Kanzaki Rin left, taking Yagawa Ryoka's corpse with her.
The corpse was her "spoils of war." She could use it to earn merit within the Disaster Countermeasure Department and receive commendations and a promotion.
Fang Cheng had no idea how she planned to fake a battle without exposing herself, while making sure the Countermeasure Department wouldn't suspect a thing.
That was Kanzaki Rin's problem to solve. Judging by how confident she looked, it probably wouldn't cause any trouble.
After Kanzaki Rin left, Fang Cheng spent half the night cleaning the house. He also remembered to spend another two hours exercising to earn his stamina points for the day before finally crawling into bed, exhausted.
Kanzaki Rin moved quickly. The next morning, a furniture company showed up at Fang Cheng's door and delivered a whole new set of furniture.
Of course, none of it was high-end. No matter how rich Kanzaki Rin was, she wouldn't waste that kind of money on someone as cheap as him.
Fang Cheng was perfectly satisfied. The joy of getting something for free wasn't about how much it was worth, but whether it was free at all.
"Here's the pig's blood you wanted."
Kanzaki Rin didn't show up until noon. She tossed Fang Cheng a large bag of fresh pig's blood, and he had no idea where she'd gotten it.
Besides the pig's blood, Kanzaki Rin had also brought a large amount of the information Fang Cheng needed. It wasn't on paper, of course, but stored on a tiny USB drive.
Kanzaki Rin tossed him the drive. "You have one day to look through this information. After that, you must destroy it completely."
"One day?"
Fang Cheng asked in surprise, "If there's too much, I won't be able to remember it all in one day."
Kanzaki Rin showed no sympathy. "That's your problem. In any case, this information must be destroyed by tomorrow. Neither you nor I can afford to take responsibility if it leaks."
In other words, Kanzaki Rin had smuggled all this information out illegally?
Wow, that woman's brain had to be black inside. She was breaking the law right out in the open.
Fang Cheng didn't pick a fight with her over it. He shrugged. "I'll do my best."
Kanzaki Rin glanced at the bag of fresh pig's blood. "Aren't you going to eat it?"
She seemed strangely fixated on Fang Cheng drinking blood.
"I am. Why else would I have asked you to buy it?"
Fang Cheng carried the pig's blood into the kitchen.
Kanzaki Rin followed him. When she saw him skillfully turn on the stove and boil some water, she couldn't help asking, "What are you doing?"
Fang Cheng pulled out several packs of vermicelli he'd gone out to buy that morning. "Eating. What else?"
"This is how you eat it?"
When Kanzaki Rin saw the vermicelli, she finally understood what Fang Cheng meant by "eat."
"Are you messing with me?"
She was furious. No matter how absurd things got, vampires couldn't possibly eat cooked pig's blood. That was human food.
If vampires ate the same food as humans, could they even be called vampires?
They might as well be called pig's-blood-and-vermicelli stew ghosts.
Kanzaki Rin was now convinced that Fang Cheng was deliberately making fun of her. She'd gone all over the market to get him fresh pig's blood, too.
Seeing how angry Kanzaki Rin was, Fang Cheng shook his head. "I don't know whether other vampires eat it, but I like it this way. Don't assume a whole species has to eat a certain kind of food. That's a stereotype, and it's also discrimination."
You've got to be kidding me...
At that moment, Kanzaki Rin really wanted to swear, but her good upbringing forced her to hold it in.
Fang Cheng turned around, still holding the vermicelli. "Want to eat together?"
"Keep it all for yourself."
Kanzaki Rin shot him a cold look and turned to leave the kitchen.
"Thanks for the meal."
Kanzaki Rin set down her bowl and chopsticks, then gently dabbed her lips with a napkin.
Fang Cheng glanced at the now-empty pot of pig's-blood-and-vermicelli stew, then looked at Kanzaki Rin's ample chest.
Unlike Asaka Akie, Kanzaki Rin wasn't shy about it. She glared right back at him with sharp eyes. "What are you looking at?"
Fang Cheng sighed. "I get it now. You eat even more than I do, but you still don't gain weight. The nutrients all end up where they're supposed to."
Faced with Fang Cheng's borderline sexual harassment, Kanzaki Rin didn't bat an eye. "You have less than 24 hours to look through the information. If you keep wasting precious time on meaningless things like this, I'll consider destroying it right now."
"We've eaten at the same table. Can't you cut me some slack?"
"You just wasted another few seconds."
"Hmph. What a heartless woman."
Fang Cheng handed the dishes and chopsticks to Kanzaki Rin to wash, then headed straight into the bedroom to start looking through the information she'd brought.
The materials were divided into two parts: a compendium of supernatural creatures, and information about the Disaster Countermeasure Department's selection and training system for psychics.
The compendium's index alone listed more than ten thousand types of creatures. The whole thing ran to at least several million words. There was no way he could finish it in a day.
Fang Cheng suspected Kanzaki Rin had done it on purpose, but it was a deliberate trap, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Fang Cheng tried copying and pasting, but Kanzaki Rin had clearly anticipated that. He had no idea how she'd set it up, but he couldn't copy a single character from the USB drive. Printing was blocked, too.
After trying several methods without success, Fang Cheng gave up on copying the information.
Besides, with this kind of lawbreaking, there were only two possibilities: never doing it again, or doing it an infinite number of times. Now that Kanzaki Rin had started, Fang Cheng would have plenty of ways to get her to bring the information out again in the future.
Fang Cheng started with the Supernatural Creature Compendium. It divided monsters into three major categories.
The first category was undead creatures, represented by vampires and zombies. It included all creatures with undead traits.
The second category was eerie creatures, represented by ghosts and spirits. It included unknown creatures with religious associations, such as evil spirits conjured up by cults.
The third category was traditional monsters: creatures that had evolved from folk customs and legends. Examples included the Dragon Maiden and Fox Immortal at the East Asian Revolutionary League headquarters; the Kappa and Tengu from Area 11; and goblins and gargoyles from Western Europe.
Fang Cheng couldn't read everything, so he pulled up the vampire information from the index and read it from beginning to end.
Afterward, Fang Cheng finally had a general understanding of vampires.
The first vampire whose existence had been confirmed could be traced back to the Middle Ages in Western Europe.
The second vampire wasn't discovered until the beginning of the First Industrial Revolution.
After that, vampires began appearing frequently. It wasn't only vampires; other supernatural creatures also began appearing on a large scale after the First Industrial Revolution.
Before the First Industrial Revolution, supernatural creatures had only appeared sporadically.
Vampires were extremely brutal and terrifying monsters. They posed a serious threat not only to humans, but also to their own kind.
Every newly created vampire instinctively wanted to hunt other vampires to increase its strength.
As the killing continued, monsters like the Blood Queen would eventually emerge as Disaster-Class threats.
What puzzled people was that powerful vampires would go around creating more of their kind, only for them to kill one another. Some vampires were even hunted by the vampires they had created.
There was still no reasonable explanation for this bizarre, suicidal behavior.
Whenever a vampire came within a certain distance of another vampire, it could smell a peculiar odor, something like the stench of blood.
This drove them to hunt one another or flee. Not every vampire was confident it could defeat its own kind. If one judged that another vampire was far stronger, it would choose to run.
After reading the vampire information, a question came to Fang Cheng.
He wasn't a vampire. So how had Yagawa Ryoka found him? Did he smell like a vampire, too?
On the other hand, why had he been able to smell the blood on Yagawa Ryoka?
Fang Cheng subconsciously touched his neck. For a moment, the Blood Queen, Isis, and her flawless face suddenly appeared in his mind.
She gave Fang Cheng a meaningful smile, making him feel as if he'd plunged into an icy river, his whole body enveloped by a deep chill.
"Damn it, what did that woman do to me?"
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