Investigation

Investigation

Aside from becoming bald, having better skin, and slightly whiter teeth, Xiang Kun's body fat percentage had also dropped noticeably. His belly had shrunk considerably, the most obvious sign being that he had to tighten his belt by another notch.

Yet his weight had not dropped significantly. During the company health check at the beginning of the year, he had weighed 86 kilograms. Now he weighed 84 kilograms, practically no change at all. Besides, it had been nearly five days since July 11, and he had barely eaten a proper meal.

Subjectively, Xiang Kun could also clearly feel that his legs seemed stronger. He could tell just from walking, climbing stairs, and carrying things.

Thinking of this, he dropped to the floor and began doing push-ups.

After graduating from college, Xiang Kun had thrown himself into work and rarely exercised. Not only had he put on quite a bit of weight, but his strength had declined as well. When he went back to his hometown during the New Year and played cards with several old classmates, the loser had to do standard push-ups. At most, he could only manage fourteen in one go.

But now, Xiang Kun had already done thirty standard push-ups with plenty left in the tank. He only began to feel weakness in his shoulders and triceps after fifty, and by fifty-eight, he could no longer maintain proper form.

Of course, fifty-eight standard push-ups might be easy enough for people who exercised regularly. But for Xiang Kun, who weighed nearly 85 kilograms and had barely worked out in years, going from fourteen during the New Year to fifty-eight now was nothing short of a tremendous leap.

Xiang Kun returned to his computer and recorded those figures in his document as well. He added the photos he had taken and his other physical data, organizing everything by date.

Then Xiang Kun did several more sets of push-ups, along with indoor exercises such as crunches and squats.

Not only were his single-set limits far higher than before, but his overall muscular endurance had improved by several levels as well.

Previously, after doing fourteen standard push-ups in one go, he could rest for one minute and do another thirteen. After resting another two or three minutes, he could only manage eleven or twelve.

Now, after doing fifty-eight, Xiang Kun could rest for one minute and do another fifty-eight. As long as he rested for more than a minute, he could complete another set of fifty-eight standard push-ups. It was not until the eighth set that the number dropped to fifty-two, and his muscles finally showed obvious weakness and soreness.

So far, most of the physical changes X had brought Xiang Kun were good, beneficial, and enhancements.

But the issue he had never been able to let go of was eating.

From July 11 until now, although he had spent most of his time sleeping, he had still been quite active whenever he was awake. He had just deliberately completed a large amount of high-intensity bodyweight training, yet he still did not feel hungry at all. After resting for a while, his fatigue quickly faded, and his muscle strength almost completely recovered.

He was certain that his body was not lacking nutrients or energy. His current state was not simply psychological.

But could that tiny amount of chicken blood really provide so much energy?

Had his stomach undergone such a drastic mutation that it could extract enough energy to sustain several days of expenditure from such a small amount of chicken blood?

At six in the evening, Xiang Kun left home and headed for the roadside eatery where he had "drowned his sorrows in alcohol" on July 11.

He discovered that after sunset, he seemed more alert and energized when he went out. It was as though the moon in the sky gave him some inexplicable drive.

When he arrived at the eatery, Xiang Kun ordered the exact same alcohol and dishes he had had that day. He poured himself a drink but did not drink it or touch the food. He simply sat there, pretending to play with his phone while watching the surroundings from the corner of his eye.

He tried to recall what had happened then—whether anything unusual had occurred, whether there had been anything strange about the alcohol he drank or the food he ate.

He sat there until nearly eight before getting up and walking over to the owner. After paying his bill, he told him that he had come alone for drinks last Thursday night and seemed to have left his phone there. He asked if he could check the security footage—he had noticed a surveillance camera mounted above the cashier's counter earlier.

Since Xiang Kun was a customer who had just spent money there, the owner did not ask many questions and directly had an employee take him to view the footage.

Their surveillance recordings were kept for a week. If Xiang Kun had come a few days later, they probably would have been gone.

They pulled up the evening of July 11. From the footage, during the time Xiang Kun had come to drink, he had been drinking alone from beginning to end. Other than the servers who brought him food and alcohol, no one else had approached him.

At around 8:30, he got up to pay, then called a Didi. The car arrived two minutes later, and he got in.

Nothing unusual had happened.

After watching the footage and leaving the eatery, Xiang Kun did not call a car. He chose to run straight home instead.

The eatery was actually quite close to his home. It took just over five minutes by car, and not much longer on foot, but he deliberately took a detour and ran several extra kilometers.

Under the moonlight, Xiang Kun felt as though he was growing lighter and faster the more he ran, as if his stamina would never run out. So he accelerated, sprinting madly at what felt like a hundred-meter dash pace, drawing plenty of sidelong looks from passersby.

Of course, his stamina was not endless. After running at that speed for less than two minutes, he began to gasp for breath and had no choice but to stop.

After returning home, Xiang Kun took a shower, drank a bottle of mineral water, and sat down at his computer. He recorded the "results of his investigation" in a document titled "X Cause Investigation 1: Roadside Eatery," then placed the surveillance footage copied from the eatery into the same folder.

That night, Xiang Kun still could not sleep, so he spent the time writing a web crawler script. It automatically pulled information matching the description of his "symptoms" from search engine results and several targeted social media platforms, filtering out obvious film, television, literary, and artistic works, along with related descriptions. Although the crawling speed was slow, it was still far more efficient than checking entries one by one himself.

Then, every half hour, he got up and exercised for half an hour—push-ups, squats, crunches, glute bridges, planks, and other quiet bodyweight exercises he could do in his room without making much noise.

He also deliberately increased the difficulty for himself: wide-grip and narrow-grip push-ups, weighted squats, horse stances, some basic yoga movements he found online, and even attempts at Russian push-ups. However, those attempts failed, proving that the improvements to his physical strength and coordination still had their limits.

He wanted to see how long his body's energy reserves could sustain this level of expenditure, and when he would feel hungry again. He still found it hard to believe that the tiny amount of chicken blood he had drunk yesterday could support such prolonged energy consumption.

But strangely, no matter how exhausted he was after each workout, the fatigue in his muscles would mostly disappear after resting for at most twenty minutes. He did not feel hungry or weaker, either. It was as if he could recharge wirelessly simply by taking a break.

This cycle continued until morning, when Xiang Kun finally felt a trace of fatigue. Yet he vaguely felt that it was not caused by doing set after set of exercises, but was somehow related to dawn.