Forever Seventeen

Seven o'clock.

The sun was already quite warm.

With nothing else to do, Yu Xian began practicing his newly acquired ability.

Standing sideways to Blue Bird, he looked at a tree not far ahead. A Bubble appeared at his fingertips, and he controlled it to shoot toward the tree, instantly piercing straight through it.

With a thought, the Bubble curved around and punched a smooth hole through a boulder.

Bubble was unaffected by gravity and carried no kinetic energy. Its speed depended entirely on how fast Yu Xian's thoughts were, while its attack power depended on how much force it could withstand.

Yu Xian controlled the Bubble, making it faster and faster. Once it reached some unknown multiple of the speed of sound, it suddenly burst and vanished.

"The energy membrane forming the Bubble couldn't withstand any more air resistance, so it burst?" Yu Xian murmured thoughtfully.

It wasn't that Bubble couldn't go faster, but that its energy membrane couldn't endure the air resistance. If the membrane had infinite hardness, Yu Xian could make it move at sublight speed, or even at the speed of light.

Next, Yu Xian created two more Bubbles. He weakened their hardness but increased their elasticity.

He pressed their surfaces. They really had become springier, but without his control, the two Bubbles remained fixed at their coordinates, so their rebound force was extremely concentrated.

Simply put, they were incredibly bouncy. They might prove unexpectedly useful in certain situations.

"What if I increase the stickiness?"

He created an extremely adhesive Bubble and pressed a finger against its surface. Sure enough, his finger immediately stuck to it.

He then tried to pull his finger free, but even with all his strength, he couldn't break loose. Unless he was willing to cut off his finger, his whole body would be firmly stuck to the Bubble.

Actually, the way to break the deadlock was simple: possess enough power to destroy the Bubble. Break it directly, and one could move again.

The problem was that there probably weren't many people with that ability. After all, one needed at least Eagle Rank strength to possibly break it. If Yu Xian prepared several more Bubbles and jammed certain points where someone exerted force, he could even restrain some powerful individuals above Eagle Rank.

At that moment, a bird landed on a nearby tree and watched the two of them.

With a thought from Yu Xian, a Bubble instantly looped around and stuck right onto the bird's back, then carried it back into his hand.

Watching the struggling bird, he asked, "Blue Bird, if Aberrant Insects have already parasitized birds, does what we're doing still mean anything?"

"Trust headquarters. The think tank must have considered every possible scenario. Since they made this decision, there must be a reason for it," Blue Bird said casually.

Yu Xian controlled the Bubble to fly into the distance and nodded. "Mm, I understand. It's just that this is my first time taking part in such a major operation, so I'm a little too nervous."

Then he continued training his ability, such as making the Bubble spin or trying to alter its shape.

The sun gradually climbed toward the center of the sky, and the sunlight grew hotter. Blue Bird simply took out a parasol, opened it, and watched Yu Xian train beneath the sun.

"Salty Fish, are you really a Vampire?" Blue Bird couldn't help asking as she watched Yu Xian looking full of energy under the blazing sun.

Yu Xian nodded. "Of course."

"Then do you drink blood?" Blue Bird asked.

Yu Xian nodded. "Of course I drink blood. I drank some yesterday."

Pangu's Blood was blood too. Since he had drunk it, he wasn't going to deny it, though the experience of drinking Pangu's Blood had actually been awful. Pangu's memories were too painful. Yu Xian even wondered whether Pangu was still endlessly repeating the dream of creating heaven and earth within chaos.

Right.

Yu Xian suddenly remembered that he still had quite a bit of silver in his storage ring.

So he took out a piece of silver, opened his mouth, and sucked it into his body as though drinking soy milk.

"..."

Watching Yu Xian's actions, Blue Bird found the whole thing surreal.

What kind of lousy Vampire was this? He basked in sunlight and ate silver. The sight was simply too jarring.

"By the way, how old are you?" Blue Bird asked, an idea suddenly occurring to her.

Yu Xian answered, "Seventeen. What about you?"

"I'm twenty-four. By the way, a Vampire who undergoes First Embrace seems to have their body frozen at the moment of First Embrace. Doesn't that mean you'll only ever be seventeen from now on?" Blue Bird asked after answering.

In fact, both First Embrace Vampires and wild Vampires had their bodies frozen at the age when they were transformed.

Yu Xian nodded with a smile. "That's right. So no matter how many years pass, no matter who asks me, I'll always be seventeen."

"..."

Blue Bird immediately looked suspicious. So was Yu Xian's answer just now true or false?

Then Yu Xian himself suddenly froze, having thought of a very important question.

He looked at Blue Bird and asked, "Blue Bird, Vampires born naturally can grow up, right?"

"That's true. Although Vampires have very low reproductive ability, there are still some natural-born Vampires. They're babies when they're born, so they can't possibly stay babies forever. It seems they stop growing only after reaching a certain age," Blue Bird said with a nod.

As Yu Xian listened, an image naturally formed in his mind: he still looked exactly as he did now, while Nora had become a tall, mature young woman.

Standing together, they would look like siblings, or perhaps even mother and son...

"I wonder what Nora will look like when she grows up?"

"Will she still be as silly as she is now?"

As his thoughts ran wild, Pangu's Heart in his body gave a beat.

He dispersed the messy thoughts in his mind, covered his chest with a hand, and thought expectantly, Tomorrow, I should be able to awaken Pangu's first Divine Ability.

Hopefully, he'd hit the jackpot in one go and draw Pangu's Undying Divine Ability right away.

Of course, if he couldn't hit the jackpot in one go, Pangu's Divine Might wasn't something he couldn't accept either.

Fine.

If it wasn't Pangu's Divine Might, then Pangu's Sky-Rending Divine Ability would be pretty good too.

While he was imagining the future, deep within the mountains, several of Zhou Tai's personalities controlled different bodies and sat together in a cave, discussing matters with grave expressions.

"It seems we've been surrounded," Number Two Zhou Tai said.

Number Three Zhou Tai was unusually serious. "This really is troublesome. They may have already guessed our weakness."

"Then kill them all! Kill every last one of them!" Number Five Zhou Tai sprang to his feet and said murderously.

Number Two Zhou Tai frowned. "Our top priority is finding a way to send the main body out. As long as the main body doesn't die, we won't die."

Although their eldest had been replaced by an Aberrant Insect, their existence originated from their eldest's illness. Thus, they actually had one root: the Aberrant Insect version of their eldest. Once that Aberrant Insect was killed, they would all die.

Naturally, they would never tell Chen Qingsong about such a major weakness. They had never even spoken of it before.

None of the Zhou Tais could understand how humans had learned of it.