Memory

Xiang Kun first used his computer to open JD.com and bought a Redmi phone for 1,199 yuan. His previous phone was also a budget model he'd used for over a year; it was shattered to the point where there was no point in repairing it.

In any case, he used to spend most of his time in front of a computer. He rarely installed games on his phone and seldom watched videos, at most scrolling through Zhihu, GitHub, or CSDN on the subway, or reading e-books. Now, however, most of his energy and time were focused on training for his mutation, so the phone's most used functions were the timer and the flashlight.

Moreover, he had no income now and faced the crisis of living off his savings. If he bought an expensive phone and it broke again, he wouldn't have the money to replace it.

He checked and saw that the local warehouse had stock, with delivery expected by the afternoon.

While he was at it, he found the cheapest pair of black-framed non-prescription glasses on Taobao with free shipping. The pair he had before had shattered by the lake, and he needed a new one to maintain his familiar image in front of acquaintances.

Then, Xiang Kun began the routine he performed every time he woke up: measuring and recording his body's various statistics.

In terms of weight, he had gained another 1.4kg, bringing him to 95.4kg.

His body temperature had dropped slightly, to 27.4℃.

Perhaps because of the two life-and-death struggles with that giant owl, during which he suffered multiple severe wounds, his body felt it was in extreme danger and desperately needed to improve its recovery capabilities. Consequently, his recovery speed for knife wounds had significantly increased, from 12 minutes and 23 seconds down to 10 minutes and 55 seconds—and this was during the day, when his recovery was inhibited. If calculated based on the previous 20% inhibition rate after sunrise, his recovery time after sunset should be around 9 minutes and 5 seconds to 9 minutes and 6 seconds, which was a massive improvement.

He couldn't yet provide a concrete statistic for the improvement in his sense of smell and hearing, but subjectively, he could feel that the enhancement was very significant.

There was another thing Xiang Kun discovered by surprise: his skeleton seemed to have changed. Comparing photos on his computer from when the mutation first began to now, his shoulder width and arm length seemed to have shifted. Looking closer, it even seemed like he had grown taller.

Xiang Kun stood against the wall, made a mark, and measured it with a tape measure.

179.7cm. He had indeed grown taller.

During his company's previous physical exam, his height was recorded as 177.5cm. Although there could be variations depending on the time of day and the measuring instrument—he had even measured 178.9cm during a college physical—even using that as a reference, he had still grown nearly 1cm.

It was a pity that after his first mutation, he hadn't measured or tracked data like height, shoulder width, or arm length. After all, he hadn't expected that even his bones would change.

However, after the battle with the giant owl last night, he wasn't too surprised that his bones were undergoing a secondary growth spurt.

He had actually been thinking about the dream he had after falling asleep from drinking the owl's blood—the first dream he'd had since his body began mutating on July 11th.

He hadn't paid much attention to it when he first woke up, but reflecting on it now, he suddenly realized it might not have been just a dream.

The images in the dream were similar to the one-second glimpse he saw after tasting a drop of the owl's blood; they were all from the owl's first-person perspective.

This time, in the dream, the images Xiang Kun saw weren't just a single second, but a vast number of them. However, they were in a chaotic chronological order, seemingly without logical connection, with scenes jumping around as they piled up for him to watch.

A large portion of them consisted of flying or diving through the air; honestly, the experience wasn't very pleasant.

But now, as Xiang Kun recalled the images from the dream, he discovered that he could actually pull up the scenes he had "seen" and "watch" them again.

This felt completely different from recalling images he had seen in reality or other memories.

It was as if he had opened a small window in his brain, allowing him to browse someone else's experiences in the first person.

Yes, the images he saw in the dream must have been the memories of that giant owl.

Before, he had only licked a drop of blood, so he only gained a second or so of imagery.

Later, Xiang Kun had essentially gorged himself on the owl's blood, which led directly to a dream where he obtained a massive amount of memory fragments that originally belonged to the giant owl.

Could memory information really be stored in the blood, and the more you drink, the more you get?

He had drunk chicken blood and rabbit blood before, but he had never seen any images. It seemed this trait only existed in mutated creatures like himself and that giant owl. If that owl had drunk his blood, could it have seen his memories too?

It was just that these images lacked chronological order and were completely irregular, which was truly a headache to watch.

He didn't know if it was because the owl's intelligence wasn't high enough, resulting in chaotic memories, or if memories obtained through this method were always like that.

The useful information in those memories would require time to analyze and extract, but a few points were already certain.

First, that owl wasn't born so unique; like Xiang Kun, it had mutated later in life. However, the specifics of how and why it mutated would require digging through those memory fragments over time.

Second, the owl did indeed rely on drinking the blood of other creatures to survive after mutating, just like Xiang Kun. Judging from the images he saw, the number of creatures the owl had hunted and the frequency of its feeding were far greater than his own.

Third, the owl had originally lived in the deep mountains and had indeed spotted the rabbit Xiang Kun killed at the dump, which led it to target him. However, it seemed unable to accurately track Xiang Kun's location; running into him by the lake while he was searching for the dog must have been a coincidence.

As for why it left the deep mountains and entered the city, he hadn't found an answer yet, but from those images, Xiang Kun was indeed the first human it had attacked.

Clearly, the owl's ability to grow so large and continue flying was thanks to the same mutation Xiang Kun possessed.

For a bird of prey that needed to hunt to survive, its way of life was predation, and its mutation naturally leaned toward possessing greater hunting capabilities—after its size increased, its prey indeed became much more diverse, with sharp talons capable of piercing the thick hide of a wild boar.

The owl's intelligence had also increased to a certain extent along with its mutation.

Xiang Kun couldn't help but wonder if the prototypes for the monsters in historical legends were actually these types of mutated animals.

Xiang Kun even wondered if a mutated animal that had been raised by humans and possessed a strong urge and need to communicate might eventually evolve the ability to speak through successive mutations.

And perhaps the fact that they turned into powder and dissipated completely after death was the reason why legends remained legends, with no evidence left behind?

Of course, these were all just guesses.

Xiang Kun had previously wanted to find a "case" like his own, but he never expected that the closest thing he would find would be an owl.

Furthermore, this owl had wanted to kill him, only to end up dying by his hand, with its blood then consumed by him.

Xiang Kun couldn't help but wonder: could he be the first human to ever mutate?