Prologue
"What does it feel like to become a vampire?"
The first time Xiang Kun saw this question on Zhihu, he didn't take it seriously. After all, most of the top-voted answers were obviously made-up stories, the kind that let the imagination run wild. Their vampires were either rich, handsome heirs or melancholy, devoted old romantics. At heart, they were just romance novels.
A few answers seriously tracing the origins of vampire legends and exploring possible medical explanations did exist, but they were all buried farther down, with hardly anyone agreeing with them. Clearly, most people didn't think the question needed to be taken seriously.
The person who first posted the question had probably asked it as a joke, too.
Xiang Kun treated it like a story as well. After casually reading a few answers, he moved on to other questions.
At the time, he naturally never imagined that before long, he would be in a position to answer that question for real.
Before you continue