Chapter Twenty: Hearing and Smelling
Xiang Kun was slightly dumbfounded while looking at the videos, and he realized that there were other videos from different angles in the highlighted comments, although they were not as clear. It was obvious that more than one person had captured the incident on camera.
He even saw a video taken by a surveillance camera. He wondered if the grocery store owner had uploaded it.
Xiang Kun was a bit overwhelmed. He handed the phone back to the journalist and hastily left his house, claiming that he had errands to run.
After walking around the street for a while, Xiang Kun didn't find the situation as serious as he'd thought. He hadn't shown any supernatural abilities when he'd stopped the offender. As long as he refused interviews, stayed out of sight, maintained a low profile, and waited for the matter to blow over, nobody would pay attention to him anymore.
After all, what the netizens cared about was the event itself.
Xiang Kun went to the busiest part of the city, found a roadside beverage shop, bought a drink, and then sat at the entrance with half-closed eyes, as if he were dozing off.
But in reality, he was concentrating on his hearing.
The timbre of the shop assistants' voices, the customers' orders, the sounds of footsteps and conversations outside, the noise of cars, honks, the promotional broadcasts from the nearby shopping mall, music — all sorts of sounds were being distinguished in Xiang Kun's mind.
He then locked onto a particular sound and began to focus on "capturing" it.
For instance, when he heard certain footsteps, he would track that sound, gauge its movement and position, estimate his distance from it, the material of the shoe sole, and so on until the sound faded and could no longer be heard.
In this way, Xiang Kun "constructed" a mental map of his surroundings using his heightened sense of hearing.
After his last blood-drinking session, Xiang Kun noticed his hearing had greatly improved—far stronger than that of an ordinary person.
Following his third blood-drinking session, Xiang Kun adjusted his training plan, reducing the proportion of strength training and adding exercises for agility and balance. Especially for his vision, hearing, and smell, he planned targeted exercises to train these senses.
Xiang Kun sat at the entrance of the beverage shop from just after ten in the morning until late afternoon. His eyes never opened, his buttocks never shifted from the spot. The beverage shop staff probably thought he was asleep.
At 5:15 in the afternoon, Xiang Kun opened his eyes, stretched as if he had actually been sleeping, got up, and left the beverage shop. He tossed the milk tea he'd bought into the trash — he hadn't taken a single sip.
Xiang Kun didn't go home; instead, he continued his auditory training.
He strolled aimlessly on the streets, randomly hunting for different sounds to track.
Sometimes he would spot people chatting or making phone calls, and he would slowly approach until he could vaguely hear their conversation. Then he would incrementally increase the distance, continuously extending the maximum distance at which he could hear the sound.
Sometimes he would randomly pick out a sound from a cacophony and trace its source, such as a single pair of footsteps amidst many, a dog's bark out of sight, or an unidentified ringing phone.
Other times, he would use a fixed and continuous sound source as the center, like a shopping mall broadcast, a clothing store's music, or even the sound of machinery, and gradually increase the distance from it.
For his auditory training, Xiang Kun's method was to listen, distinguish, and continuously test the limits of his hearing.
For the next few days, he spent almost ten hours each day roaming the streets, listening to various sounds to train his hearing.
Xiang Kun realized that compared to training during the day, the training effect at night was much better.
Not only were his bodily functions stronger and his mental state clearer at night, but his hearing was also more sensitive. Furthermore, there was less noise at night, with an overall quieter atmosphere, which made training easier for him at this stage.
Therefore, Xiang Kun continued his physical training at the gym during the day, and at night, he roamed the streets, randomly searching for different sounds.
This routine led him to hear many sounds he'd never considered before, such as the chirping and crawling of various bugs in the grass or gutters, the sound of a rat gnawing, the noise different building materials made due to thermal expansion or other vibrations, the differing sounds the wind made when blowing through various street layouts and roads, and some very faint sounds that he couldn't even determine the origin of.
Beyond his auditory, he also underwent olfactory training. Similar to how he trained his hearing, he worked to distinguish and trace different smells.
However, despite both trainings taking place on the streets, they were conducted separately. Currently, trying to simultaneously smell and listen would prevent full concentration on either sense and cause mutual interference.
So, when he first began his olfactory training, he would find a place to sit, close his eyes, use earplugs, and block out these two major senses. He would then exclusively use his nose to perceive his surroundings and differentiate various sources of smell among the ambient odors.
Compared to sounds, it was harder to distinguish and train with smells. Often, a strong odor would overpower others, and after being in a certain environment for a while, the nose would become accustomed to the ambient scents, causing a loss of sensitivity.
As such, he would often deliberately choose locations with particularly strong or mixed odors, such as garbage dumps, foul-smelling ditches, or food streets for his training.
On the evening of July 30th, Xiang Kun didn't leave the house after returning from the gym because he felt hungry again.
Counting the days, it had been about six days since his last blood-drinking session, similar to his previous records.
This time, Xiang Kun didn't conduct another endurance experiment. As soon as he felt hungry, he decided to deal with his last rabbit at home, consuming about 165 ml of rabbit blood.
Afterward, overcome with drowsiness, Xiang Kun set an alarm for 23 hours later on his phone.
He wanted to see whether he could be awakened by noise during his deep sleep.
The reason he set the alarm for 23 hours later was that he was worried that being awakened prematurely could mean insufficient sleep, which could possibly have negative effects on his body.
The alarm's duration was set to ring for one minute, three times in a row.
...
When Xiang Kun opened his eyes again, he had a moment of confusion. He felt as though something had changed in the world, but after a few minutes of thinking, he couldn't figure out what was different.
He sat up and checked his phone. As expected, the alarm hadn't roused him. It seemed that during his post-blood-drinking sleep, the sound of an alarm couldn't wake him.
What he didn't know was whether he would wake up if there was physical contact and how intense such physical contact needed to be?
As for his sleep duration this time, it was 25 hours and 27 minutes, still within the range of his previous records. There seemed to be no change.
Suddenly, Xiang Kun felt the room was rather noisy. He could even hear the boisterous conversations from the roadside stalls outside. Thinking he had forgotten to close the window before he slept, he checked it but found it tightly shut.
Xiang Kun was stunned for a moment, then realized it wasn't the noise from outside that had changed. His hearing had improved again.