Prey

Chapter 40: Prey

The moment he saw the claw, Xiang Kun realized that what he was seeing was from the Giant Owl's point of view—and it probably wasn't happening in real time.

In other words, had he just seen a scene from the owl's memory?

As Xiang Kun understood it, animals' memories were generally stored in the neurons of their brains. He had only swallowed a little blood, not the owl's brain. So how did this work?

Setting aside his guesses about the underlying principle, that brief scene of just over a second had contained quite a bit of information.

The rabbit in the torn-open garbage bag seemed to be the one he had killed when he drank its blood.

Xiang Kun couldn't help thinking of the legends in vampire fiction: people who survived being bitten by vampires were turned into vampires themselves. It was as if there were some kind of virus in a vampire's saliva that transformed anyone it touched. Maybe this owl had mutated because it ate a rabbit that had been contaminated with his saliva?

But Xiang Kun quickly dismissed that theory.

1. When he collected the rabbit's blood, he had drained it into a container before drinking. He hadn't let his saliva touch the rabbit.

2. In the scene he had seen, "his" claws were already enormous. Clearly, it was the Giant Owl after it had mutated.

Xiang Kun recalled the surroundings in the scene that had lasted just over a second and concluded that it had probably taken place at the garbage dump.

Could this Giant Owl have come looking for him after stumbling across the rabbit and becoming interested in him?

But if that were the case, shouldn't the owl have come straight for him? Why had it gone after a mouse and then a dog?

It couldn't have been deliberately trying to lure him out here by doing all that, could it? He had stumbled across the dead mouse by chance, and his interest in the strange scent the owl had left on it was accidental too. If it had wanted to get his attention, it should have dumped the mouse on his balcony. Besides, if it really wanted to find somewhere secluded to attack him, it would have had a better opportunity while he was in the hills at night over the past few days.

Maybe this owl was a mutated creature, like him, transformed for some reason.

As for why it had attacked him, Xiang Kun understood after tasting a mouthful of the Giant Owl's blood: it had mistaken him for prey.

He also suddenly realized why the dead mouse had been left uneaten despite being so badly mauled. The owl's entire digestive system might have mutated, just like his. It drank blood instead of eating meat.

Its enormous size was probably another result of its mutation.

And maybe the owl had dumped the mouse's body in the hills and the husky's body in the lake to cover its tracks...

By the light of the moon, Xiang Kun looked himself over. He was covered in dirt and blood, his T-shirt was gone, and he was bare-chested. If someone saw him walking down the street like this, they'd probably call the police... or film him and post it on Douyin.

It was already past midnight, but that didn't mean the streets were empty.

And when he returned to his residential complex, the security guards were sure to notice. He didn't want that.

After thinking it over, Xiang Kun headed toward the lake nearby and jumped into the shallows. His body sank straight into the mud until it reached his waist.

He rinsed the blood off as best he could with lake water, then climbed out. His pants were now caked in mud, completely concealing the bloodstains.

When he returned to his complex, his bedraggled appearance naturally drew sidelong looks from the guard at the entrance.

Xiang Kun smiled ruefully. "I went for a run and accidentally fell into the lake."

The guard stared at him in bewilderment, then watched him walk into the complex with a look of sympathy and concern.

Bare-chested and covered in mud, Xiang Kun returned home dripping wet. He quickly tossed his soaked pants and shoes into the trash, took a quick shower, then sat down in front of his laptop.

A search engine told him that the world's largest owl was Blakiston's fish owl, with a body length of 70–77 centimeters and a weight of 1.5–5.5 kilograms. That was huge for a bird, but still several times smaller than the Giant Owl he had encountered that night.

There were birds that reached 1.5 or even 1.6 meters in height and weighed dozens of kilograms, such as ostriches, emus, and cassowaries. But though they could run fast on the ground, they couldn't fly. They were simply too heavy.

Xiang Kun searched for pictures of various owls and thought the Giant Owl looked most like a great gray owl: a large, round head, a prominent facial disk, and no ear tufts. But compared to the pictures he found, the Giant Owl he had seen had much darker feathers and no white spots at all. It could hide in the dark, making it extremely difficult to spot.

A Giant Owl that big showing up near a city would attract a great deal of attention if anyone saw it!

There were surveillance cameras all over the streets, and practically everyone had a phone that could take photos and videos. If someone saw it, it would be easy to capture on camera.

So Xiang Kun searched the internet using terms like giant bird, giant owl, and strange bird. When he didn't find what he was looking for, he broadened his search terms and used a web-crawling script to search local forums and online message boards in his city and several nearby cities, scraping information as he went.

But the results suggested that nobody had seen the Giant Owl.

The only thing that seemed possibly related to Xiang Kun was a post on a neighboring county's message board. Someone claimed that one night, he'd seen a person standing in a tree at the entrance to his village and staring at him. He'd been startled and tried to shine his phone's flashlight at it, but the person had vanished.

From the description, it was probably the Giant Owl. Xiang Kun himself had nearly mistaken it for someone standing in a tree wearing a long coat.

Unfortunately, the poster had reacted too slowly and hadn't managed to take a picture.

Based on his earlier attempts to track the Giant Owl and the scene he had seen for just over a second, Xiang Kun thought it must be far more intelligent than other owls. It was also deliberately avoiding humans, probably only venturing near the city late at night and staying hidden during the day.

Either the Giant Owl had only recently mutated and grown so enormous, or it had been living deep in the wilderness until now. If it had been careful to avoid humans, it made sense that nobody had discovered it.

Otherwise, if it had been staying near the city for a long time, it would have been hard for a bird that huge to avoid being seen, no matter how cautious it was.

If it had come out of the wilderness, what had driven it to do so? Had it deliberately searched the garbage dump for the rabbit carcass Xiang Kun had thrown away, or had it just happened upon it?

For now, he had no answers.

The Giant Owl had treated Xiang Kun as prey. Now, Xiang Kun was just as interested in the owl.

He thought he might be able to find the reason behind all the changes he had undergone by studying the owl.

Of course, the owl's blood was something he badly needed too. He was certain that it would provide far more energy than rabbit, chicken, duck, or any other blood he had tasted before.

According to the pattern he'd observed, he would become hungry today and drink blood. He had already bought three meat rabbits for home, and this time he planned to increase the amount he drank by taking the blood from two of them.

He could move up the time of his blood drinking and start now. Then, if he woke up after another 25 hours, it would be early tomorrow morning—just the right time to head out at night and look for the Giant Owl.

Another feeding meant another mutation, which would improve his strength, recovery, and senses. That would help him considerably in a fight against the owl.

But Xiang Kun was also worried. What if the owl had been frightened by their fierce struggle that night, or decided he was too difficult to deal with, and gave up and left?

If it returned to the wilderness and ended up dozens or even hundreds of kilometers away, Xiang Kun wasn't confident he could track it down.