Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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If Li Yuebai could travel back to the Zhengde era of the Ming Dynasty, the first thing he would do was find Old Master Tang, give him a thumbs up, and shout three times,
“Old Master, you are wise!” This book, *A Study of Blood Charms*, was basically equivalent to a *General Introduction to Vampires*!
Although it was written in traditional Chinese characters in vertical format, making it very tiring to read, Li Yuebai, risking the dignity of an excellent Chinese language teacher, still managed to understand it all.
In layman’s terms, the content recorded here was that a dozen years ago, around 1500 AD, the conflict between hunters and vampires reached its peak in Europe, ultimately leading to a decisive battle.
In the final battle, the hunters were almost completely wiped out, severely damaging the vampires at the cost of their lives. Some vampires chose to hibernate, while the rest were forcibly sealed. Whether they chose to hibernate voluntarily or were forcibly sealed, the result was the same— the vampires’ bodies shrunk to the size of a palm and were sealed into various objects.
There were no hunters left alive, so few know about this, and even fewer know when these vampires would awaken again.
The Vatican claimed they were permanently sealed away until the end of time.
However, the priest who wrote this book is highly sceptical of this claim.
He wrote this line in his native language: “I am deeply worried about the reality that they will awaken. At that time, the world will inevitably be ruled by darkness again, perhaps in a short hundred years, perhaps in a long thousand years. In short, they will awaken, and we will be powerless to stop it.”
“The result is five hundred years,” Li Yuebai muttered to himself. “From 1500 to now, a little over five hundred years.”
As for Countess Karnstein, the maid Ampsa… these names could be easily found online. The internet said that Countess Karnstein was a vampire noblewoman with her own fiefdom. In her basement, there were countless corpses of young girls. The maid Ampsa was, of course, a famous vampire maid in history, equally cruel…
But *A Study of Blood Charms* said that they were not the names of a single vampire, but a collective term for a certain type of vampire.
There were many kinds of vampires, each with a common name. Perhaps there were hundreds of Countess Karnsteins and hundreds of maids Ampsas. Countess Karnstein’s common fetish was drinking the blood of virgins, while her maid, Ampsa, specifically craved the blood of virgins.
All vampires possessed a degree of mind control.
Before this mass hibernation, a few individual vampires had experienced hibernation periods, and there were even cases of them possessing humans again after hibernation, all recorded by the priests.
It was said that when the possession was short-lived, the vampire’s level was low, and their power was weak, garlic could dispel the hibernating entity.
However, when the possession was long-lasting, the vampire’s level was high, and their power was strong, no amount of garlic would be effective.
Fortunately, Ma Xiaoting wasn’t too unlucky; she encountered the former situation.
At the time, Li Yuebai used garlic juice only as a last resort; if the garlic juice didn’t work… then he would probably have to make the cruellest choice—to destroy the vampire along with Ma Xiaoting.
Thankfully, there was still in time.
The *A Study of Blood Charms* also specifically mentioned a long-lost sacred object called the [Sealing Silver Rope].
The Sealing Silver Rope?
Li Yuebai immediately took out the silver ring from the evidence bag.
It looked perfectly still, a small, shiny ring, nothing special.
Li Yuebai found two pairs of pliers with insulated handles and tried to pull it open as before.
It wouldn’t budge.
Wait a minute, last time he easily pulled it open with his hands, even burning his hand…
Could it be that hands could do it, but tools couldn’t?
He consulted Old Master Tang’s book, which clearly stated: direct contact with human flesh was necessary to open the sealing silver cord.
Still, something wasn’t right. Last time he was wearing plastic gloves, which couldn’t be considered direct contact, could it? Then it dawned on him: the gloves had already been stained with blood during the autopsy, which was why they could be opened.
Li Yuebai steeled himself, opened a pack of sterile disposable needles, and pricked his hand with his eyes closed.
Blood dripped onto the silver ring, and with a pull of the pliers—after a flash of light, it actually opened! The silver ring was stretched longer and thinner until it became a necklace.
When it reached a circumference of about 40 centimeters, it quieted down, no longer hot, and no longer emitting terrifying sparks.
Li Yuebai carefully poked it with his index finger, and only after confirming it was fine did he dare pick it up with both hands—it was now a completely soft silver necklace, even with a clasp, so he could unfasten it and wear it around his neck.
Li Yuebai unfastened the clasp and put it on the table leg like a necklace.
The table was vintage-style, having sat in the living room for many years with almost no movement. The legs were thick, made of stainless steel, heavy and sturdy, with a small protrusion on one leg to catch the necklace and prevent it from falling.
Li Yuebai turned on his phone’s camera and started filming.
One minute passed, nothing happened.
Two minutes passed, nothing happened.
Three minutes passed, nothing happened.
At the end of the three minutes, just as the second hand reached zero, there was a sharp crack! The table, which had been as still as a mountain, suddenly tilted to one side.
The heavy table leg was twisted into a painful shape by the seemingly delicate necklace.
A clanging metallic sound rang out as the leg, constricted by the necklace, narrowed further, deforming due to the ductility of stainless steel… Finally, with a crisp snapping sound, the table toppled over, the leg completely broken in two.
The whole process took no more than ten seconds.
The silver necklace, now lying on the floor, had reformed into a silver ring.
“What are you doing?” Ye Qing, drying her wet hair, emerged from the bathroom, his usually calm eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at Li Yuebai and the broken table leg.
“Conducting an experiment.” Li Yuebai stood up. “There are no more doubts about Xu Lili’s cause of death.”
The dormant entity that called itself the maid Ampsa wasn’t in a dormant state on its own. Instead, it had been sealed inside a hollow castle stone by a vampire hunter, who had tightly bound the coffin containing it with silver sealing ropes. The coffin was made of a special, extremely hard material, unlike metal table legs which are easily broken. At most, it bore a few marks, but the coffin was completely sealed. Without outside help, even if the dormant entity woke up, it couldn’t escape.
Unfortunately, shortly after it awoke, the castle stone ended up in Xu Lili’s hands.
Unable to escape, the dormant entity could only use its limited mental control abilities to gradually bewitch Xu Lili. Because of the close proximity, Xu Lili couldn’t escape and unknowingly became hopelessly ensnared.
In her diary, she wrote: “Want to open a box”—this was the dormant entity’s hint, enticing her to open the castle stone.
The desire for a necklace—a subtle hint from the dormant entity—was what lured Xu Lili to remove the sealing silver rope.
This seduction intensified day by day. Finally, one day, Xu Lili opened the stone block and discovered a small black coffin inside, along with the sealing silver rope wrapped around it. Now, without the stone block as a barrier, the dormant entity’s mind control was even stronger. Xu Lili almost frantically and uncontrollably reached out and grabbed the small black coffin, then desperately ripped the sealing silver rope off with her bare hands!
This was why her hands bore such shocking scars.
By the time she finally removed the sealing silver rope, it had been torn to the length of a necklace.
The dormant entity’s seduction was still working. Xu Lili looked at the necklace and smiled contentedly. Uncontrollably, she put it around her neck like a real necklace, even taking a selfie with her computer’s webcam and sending it to a friend via chat. At that moment, the dormant entity also escaped from the coffin, and was also captured on camera while floating behind Xu Lili.
Three minutes after the photo was taken, the “necklace” began to tighten terrifyingly!
Xu Lili barely had time to struggle before the silver binding cord snapped her neck, her body falling to the ground, blood splattering, her head rolling to the side.
The dormant entity, perhaps finding her body too weak and needing to expend considerable magical energy to heal the wound, abandoned its plan to possess her and instead waited patiently.
Soon after, Xu Lili’s roommate, Ma Xiaoting, returned.
The dormant entity also didn’t rush to possess Ma Xiaoting— since though weak, she was conscious, neither unconscious nor seriously injured, and not on the verge of death; therefore possession was impossible, so it was better to wait quietly.
What followed was witnessed by Li Yuebai and Ye Qing.
In the past two days, after giving her statement, Ma Xiaoting, accompanied by someone from the bureau, went to the hospital for a medical examination. The results showed that her body remained that of a normal human, unaffected by the possession. Perhaps because the dormant entity feared garlic and detached from her body early, it prevented an irreversible situation.
Ma Xiaoting had now safely returned to her hometown, but the psychological trauma she had suffered won’t be erased anytime soon. Li Yuebai planned to withhold the truth of the case from her for now, allowing her to recover quietly.
“The matter of the sealed silver ring is clear.” Li Yuebai put the silver ring back into the evidence bag and picked up the castle stone again: “But we still don’t know where the remaining dormant entities are hiding. For example, this stone, from the outside, is completely indistinguishable from an ordinary stone. Are we really just going to wait for them to come to us after the case occurs?”
“That’s the only way for now.” Ye Qing nodded.
“Actually, there is a method, theoretically.” Li Yuebai frowned. “Since the dormant entities are hiding in their hideouts, they can use mind control to control humans who approach. So, if we see people who have been particularly suspicious lately, behaving abnormally, we can determine that there is a dormant entity nearby, or a vampire that has already hatched.”
“It won’t work in practice.” Ye Qing poured cold water on him with the truth. “There are too many people. You can’t monitor everyone, and it’s difficult to distinguish whether everyone’s abnormal behavior is related to the vampire’s mind control.”
“That’s right…” Li Yuebai sighed.
“By the way, Ye Qing.” He suddenly remembered. “What’s going on abroad, especially in Europe lately?”
Vampires were most numerous in Europe, and now that vampires were awakening one after another, the situation there would only be worse than in China.
“I’ve already looked at their internal data.” Ye Qing turned the computer screen to show Li Yuebai. “Like us, they are in the initial understanding stage and haven’t made it public at all.”
In fact, it could be seen from the several terrorist attacks in recent years that the police force and response capabilities of some European countries were not as good as before.
Various countries had probably started secretly contacting each other about this, after all, fighting vampires was a matter for all humanity. However, with the enemy in the shadows and us in the open, it was even more difficult to tackle than counter-terrorism.
Li Yuebai was about to go back to the station with Ye Qing to see if there were any new developments when his phone rang.
The screen showed that the caller was Liang Jing, Liang Tian’s sister.
Li Yuebai hesitated to answer for a moment.
At the scene of Liang Tian’s murder, Liang Jing had lost control and blamed him, saying that Liang Tian’s death was all her responsibility. Li Yuebai knew very well that Gu Xisha hadn’t done anything wrong, but he had to consider Liang Jing’s feelings. Compared to the pain of losing a relative, what was a scolding?
He was in the same boat, so he answered before the first ring.
“Hello, Gu Xisha! This is Liang Jing.” Liang Jing’s voice was still hysterical: “I’m reporting a crime, you guys come to the biological research center quickly, I &%……%…￥”
The last sentence was spoken too urgently to be heard clearly.
“Okay, we’re coming right away.” Li Yuebai replied sternly, “How are you now?”
“I’m not injured.” Liang Jing hurriedly replied, “My husband… my husband turned into a snake!”
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