The Training Ground was still the same Training Ground.
But this time, Ling Yue didn’t cut her palm to draw blood for a Blood Blade.
Instead, she stood in the center of the room and beckoned to her.
“Come on, run toward me at your maximum speed.”
Hearing this, Feng Ling flexed her ankles, took a deep breath, and concentrated her strength into the tips of her toes.
The next second, she felt like a stone launched from a slingshot.
In an instant, she crossed the entire Training Ground and crashed straight into Ling Yue’s chest.
Ling Yue sidestepped and reached out, hooking her fingers into Feng Ling’s collar and lifting her into the air.
“Your speed is indeed faster than before, but your direction is off. When you accelerate at full power, your shoulder line shifts, and that throws off your entire center of gravity.”
At that moment, Feng Ling realized she was suspended in midair, her feet finding nothing to stand on.
She could only kick her legs awkwardly.
“Try again. This time, before you accelerate, get a clear view of my position. Don’t aim for my shoulder at the start. Aim for the point behind me… the place where you actually want to stop.”
Then Ling Yue set her down and gently patted her back.
Feng Ling retreated to the starting point, adjusted her breathing, and charged again.
This time, she locked onto the floor tile two meters behind Ling Yue in advance.
And when she pushed off, she felt the floor tremble.
Feng Ling’s body shot forward in a straight line, brushed past Ling Yue’s shoulder, and crashed straight into the wall at the far end of the Training Ground, embedded in a pile of rubble.
“Your direction is correct, but your speed exceeds your legs’ braking capacity. You need to learn how to use blood flow velocity to make an emergency stop…”
Ling Yue gently nudged the broken bricks aside with her toe and pulled her small body out.
Feng Ling sat on the ground and took stock of her body.
The impact from crashing into the wall had broken two of her ribs, but now the ribs had automatically healed.
“How long will it take me to gain full control?” she asked, looking up.
“About half a month.”
“That’s too slow!”
“For an ordinary Vampire, it takes a year. Isn’t Xiao Fengling satisfied with just half a month?”
Ling Yue crouched down and picked the bits of gravel out of her hair one by one.
“I want to learn a faster method! Like just now, when you hooked my collar—how did you catch me so accurately at that speed?”
Hearing this, Ling Yue lightly cut her own palm with her fingernail, letting blood seep from the wound, then extended her hand to Feng Ling.
“Drink this first. Listen while you drink.”
The moment Xiao Fengling saw the blood, before reason could react, she had already grabbed Ling Yue’s hand and pressed her lips to the wound.
And when the blood slid down her throat, the restless stirring inside her body finally quieted for a moment.
“The reason I could catch you is that your speed is completely within my Perception Range. No matter how fast you go, your blood moves inside my Perception Field, like the brightest star in the night sky. I can know where you are even with my eyes closed,” Ling Yue explained.
“So that means… your blood… is inside my body?”
“To be precise, the blood inside you was once a part of me. Most of the blood I gave you when I transformed you into a Vampire has already merged with your own blood, but a small portion will remain in your veins forever. It always carries my Blood Mark… No matter where you are, I can find you, as long as I want to.”
As she said this, Ling Yue gave Feng Ling a meaningful look that made her skin crawl.
Then Feng Ling lowered her head and slowly wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth.
But in her mind, she tore that sentence apart and analyzed it piece by piece.
‘No matter where you are, I can find you… no matter where you are…’
‘So, even if she escaped this castle… even if she ran to the other end of the world, as long as she still carried this blood, Ling Yue could find her.’
‘Unless she got rid of the blood in her body.’
“So that means even if I run to the ends of the earth, you can still find me?”
However, Feng Ling said this in a half-joking tone, and after finishing, she deliberately pouted.
“Yes.”
Ling Yue responded with a smile.
Feng Ling didn’t ask further.
‘Enough… The information she obtained this time was enough to let her start thinking about the direction of her next plan.’
Then she stood up, pushed aside the broken bricks, and dusted off her skirt.
“Let’s do it again. I—I refuse to believe I can’t stop today!”
Feng Ling deliberately put on a silly, cute look of someone who’s bad at the game but loves playing.
…
And the next two hours were completely smashed inside the Training Ground.
Feng Ling charged from one end of the room to the other again and again.
From crashing into the wall to grazing it… from grazing it to stumbling two steps and nearly stopping…
Finally, after a full-speed sprint, she forced her blood to drive in the opposite direction, locking her feet in place just half a step in front of Ling Yue.
But the stop was still too violent.
She stumbled forward half a step, her forehead bumping into Ling Yue’s chest… Not bad, actually felt pretty nice.
Hah.
‘No, what am I thinking! This is the madwoman who killed me twice!’
“Great progress. Want to practice a bit more?”
Ling Yue looked down at Feng Ling in her arms with gentle eyes.
“No! I’m about to starve to death!” Feng Ling refused decisively.
Her hunger was indeed surging wildly through her veins.
The consumption from the consecutive sprints had raised the dryness inside her by several levels.
At this moment, she didn’t even dare to look at Ling Yue’s neck, afraid of losing control.
“Then let’s go upstairs and eat.”
Ling Yue took her hand and walked toward the stairs.
Feng Ling let herself be led, but quietly clenched her other fist.
‘Just now, two thoughts flashed through her mind at the same time.’
‘One was, of course, fear, making her want to step back immediately.’
‘The other was to fiercely rub a spiral rice ball, then bite it off and eat it… just like Ling Yue bit her.’
Then, she clenched her fists so tightly that her lips bled from biting.
‘Wait, when she crashed into Ling Yue’s embrace, did she hear a familiar yet unfamiliar sound?’
‘And it sounded a bit like the noise she made when she was being drained or pressed onto the bed… What’s going on?’
…
At lunch, Feng Ling ate two large bowls in a row, and even stole half of Ling Yue’s bowl after finishing.
‘While eating, she made excuses to herself…’
‘Training consumes a lot, need to replenish blood, eating more is normal…’
‘As for whether this excuse could fool herself, she couldn’t be bothered to think about it.’
And in the afternoon, while curled up on the sofa in the Living Room, she suddenly realized something.
‘Ling Yue was not there; she had gone to the “Private Area” on the third floor.’
‘This was originally her most precious time window… Every time before, she would sneak around looking for exits.’
‘But this time she didn’t move. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to escape, but because Ling Yue had told her in the Training Ground that her blood carried her mark.’
‘She needed to first verify whether that statement was real or just a scare tactic.’
‘If it was real, then even if she ran to the ends of the world, Ling Yue could find her in seconds. That wouldn’t be escaping; it would be suicide.’
“How should I verify it…”
Feng Ling turned over on the sofa and pressed the cushion against her face.
‘Escape once? She had already tried that method. The result was that Ling Yue, turning into Blood Mist, caught up and choked her half to death with only 30% of her strength, then dragged her back and gave her Cold Violence for over a month… and finally erased her with the Flame of End.’
‘So that path was a dead end. She needed another method to verify.’
Then Feng Ling continued staring blankly at the chandelier on the ceiling.
‘If Ling Yue’s blood had left a mark inside her body, could she sense it? Hmm… let’s try.’
So she closed her eyes and focused all her attention inward.
Before, when she did this, she could only feel a vague sense of blood flowing… but now it was different.
Every drop of her blood had its own presence, and she could even distinguish the flow speed in different areas.
The flow was fastest near the heart, then slowest at the fingertips.
The directions of arteries and veins were different, and the blood colors varied in depth.
And within this blood she knew well, she began to search for something that didn’t belong to her.
She searched for a long time, and finally, on the wall of the aorta behind the heart, she touched a small layer of something almost fused with the vessel.
This thing… did not belong to her… and it emitted a faint sweet scent, exactly like the taste every time she sucked on Ling Yue’s wrist wound.
And the moment her consciousness touched that blood film, two contradictory reactions occurred simultaneously in her body.
A low-frequency vibration came from behind her body, while her brain directly flashed the image of Ling Yue’s blood-red eyes after removing her contact lenses.
‘Alright, no need to verify anymore… It’s real… it’s real…’
Feng Ling’s eyes snapped open.
Her back was now covered in cold sweat.
She grabbed the Switch from the sofa, quickly turned it on and loaded her save, then made the character run around aimlessly.
‘But in her mind, she was rapidly turning over other matters.’
‘So the first obstacle to escape was not the main door, not the windows, not even Ling Yue’s physical tracking.’
‘The blood inside her was itself an inescapable cage.’
‘This blood gave her super speed, strength, and self-healing, and the ability to fly hundreds of meters, but it was also an invisible dog leash attached to her… wherever she went, she could be yanked back.’
‘What if… just if… she replaced the blood inside her with something else? That is, drain all her blood and replace it with new blood.’
‘But that would mean dying again, and she wasn’t sure if the Reincarnation Mechanism would fail because of the strange reason of “purifying her own blood.”’
‘So… this path was too risky… she needed to plan carefully.’
‘Then what exactly should she do?’