Chapter 3: Silver Blood
Late at night, in the basement of a villa somewhere in Silver City, more than a dozen men hung upside down beneath dim lighting with their eyes blindfolded.
"You sure talk big for a bunch of incompetents. Since you claim that everything can be bought, I wonder if you can buy your own lives now."
A long-haired young man with delicate features, dressed in a tailcoat, stared at the reckless lunatics before him. As he spoke, the killing intent he radiated grew increasingly intense. If not for the need to find out the whereabouts of Nora's blood, he would have long hacked them into pieces and fed them to the dogs.
As Nora's guardian in Silver City, Roche bore an enormous responsibility for her being attacked.
He actually felt rather wronged. Nora had the Daywalker ability and could move freely under the sun, so the only way he could protect her was by assigning her a team of human bodyguards.
If Nora was attacked while she was out shopping during the day, what could he possibly do?
After Nora's incident, he immediately mobilized the entire Blood Race's forces in Silver City and managed to intercept the group before they could flee.
He had not expected that there wouldn't even be one supernatural being among this group. All of them were ordinary humans.
Roche walked up to one of the young men, patted his face, and asked in a slow, measured tone, "Tell me, who did you sell the blood to?"
This young man was clearly the leader of the group. He had silver weapons, and he had nearly injured them before he was captured.
"I don't know him. He wore a mask and was probably wearing a disguise underneath it. There are rules in our line of work. Digging into a customer's identity is against the rules. That's all I know," the young man answered truthfully, retaining his calm demeanor.
Roche let out a cold sneer and suddenly plunged his hand into the neck of a nearby man suspended upside down. That man immediately convulsed and screamed in agony. Then, his blood flowed from the wound after Roche's hand and condensed into a slender blood sword.
"You have your rules, but I also have mine. Let's see whose rules carry more weight," Roche said with a vicious smile.
Next, the entire basement was filled with agonized screams and the sickening sound of flesh tearing.
Finally, before the night ended, everything fell silent once more.
Roche came up from the basement and took a white towel from his assistant. As he carefully wiped his hands, he said calmly, "Tang Bo, assemble a team and look into it. The thief who obtained Miss Nora's blood should be around her age and come from a family with some financial means. They may have recently withdrawn 25 million. It shouldn't be difficult tracking them down."
"Understood. I will catch that bastard and—" the assistant replied with his head lowered.
Before he could finish, Roche cut him off. "Bring him back alive and let Miss Nora deal with him herself. The Duke decreed that it's time for Miss Nora to take her first life."
Logically speaking, even if the bodyguards were gunned down, Nora herself was not someone ordinary humans could easily subdue. Vampires had physical capabilities far beyond those of ordinary humans. Even if the attackers were armed, escaping should not have been difficult.
Unfortunately, Nora had been so shaken by the deaths of her bodyguards that she was completely at a loss. Before she could even react, those ordinary humans had already wounded her with silver weapons.
If those people had been after Nora's life, she would have had no chance of surviving.
***
Bathed in the warm sunlight by the window, Yu Xian sat in the fourth row on the left side of Class 3 of Grade 12, completely engrossed in a novel.
Once it passed 1:30 PM, the sun would shine directly onto this seat. Even with the curtains drawn, heat could still be felt. Yu Xian had once disliked this seat very much, but now, he was very satisfied with it.
With enough food, a vampire did not need sleep. During the daytime, he would obediently stay at school, basking in the sun, and at nightfall, he would follow online courses at home to practice various combat techniques.
Yu Xian knew very well that he had already set one foot in the supernatural world.
Whether he was willing or not, there would inevitably be times in the future when he would be forced to use violence. Thus, it was best for him to start preparing for it now. The only way to avoid being flustered when the time came was to start training early.
In recent days, his physical capabilities had been steadily increasing. Things he once could not even imagine were now easily within his capabilities.
For example, he could now do a thousand one-finger handstand push-ups in one go without breaking a sweat, and he could easily do a one-finger dead hang. A simple punch produced over a ton of force, which meant that he could quite literally strike a bull dead.
He wasn't sure whether he was considered strong or weak among vampires. After all, he had never heard anyone talk about vampires being anything special in terms of raw strength. If anything, it was supernatural beings such as werewolves and wiccans, alongside knights and martial artists, who were renowned for their brute force.
I wonder what abilities I'll awaken.
Yu Xian closed the book he was reading and rested his head on his desk, enjoying the sunlight as anticipation quietly welled up in his heart.
His heart had already beaten nine times. If nothing unexpected happened, he could reach his ten heartbeats today and awaken his first minor ability.
The only minor abilities he could find online—or rather, the ones the Blood Race had intentionally made known to the public—were Bat Manipulation, Blood Flame, enhanced smell, and hibernation.
To Yu Xian, Bat Manipulation and Blood Flame were top-tier draws, enhanced smell was middling, while hibernation was the worst possible outcome.
Hibernation was objectively not a bad ability. It was the most common first minor ability awakened by the vampires, and it allowed them to dramatically reduce their energy consumption while sleeping, as well as stabilize injuries and help them heal.
The problem was that while hibernating, a vampire's awareness of the outside world became extremely dull, making them an easy target for surprise attacks.
In the past, there were cases where ordinary humans located the safehouse of a wild vampire in hibernation. They easily killed it, and that earned them the right to join the Blood Race.
Therefore, wild vampires like Yu Xian would never hibernate even if they had awakened this ability, unless they had an absolutely secure refuge.
The afternoon sun grew increasingly intense. The classmates in front of him had already closed the curtain. Only Yu Xian still kept a small gap to continue basking in the sunlight.
The second period was history class.
Yu Xian propped up his history textbook to shield himself from view, then rested on his desk and soaked in the sunlight.
It had to be said that the history teacher seemed to possess some extraordinary power. He clearly wasn't tired, yet under the teacher's hypnotic droning, drowsiness overtook him, and his eyelids kept drooping shut.
Suddenly, his heart gave a violent thump, instantly driving away all traces of drowsiness.
This heartbeat was far more violent than the previous ones. It was as though some kind of force had erupted from his heart, surging through every artery, every limb, and every bone in his body. At last, the shock reached his brain, and deep within his consciousness, he seemed to hear thunder rumbling, as if some power was condensing within his soul through his bloodline.
In that instant, a sudden understanding dawned upon him, and he knew what his first minor ability was.
It was an active ability called Silver Blood!