Other Scents

Chapter 36: Other Scents

The elevator doors slowly closed. Inside, Xiang Kun stood to one side with Little Chubby Girl Liu Shiling's hand in his, alongside Shiling's Mother. On the other side, Ms. Yang held the leash of her beloved dog, PINKIE.

But the husky no longer showed any of its earlier excitement. It had curled into a ball, pressed tight against the corner of the elevator as if trying to disappear into the wall. No matter how Ms. Yang pulled or called to it, it wouldn't budge.

Huskies were often nicknamed "derpy huskies" because they were prone to acting crazy and foolish. They were also less obedient, liked causing trouble, and loved wrecking the house. Along with Alaskan Malamutes and Samoyeds, they were known as the "three idiots of the snow."

In truth, however, huskies and the other two sled-dog breeds weren't unintelligent. Sled dogs had originally been working dogs domesticated by Siberian herders. When pulling sleds through blizzards, they were better at finding their way than people, so the lead dog often had to make decisions and choose a route on its own.

That was why sled dogs weren't very obedient: not because they didn't understand their owners' commands and intentions, but because they thought they were smarter than their owners and liked to make their own decisions. Their owners also hadn't established enough authority to keep them in line. Or sometimes, the dogs were simply being mischievous on purpose to get what they wanted.

It was clear that Ms. Yang hadn't trained her husky properly. It didn't treat her as its master; it probably saw her as a companion of even lower status than itself.

Xiang Kun knew the husky hadn't meant to attack Little Chubby Girl. It had only wanted to play with her. But if it had knocked her over in that situation, she could easily have been hurt—and the fright alone would have been bad enough.

In the end, it was Ms. Yang's fault for not training her dog properly.

But while Ms. Yang couldn't control her pet, Xiang Kun could.

Back when he still went on his nighttime "patrols," he sometimes came across stray dogs and cats looking for food, or people out walking their dogs in the middle of the night.

He'd discovered that whenever cats or dogs noticed him, all he had to do was hold his breath, tense his muscles slightly, and let off a menacing air. They would immediately back away, run off, or even flatten themselves against the ground, though he hadn't moved at all.

Once, a Labrador whose owner had let go of its leash came over to sniff him. Xiang Kun gave it a look, and it immediately lay down, too scared to move. When he ran into it again the next day, it was on a leash, but as soon as it saw him, it dropped to the ground, eyes lowered and tail tucked. No matter how hard its owner pulled, it wouldn't move.

He'd also tested this at home on the rabbits he'd bought for meat. They'd trembled in fear and curled up into balls, just like the dogs.

But it didn't seem to work on birds. The pigeons in the square and the sparrows perched on the wall completely ignored his "threats." When he went to the market and tried it on chickens and ducks, they ignored him too.

Xiang Kun guessed that animals like cats and dogs had particularly sharp senses. They could detect the intense danger in the pheromones he gave off, which explained their reactions.

At any rate, he was certain that from now on, whenever Ms. Yang's husky saw him or Little Chubby Girl, it would go out of its way to avoid them.

Little Chubby Girl held Xiang Kun's hand and peered out from beside his thigh at the husky cowering in the elevator corner, facing the wall. The shock and fear in her eyes gradually faded.

"If you're not afraid of it, it'll be afraid of you," Xiang Kun said, patting Little Chubby Girl on the head.

Shiling's Mother looked at Xiang Kun, then at the husky that had suddenly cowered in the corner. She was puzzled. She'd seen it clearly from where she stood: the dog had looked at Xiang Kun, and then it had been "scared"?

The elevator soon reached the first floor. By the time Xiang Kun had led Little Chubby Girl and Shiling's Mother out through the building's electronic entrance, Ms. Yang still hadn't managed to pull her beloved dog out of the elevator.

After leaving the residential compound and saying goodbye to Little Chubby Girl and her mother, Xiang Kun first walked briskly. Ten minutes later, he broke into a run.

He ran so fast that many passersby glanced at him. Seeing him with a backpack, they assumed he was an office worker in a hurry, so they weren't especially surprised.

Of course, they had no idea that Xiang Kun was about to run more than twenty kilometers.

Xiang Kun didn't push himself to his top speed. Instead, he kept to a moderate pace, one that let him observe and think at the same time.

He'd once roughly timed his hundred-meter sprint and found that he could do it in a little over eleven seconds.

For an ordinary person, that was an astonishing result, enough to qualify as a national-level second-class athlete. But for Xiang Kun, it was nothing special. He was still far from surpassing the limits of the human body.

As for long-distance running, though, Xiang Kun thought he could easily break several world records.

His recovery was simply too fast. He could run for a long time at nearly top speed, then jog for a little while after reaching his limit and continue at full strength. In a marathon, that would practically be cheating.

As he ran, Xiang Kun observed his surroundings and took note of the streets, shops, and other landmarks. He compared them with the online map he'd looked at the night before, building a three-dimensional mental map of the area.

He needed to learn more about the neighborhood where he'd be living, and the exercise also trained his powers of observation and memory.

It took Xiang Kun a little over an hour to run to the gym. That was naturally much slower than taking public transportation, but it was an impressive time for a run. Besides, he was barely sweating and showed no sign of fatigue.

But after spending the entire morning at the gym, Xiang Kun decided he wouldn't be coming back.

The young coach from the boxing gym downstairs had come to find him after learning he'd been working out upstairs. He asked if Xiang Kun wanted to join their boxing gym—not as a student, but as a fighter. He added that one of the gym's founders, the older coach who had refereed Xiang Kun's sparring match with him, was willing to train Xiang Kun personally.

Xiang Kun thanked them for their interest but turned them down.

The incident made him realize that his recent performances at the gym, along with what he'd shown at the boxing gym a few days earlier and during his hike with Tang Baona, had already drawn a lot of attention. Naturally, people would be paying more attention to him.

He knew the people at the boxing gym probably wouldn't keep bothering him after he refused, but the attention would remain all the same. Even though he'd stopped doing bench presses, squats, and deadlifts with weights at his limit, many of the gym's trainers and members still watched him work out. His results in the three main lifts during his first few sessions had spread, and everyone was curious about how he trained.

Under the circumstances, he'd naturally have to hold back and worry about drawing notice whenever he worked out at the gym.

So even though he'd only just gotten his membership and couldn't transfer it to anyone else, which was a real shame, Xiang Kun had no choice but to find somewhere else to train.

Fortunately, the training he was doing now didn't rely much on equipment anyway. He could exercise without it.

After leaving the gym, Xiang Kun spent the entire afternoon searching within ten kilometers of his residential compound for somewhere quiet where he could train and test himself without worry.

In the end, he chose a small mountain a little over four kilometers from his compound.

At its foot was an abandoned construction site. It had originally been meant to become a villa complex, but for some reason, the project had never been completed.

The residents who'd lived nearby had already moved away. The area around the mountain was a mess, and few people ever came there. Weeds grew everywhere, and it was hard to find a path.

Once the sun had set and darkness fell, the place grew completely silent. There wasn't a single light to be seen. Looking at the residential compounds in the distance, Xiang Kun felt as if he were hiding in the shadows, watching the outside world.

Xiang Kun was very pleased with the place and decided to do his various exercises there for the time being.

Although it wasn't very far from the residential area, the interference from smells, sounds, and light was much less, making it well suited for training his senses.

Compared with the city, the smells in the mountains were simpler, but they were relatively unfamiliar to Xiang Kun.

He caught a whiff of something rotten and bloody not far away. Judging by the smell, it seemed to be a dead rat.

He followed the scent and turned on his phone's flashlight. Sure enough, there was a dead rat in the weeds, its belly ripped open.

After confirming his guess, Xiang Kun was about to leave. But then he stopped, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, carefully distinguishing the pheromones in the air.

Besides the smell of the rat, there was another faint scent. Had it been left by the animal that had killed it?