onto the table with a thump. A moment later, even snores rose from her.
"...That effect is a little too strong. How low is this girl's resistance?" Vivian frowned, then looked at Hao Ren. "I don't know why, but my Blood Magic seems to be useless against you."
Hao Ren immediately perked up. He stared at his hands in disbelief. "Could I actually be an incredibly powerful person?! Is my hidden setting natural magic immunity or something?"
Vivian answered honestly, "It's also possible that your nerves are too dull. For example, idiots are immune to all mental-confusion magic..."
Hao Ren: "Ahem, watch what you say. You still owe me money."
Vivian awkwardly stuck out her tongue. "All right, no more jokes. But natural magic immunity is probably impossible. I'm very sensitive to living creatures, and you should just be an ordinary person. Besides, you aren't immune to the cold air I create, are you? Ask Raven 12345 about the specific reason later. I have a feeling that your agreement with that so-called god isn't as simple as it seems. You might have changed somehow after returning from her. For now... you'd better use my amulet."
In the end, things developed just as they had at the beginning: all that spiritual blood and magic had been nonsense, and Hao Ren ended up with a vampire's evil-warding treasure. It was supposedly a Bagua Plate obtained from Mount Wutai, capable of warding off evil and calming the mind...
When Vivian handed the Bagua Plate to Hao Ren, she repeatedly warned him to be careful, terrified that her precious treasure might be damaged. It was clear that this strange vampire girl treasured her collection of magical artifacts quite a lot, which moved Hao Ren deeply.
But did that thing really work?
Before you continue