What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 495: Chapter 495: Wrathful Thunder (Part 2)

Liu Shiling, carrying the custard pie, set out from Qing Mountain Village, heading down the mountain road.

The sky was filled with rolling dark clouds which blocked a large part of starlight and moonlight. However, little fatty girl was in a heightened emotional state that she no longer cared about the dark. She firmly held the straps of her backpack and strode forward, following the path shown by her custard pie.

She didn’t need to see the path clearly, nor did she need to see the custard pie clearly. It felt as though a thread was connecting her and the custard pie, allowing her to vaguely sense its position and emotions, to follow closely.

The surrounding forests were filled with a ‘wooing’ sound of the wind, and the direction of the wind was very strange, as if it was gathering from below to rise upwards from a certain point.

But around the walking little fatty girl, there was no such strong wind, as if she was in a domain that separated her from the surrounding influences.

All that Liu Shiling thought of now was to go down the mountain to find her mom, and then ask about the situation of her dad, to stay by her mother’s side, and she promised to behave well and not cause her mother any trouble.

From her childhood to now, her dad has often been away due to his business trips, and the time spent at home was not long. However, little fatty girl actually liked her dad very much, because he was always kind to her and would always bring back toys and delicious food from his trips. He would never scold her or stop her from eating ice cream and snacks, and everytime he brought her out, they would go to an amusement park or have something delicious.

However, after the incident in September last year, she vaguely sensed something, after which she and her mom moved to Star City, and her dad’s homecoming frequency further decreased, and the duration of stay was also shorter.

Little fatty girl vaguely felt that dad had done something bad, which caused her mom to be bullied by others, caused her mom to be scolded by others, and caused them to have to move houses.

That’s why one day when she saw her dad and mom quarrelling on the balcony, she instinctively decided that dad was at fault. She went to protect her mom – only to be scolded by mom that day. Hence, she had disgruntledly “run away from home” – although she only went as far as the entrance of the estate.

She had never directly asked her dad and mom about these problems or tried to clarify about what really happened, because she was afraid.

She felt resentful towards her dad and even distanced herself from him after moving to Star City. However, she knew very clearly that dad was dad. Even if he did something wrong temporarily and had quarrels with mom, he would eventually come back, she had a dad.

But if… if dad was shot by the gun and was no more, what would she and her mom do?

With this thought in mind, her nose started stinging, and she felt wronged, angry, and scared.

Sometimes she thought her cousin was lying to deceive her, sometimes she wondered if her mom would never come back to fetch her after letting her stay with her grandma, sometimes she worried whether her grandma would also abandon her on the mountain and ignore her, and then if her aunt also didn’t want her and drove her out, would she become a child whom no one wanted?

But soon she thought of Alice’s words and Uncle Bald, Sister Fried Chicken Wings, Beautiful Sister, Old Fairy Sister, Sister Xiao Pingguo. They would definitely not abandon her, they would definitely help her to find her mom, they would definitely take her in.

So even though she had no clue about what to do after going down the mountain, whether she should contact her grandma first or something else, she was simply resolved to find her mom.

She kept reminding herself that, “You’re a magician,” Alice is always there to protect you, Custard Pie will follow you, and you can look for Uncle Bald. Uncle Bald is so powerful, he can certainly solve any problem!

Then she regained some confidence, feeling that she is not blown around everywhere by the wind like a dandelion, but instead she was like a large balloon being held by a string by Uncle Bald, as long as she turned back and called out, Uncle Bald would pull the string and guide her back to the ground.

Just as Liu Shiling was encouraging herself while walking down the mountain, there was a sudden sound of a starting engine, and a beam of light was coming up from the downstream road.

Under the guidance of the custard pie, Liu Shiling stopped and stepped back to the side of the road, waiting for the vehicle to pass first.

However, there was a surprised “Eh” from the tricycle, which then stopped beside her. A somewhat hoarse male voice asked, “Which family’s kid are you? Why are you here? I don’t seem to have seen you before, are you from Qing Mountain Village?”

“I’m not from Qing Mountain Village. My grandma brought me here to find my aunt, I’m now going to the town to find my grandma.” Liu Shiling was dazzled by the bright headlight of the tricycle, and when she squinted her eyes, she couldn’t see what the person asking looked like. She could only raise her hand to shield her eyes and instinctively replied.

“Oh? Did you run out here by yourself? Does your grandma know you’re out here? What’s her name? Uncle will take you to her,” a hoarse male voice said kindly.

Liu Shiling glanced at the custard pie at her feet, hesitated for a moment, then said to the man, “Can I borrow your phone to call my mom?”

“Oh, Uncle doesn’t have his phone. Let me take you to your mom,” the man replied.

“Thank you kindly, uncle, but I can get home by myself.” Liu Shiling then continued to walk briskly down the mountain with Custard Pie leading the way. Her small steps sped up even more.

She could sense that the “uncle” had a phone in his pocket but lied about not having one. Even more worrying, Custard Pie seemed very hostile and on guard towards this “uncle” – even more so than the children who had tried to pluck his whiskers earlier.

So Liu Shiling’s first reaction was to take off running.

Unexpectedly, the man turned his tricycle around and rattled back after her, blocking Little Fatty Girl’s path. He then smiled at her, “Child, I can’t let you go down the mountain alone. It’s still a long way from town. What if something happens? There are tigers, bears, and monsters in these woods that eat children!”

As he spoke, he climbed off his tricycle and began walking towards Liu Shiling.

Custard Pie lunged out at once, standing in front of the man, revealing sharp teeth and hissing, all his hair standing on end and bristling in hostility.

The man, taken aback, gave Custard Pie a fierce kick, despite knowing he was just the cat accompanying Little Fatty Girl. He then swore, “Get the hell outta my way! Damn beast, you’re asking for it!”

His voice was menacing and contained none of the gentleness from when he was talking with the Little Fat Girl prior.

“Custard Pie!” Liu Shiling gasped in shock, but she saw that after Custard Pie was sent flying, he rolled in the air before landing smack on the road, resuming his battle stance- thankfully not seeming injured.

“Come with uncle, child. I’ll take you to your mom!” Despite his reassuring words, Liu Shiling could just barely see in the light of the tricycle’s headlight that his face was twisted into a fearsome grimace and his eyes held a terrible gleam.

After a fierce growl, Custard Pie launched back into action, displaying impressive agility and speed, leaping up and raking a paw across the middle-aged man’s face.

The middle-aged man hadn’t expected the cat to be so quick and agile, and was caught off guard.

Liu Shiling received the signal from Custard Pie, instinctively turned around, and ran up the mountain but stopped after running for a bit, she turned around. Her young eyebrows furrowed, and her wide eyes stared at the man who was now coming at Custard Pie with a wrench from the tricycle and she shouted, “You’re a bad man!”

The middle-aged man faltered for a moment, used the wrench to chase Custard Pie away, then laughing, he approached her: “I’m a good man, definitely a good man!”

Liu Shiling suppressed her fear and her urge to turn and run. She pulled her hoodie up over her head, then she grabbed the strings at both sides and pulled so hard that the hood of the hoodie blocked her eyes. She quickly loosened her grip and pushed the hood back up, uncovering her eyes.

The middle-aged man, wrench in hand, didn’t consider the chubby little girl as a threat. But after taking a few steps forward, and with the headlight of the motorcycle behind him, he vaguely saw a few things floating around her.

As he got closer to the little girl, he suddenly felt his skin and scalp tingling, his hairs standing on end, even his hair seemed electrified, a strange sensation as if they were going to float upwards.

Suddenly the little girl shouted at him, “Chocolate! Ice cream! Sachima! Green bean cake! Lemon tea! He’s a bad man!”

Although the things the little girl shouted were silly and laughable, the middle-aged man found himself stopping in his tracks, a chill running down his spine. That’s because he saw several coin-like metal objects floating around her – five in total – swirling in a circle around her eerily.

The closer he got to the little girl, the stronger the sensation that he was about to be electrocuted.

A thunderous boom echoed.

The middle-aged man instinctively looked up. Lightning spread out like a network in the rolling clouds overhead, and his hair stood up on end— as if countless invisible threads were being pulled in the air.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the orange fat cat that had just been frantically fighting him, now sitting docilely across the street, looking at him from a distance.

“He is a bad man!” Little Fatty Girl yelled again.

A sudden sharp pain shot through the middle-aged man’s right hand clutching the wrench. Reflexively, he threw away the wrench. The headlight of his motorcycle behind him also dimmed.

“What the hell is going on…”

Just as the middle-aged man was dumbfounded, having abandoned the budding malicious intent and wanting to return to his vehicle to leave, a flash of light followed by another earth-shaking boom resounded not far away.

The thunderclap was so close it seemed right next to them. It was loud and crisp, startling the man so much that he instinctively crouched down with his hands over his head.

Almost simultaneously with the explosion, a bolt of lightning fell from the sky, striking a mound not far from them and blasting a large hole in it.

The middle-aged man even saw earthworm-like arcs crawling out of the crater blasted by the lightning, then dissipating in various directions. The spectacle was too bizarre, too shocking— he had never seen anything like it before.

In fact, even Little Fatty Girl, the “instigator”, was startled. She shrunk back, covering her ears and jumping aside. She wide-eyedly looked at the crater, then at the middle-aged man.

Looking at the pudgy little girl in a hooded cloak, the middle-aged man no longer found her cute but terrifying.

Suddenly, music sounded in his ear: “Let’s learn to meow together, meow, meow, meow, meow~~~”

It took a good while for him to react. The ringing was coming from the phone in his pocket. But the ringtone wasn’t his, was it?

He reflexively took out his phone. It had automatically answered the call, and a female voice came from the speaker: “Xiao Lingdang, turn around, squat down, close your eyes, and cover your ears.”

Liu Shiling was taken aback for a moment. She recognized the voice as Alice’s. She then looked towards the middle of the mountain road. A little girl in a white princess dress was standing there smiling at her. It was Alice!

Relief washed over Liu Shiling at the sight of Alice. She gave Alice a sweet smile, then did as instructed: turning around, squatting down, closing her eyes, and covering her ears.

Not only Liu Shiling, but after being astonished by the strange female voice on the phone, the middle-aged man also saw the little girl in a white dress in the middle of the road.

The girl was even more exquisite and pretty than Little Fatty Girl, just like a porcelain doll. However, all he felt was terror and fear, his limbs cold.

He wanted to turn around and leave, but found to his shock that the entire ground had begun to trembl. He couldn’t even stand, and fell to the ground.

Then he saw the little girl in the white dress disappear. In the middle of the mountain road, where she originally had been standing, the cement road started to crack. A hu?ge creature was rising from underground.

The frequent appearance of the network-shaped lightning illuminated the dense clouds above, turning the sky blood red. The blood-colored clouds rumbled downwards as though they were about to press onto the ground.

The giant underground creature finally broke through the ground and surged out. It was a huge head with various lines and ravines etched across its dark skin. Liquid that looked like magma and blood flowed over the ravines, emitting black smoke.

With several eyes on its head, each pupil was a stack of skulls, and a red liquid dripped from the corners, running down the wrinkles on its face. Upon hitting the ground, it transformed into countless tiny red bugs crawling towards the middle-aged man.

The middle-aged man was screaming in horror and trying to back away, only to find his trike had disappeared. He looked towards the position where the Little Fatty Girl was, seeing nothing but the bright light that made his eyes sting and tears flow.

He desperately tried to crawl away from the massive monster that was still digging itself out of the ground, but the creature’s mouth had already risen, and to an unbearable stench and the sounds of countless screams, a long tongue reached out and wrapped around the middle-aged man.

…

Following Alice’s words, Liu Shiling squatted down, closed her eyes, and covered her ears. She only heard a faint sound of the wind whistling, but there was no wind around her.

She wasn’t afraid that the middle-aged man would attack her when she wasn’t watching. She trusted Alice, and if Alice said that, she must be protecting her!

After a while, Liu Shiling felt something rubbing against her foot. She finally opened her eyes and saw that it was Custard Pie, tilting its little face up to look at her.

Then, when Liu Shiling stood up and looked back, she found that besides the trike with its headlights still on, the middle-aged man was nowhere to be seen.

Liu Shiling took a deep breath, finally relaxing her hand from her ears, and said to the cat at her feet, “Custard Pie, let’s go!”

She felt much better, as if a brick in her backpack had been unloaded, making her feel much lighter. She couldn’t help quietly humming, “Let’s learn the cat’s meow together, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow~~~”

Custard Pie wagged its tail and kept up, meowing now and then in tune with the song.

Before she knew it, the thick clouds in the sky had cleared, and the moonlight once again illuminated the land, allowing people to see the mountain road clearly.

Farther away, inside Qing Mountain Village on the mountain, the electricity had been restored.

The creepy howl of the wind in the surrounding woods had also stopped, and the branches and leaves were swaying with the gentle breeze.

Little Fatty Girl had no idea that she had just fully activated the environment brought by the five “Super-connected Objects,” making Xiang Kun’s entire “Super Sensory Item System” achieve something it had never done before.

Under normal circumstances, with only six Super-connected Objects in the vicinity and Xiang Kun not present, Alice would not have enough to “co-manifest.”

However, when Little Fatty Girl fully activated the five coin “Super-connected Objects,” the special environment and the “Emotion Infused Objects” chopsticks’ localization and transmission, they all gave Alice the opportunity to “play beyond the usual.”

Alice then worked together with Xiao Pingguo to remotely project the fear emotion of the “Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Wood Carving.” This, too, relied on Little Fatty Girl’s intense emotional fluctuations activating the five coins’ “Super Sensory Field,” briefly constructing an imitation of the Chongyun Village Home Court

.

Normally, emotional projection would affect everyone within its range, so Little Fatty Girl was also under influence.

However, when Xiao Pingguo projects emotions, she herself is not affected. So, while Xiao Pingguo was projecting, Alice used the fact that the five “Super-connected Objects” coins were the source, defining Little Fatty Girl, whom they surrounded, as the source of emotion. This, in turn, meant she would not be affected by the emotional projection.

The wrathful thunder that Little Fatty Girl unwittingly created had directly helped Alice and Xiao Pingguo further master the remote application of the “Super Sensory Item System.”

However, what even Alice, Xiao Pingguo, and Old Xia did not know was that this wrathful thunder of Little Fatty Girl’s had, for the first time, caused a faint consciousness response in the sleeping Xiang Kun.