Xiang Kun wasn't too worried about the photo of his back that circulated on Weibo, since he already had "experience" with it.
The video of her kicking the assailant downstairs in her rented apartment circulated online for a while and even trended on social media, but its popularity quickly faded.
Even now, you can still occasionally see GIFs of him kicking people being turned into memes, but the incident itself is no longer discussed, and no one is investigating his identity.
He knew very well that in this era of information explosion in the mobile internet, netizens are very forgetful. A hot topic can last for a few hours at most, or a few days or a week at most. Unless there is an event that continues to ferment and attract attention, even if someone deliberately hypes it up, it is difficult to last for long.
As long as Xiang Kun doesn't actively seek out publicity and refuses all interviews, even if someone claims to know his identity, it won't be easy for him to gain attention. After all, netizens don't actually care about absolute facts; they just want to see the "truth" they want to know, and there's no shortage of such "truths" online.
As for this picture of a person's back, it's even more so. Netizens' attention isn't on the identity of the person in the picture; they're either looking for the blogger who posted it on Weibo, or they're just making fun of the picture for their own amusement. Everyone has their own information they want to know.
Aside from Tang Baona and Xia Libing, who were among the few who could recognize the bow bag in the picture and identify him, very few others could tell it was him from the bald man's silhouette in the crowd. Besides, even if they did, it wouldn't matter; he hadn't done anything wrong...
Around 1 a. m., Xiang Kun, carrying his phone and earphones he hadn't used since the mutation, left the residential area and headed to the small mountain where he had been training for climbing and descending the mountain.
He wanted to first verify whether that feeling of "self-indulgence" could have any impact on his physical functions—for example, temporarily enhancing or inhibiting them.
After all, when a normal person enters a state of intense emotion, adrenaline levels also increase, which in turn increases myocardial contractility, blood output, and a series of physiological reactions, resulting in a short-term boost in explosive power and endurance, and even a certain degree of suppression of pain.
But that's often how it is; you don't intend to enter a certain emotion, and it suddenly comes on, but when you're ready to enter that emotion, you find you can't find that feeling anymore...
Xiang Kun activated his night vision and looked at the lifeless hill in front of him. It was far from the residential area, and the road was so bad that cars rarely came here, so hardly anyone would come. Since moving to the neighborhood, he had often come here at night to do various training exercises, and over time, many small animals seemed to have been frightened and left. Now, even with his hearing and sense of smell strained, finding a single mouse was quite a challenge.
This gives the small hill an even more eerie silence and gloom.
Of course, this is a good thing for Xiang Kun.
He picked up his phone, opened the music app, found a playlist of instrumental music, and started playing it shuffle.
He had originally intended to wear headphones so that it would be easier for him to find his mood through music, but he found that even at the lowest volume, he couldn't stand it. Unless he deliberately reduced his attention to the sound from the headphones, but then there would be no point in wearing them.
So he had to take off his headphones and just hold the phone in his hand to listen. Although the sound quality was a bit worse, the impact was still acceptable when he focused all his auditory attention on the phone.
Sometimes, music like "Star Sky," "Victory," "Brotherhood," and "Serenata Immortale" can be very catchy and easily draw you into a certain mood, whether uplifting or tragic, stirring up your hormones and putting your whole body into a state of excitement.
But when he deliberately tried to find that feeling, he discovered that it was really hard to find.
So Xiang Kun changed his approach again, trying to create a certain mood for himself. He started by imagining himself as a mountain climber, facing a peak he needed to conquer. But looking at the height of the mountain, he realized it was a bit out of place...
He changed his mind again. He was now an Eighth Route Army soldier, all his comrades had sacrificed themselves, and he was the only one left. The mountain was a strategic location occupied by the Japanese invaders, and it had to be taken. He was preparing for a desperate charge...
But after nearly half an hour of trying, Xiang Kun still couldn't find the right mood. What happened to his supposed ability to be easily influenced by music?
Helpless, Xiang Kun casually fiddled with the music app and randomly selected a few songs to play.
Suddenly, he heard a familiar intro melody—the theme song from the TV series "Bright Sword"—and the scene of the cavalry company's final, desperate charge involuntarily came to mind.
He was still in middle school when this TV series aired. He was very obsessed with it and watched it many times. Every time he saw a certain scene, even though he could recite the lines by heart, he still couldn't help but burst into tears.
Unconsciously, as the theme song played, Xiang Kun slowly closed his eyes, and the image of Cavalry Company Commander Sun Desheng shouting "Cavalry Company, charge!" appeared in his mind.
A moment later, Xiang Kun suddenly opened his eyes. His eyes, which had activated night vision, looked eerily colored in the night. If there were anyone else around at that moment, they might be startled and think he had been possessed by a demon.
Xiang Kun charged toward the hill like an arrow released from a bow, but due to his heavy weight and the 60KG weighted suit he was wearing, he was like a tank at full power, rumbling upwards. With each push off the ground, he left a deep footprint.
Unlike usual, Xiang Kun did not rush back down after reaching the summit, because he felt an unusual fatigue.
Actually, when he was almost at the top of the mountain, he had already shaken off the "cavalry charge" mentality and clearly realized that his body was starting to feel weak.
Although there was no timer, judging from his subjective feeling, Xiang Kun was quite certain that his speed in this mountain climb was much stronger than in the previous routine training. Before undergoing this cycle of blood drinking and mutation, this enhancement was clearly extraordinary.
It seems that once one enters a certain emotional state, one can indeed use that emotion to temporarily enhance explosive power or other aspects of physical function if needed.
Moreover, this time I was clearly not "in character" as deeply as I was the first time in the kitchen and the second time on the street, so the improvement and its duration were both very limited.
However, this kind of improvement seems to be done in the form of overexertion. At least after a full-speed mountain climb before, I was never this tired. If you are really emotionally invested, although the power that bursts out is very strong, the fatigue afterward should also be much greater.
Of course, his physical strength also recovered very quickly at night, and the feeling of fatigue was swept away in no time.
For Xiang Kun, the most important significance of this kind of short-lived burst of energy brought about by emotions is not that it enhances his "combat power".
This method is too unstable and relies on "feeling".
If he were to encounter a situation like the "Giant Owl" again, he couldn't just yell "Damn it!" at the owl, then pull out his phone, put on some background music to get into the mood before fighting. Besides, once he got into the mood, he might act too recklessly, insisting on using his head to clear a path when he could solve the problem with his intelligence.
The most significant meaning of this experiment is that Xiang Kun realized that this immersive emotional state can greatly affect bodily functions and directly impact the body, allowing both the body and consciousness to enter the state created by that emotion.
His previous method of guiding mutations was to conduct high-intensity, long-term, and continuous training targeting a specific physical or brain function, "telling" the body that its current environment requires this ability, and guiding the body's mutations and evolution towards perfecting these functions.
Now, after this experiment, he realized that he could very well use this method to directly immerse himself in emotions and use his consciousness to "tell" his body what state he was in, what abilities he needed, and what functions he wanted to enhance.
This internal "communication method" is definitely more effective than simply external training methods.
As Xiang Kun pondered this, he walked down the mountain. He didn't practice descending again because he noticed some pain in his knee joints, which might be due to injury and needed time to recover.
Xiang Kun wanted to pick up his phone to check the time, but suddenly realized...
"Hey? Where's my phone?"
He was completely bewildered when he realized his phone was gone. Then, trying to recall, he remembered that he had gotten emotional down the mountain and heard Sun Desheng shout "Cavalry charge!" before casually tossing his phone aside...
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