Hearing and Smell

Chapter 20: Hearing and Smell

Xiang Kun stared at the video, feeling a bit dazed. He noticed that among the highlighted replies, there were videos from other angles as well, though they were relatively less clear. Clearly, he wasn't the only one who had filmed the incident.

He even saw footage captured by surveillance cameras; he wasn't sure if the grocery store owner had uploaded those.

Xiang Kun felt a headache coming on. After returning the phone to the reporter, he made an excuse about having things to attend to and hurried away from his home.

After walking on the street for a while, Xiang Kun felt that this wasn't such a big deal. When he stopped the thug, he hadn't displayed any abilities that exceeded those of an ordinary person. As long as he insisted on refusing interviews, kept his face hidden, and maintained a low profile, once this blew over, no one would pay him any mind.

At the end of the day, what the netizens were interested in was merely the event itself.

Xiang Kun went to the busiest part of the city, found a roadside beverage shop, bought a drink, and sat by the entrance with his eyes half-closed, looking as if he were dozing off.

In reality, however, he was focusing all his attention on his sense of hearing.

The voices of the staff inside the shop behind him, the sound of customers ordering, the footsteps and chatter of pedestrians outside, the sounds of cars and horns from the distant main road, the broadcast and music from a nearby mall's promotional event—all sorts of sounds were being distinguished one by one in Xiang Kun's mind.

Then, he locked onto one specific sound and began to concentrate on "capturing" it.

For instance, if he heard a set of footsteps, he would track them, sensing their movement and direction, calculating the distance from himself, the material of the soles, and so on, until the sound faded away and could no longer be heard.

Using this method, Xiang Kun relied on his hearing to "construct" the situation around him within his consciousness.

After his last blood consumption, Xiang Kun had discovered that his hearing had improved significantly, becoming much sharper than that of an ordinary person.

Following his third time consuming blood, Xiang Kun adjusted his training plan. He reduced the proportion of strength training and increased exercises for agility and balance, specifically creating many plans for targeted training of his senses: sight, hearing, and smell.

Xiang Kun sat at the entrance of the beverage shop from past ten in the morning until past five in the afternoon. He never opened his eyes and never shifted his seat; the people in the shop likely assumed he had fallen asleep.

At 5:15 PM, Xiang Kun opened his eyes and stretched, as if he had truly just woken from a nap. He then stood up and left the shop, tossing the milk tea in his hand directly into the trash—in truth, he hadn't taken a single sip.

Xiang Kun did not go home but continued his auditory training.

He walked aimlessly along the street, randomly choosing various sound sources to track.

Sometimes, when he saw people talking or on the phone from afar, he would slowly approach to shorten the distance until he could vaguely hear their conversation, then he would pull back, constantly pushing the maximum distance at which he could hear.

Sometimes, he would randomly lock onto one sound amidst a cacophony, such as a single set of footsteps in a crowd, a dog barking out of his line of sight, or a ringtone echoing from an unknown location.

Sometimes, he would use a fixed, continuous sound source as a center point, such as a mall broadcast, music from a clothing store, or even the hum of machinery, and slowly increase the distance.

For auditory training, Xiang Kun's method was to listen more, distinguish more, and seek out and push the limits of his hearing.

Over the next few days, he spent nearly ten hours each day wandering the streets, listening to all types of sounds to conduct his auditory training.

Xiang Kun discovered that the training effect was much better at night than during the day.

Not only were his physical functions stronger and his mental state better at night, but his hearing was also more sensitive. Furthermore, there was much less noise at night, making it relatively quieter and easier for him to train at his current stage.

Therefore, Xiang Kun continued to work out at the gym during the day and wandered the streets at night, randomly searching for various sounds.

Because of this, he heard many sounds he had never imagined before: the chirping and crawling of various insects in bushes and gutters, the gnawing of rats, the sounds emitted by various materials in buildings due to thermal expansion or other vibrations, the different sounds wind made when blowing through streets and alleys of varying structures, and even some very faint sounds whose specific origins he couldn't even locate.

In addition to hearing, Xiang Kun also conducted olfactory training. Like the auditory training, it involved distinguishing and tracking various scents.

However, although both were trained on the street, he practiced them separately. At his current stage, if he tried to listen and smell at the same time, he couldn't fully concentrate on either sense, and they would interfere with each other.

So, when he first started training his sense of smell, he would find a place to sit down, close his eyes, and wear earplugs to seal off those two primary senses, using only his nose to perceive his surroundings and distinguish the various sources of scent.

Compared to sound, scents were actually much harder to distinguish and train. Often, a strong odor would suppress other scents, and after staying in one environment for a while, his nose would adapt to the ambient smells, causing his olfactory sensitivity to drop.

Therefore, he would sometimes deliberately choose places with strong, complex odors, such as trash heaps, stinking gutters, stagnant ponds, or food streets and snack alleys, to conduct his training.

On the night of July 30th, Xiang Kun did not go out after returning from the gym because he felt the hunger pangs again.

Counting it up, it had been about six days since his last blood consumption, which was consistent with the timeframe he had calculated previously.

This time, Xiang Kun did not attempt a fasting experiment. Once he felt the hunger, he prepared the remaining meat rabbit at home and drank about 165ml of rabbit blood.

Soon after, drowsiness washed over him. Xiang Kun picked up his phone and set an alarm for 23 hours later.

He wanted to see if he could be woken up by noise during his deep sleep.

He set it for 23 hours because he was worried that if he were woken up too early and was sleep-deprived, he didn't know if it would have any adverse effects on his body.

The alarm duration was set to one minute, repeating three times.

When Xiang Kun opened his eyes again, he lay on the bed in a daze for a moment, vaguely feeling that the world seemed a bit different. But after lying there for a few minutes and thinking for a while, he couldn't figure out exactly what was different.

He sat up from the bed and checked his phone. Sure enough, he hadn't been woken up by the alarm. It seemed that during the deep sleep period following blood consumption, he couldn't be woken up by the sound of an alarm.

He just didn't know if he would wake up if there were physical contact, and how intense that contact would need to be?

As for the duration of this sleep, it was 25 hours and 27 minutes, still within his previous statistical range, showing no change.

Xiang Kun suddenly felt that the room was a bit noisy; he could even hear the chatter and boasting of people drinking at a roadside stall outside. He thought he had forgotten to close the window before sleeping, but when he walked over to check, he found the window was shut tight.

Xiang Kun froze for a second, then realized that the noise outside hadn't gotten louder—his hearing had become stronger.