Chapter 446 – Blind Fury
The taste of blood spread across Liu Ru's lips. Once, the mere sight of blood had been enough to make her dizzy — but now she found it intoxicating in a way she had never known before. Rich, viscous, almost sweet. The pain, the resentment, the grief that had piled up inside her — all of it seemed to dissolve the instant that warmth touched her tongue.
But Liu Ru did not lose herself there for long.
Something jolted through her, and her whole body began to tremble violently.
In a panic, she wrenched the Blood Fang from Mo Fan's neck and raised a shaking hand to her own mouth — pressing her fingertips against the sharp points of her teeth in dawning horror.
*God — what am I doing??*
Liu Ru couldn't believe it. She looked at Mo Fan, and found him already looking back at her. Those dark brown eyes were utterly unreadable.
That very blankness only made it worse. The weight of his gaze felt like it was passing straight through her, riddling her with holes. She had no idea how to face him.
She pulled herself free and stumbled back several steps, her bloodshot eyes still fixed on him. A grief unlike anything she had felt before surged through her body. Under normal circumstances she would already be in tears, lost and overwhelmed — because no matter how she thought about it, she could never have imagined herself hurting the very person who had helped her.
Yet not a single tear came.
Even the act of covering her face and crying felt like a performance now. A dizzying vertigo swept over her, and all she wanted was to hurl this body — this thing she no longer recognized as her own — into the deepest abyss she could find.
*What am I??*
*What was I just doing???*
A Vampire…
Creatures she had despised down to her very bones — and now she had become one of them. She had even turned on the person standing in front of her.
Liu Ru couldn't bring herself to look at Mo Fan. She bolted, fleeing like something hunted, into the thick darkness of the wooded path beside them.
She may not have realized it herself — but wherever there was darkness, her speed was terrifying. In mere moments, she had already put several hundred meters between them.
Mo Fan, left standing where he was, had meant to give chase. But he was startled by how fast she moved.
Not long ago she had been a fragile, ordinary girl. With blood in her now, she seemed to have undergone a complete transformation.
The changed color of her pupils. The sharp points of the Blood Fang. A face pale and hauntingly beautiful, yet with lips flushed a vivid, bewitching red. Liu Ru's features hadn't changed at all — and yet she was wreathed in an impenetrable veil of mystery, her entire bearing darkened into something that belonged to an entirely different person.
He watched her desperate, fleeing silhouette disappear into the dark. Listened to the sounds of her crying, raw with despair. A wave of helpless grief rose in his chest.
She had hated Vampires with everything she had — to the point of fighting them with nothing but a dagger, staking her life on the line. And now she had become this. That despair was beyond anything Mo Fan could reach.
"Mo Fan, what happened?" Lingling's voice came from beside him.
"We were too late." Mo Fan looked at her and shook his head.
Lingling's gaze went straight to the two clear bite marks on Mo Fan's neck. One look at his pallid complexion told her everything.
"What do we do now? That Vampire seemed to sense something — no idea where it ran off to."
"I'm exhausted. Let's head back for now."
Liu Ru had taken a fair amount of his blood, and Mo Fan could feel an alarming lightness spreading through his body. Hunting down the Vampire tonight wasn't realistic. He'd have to recover first.
As far as he could see, the only thing left to do was track down that despicable Vampire and destroy it. Everything else… would have to wait.
Back at the apartment, Mo Fan lay sprawled on the couch, staring up at the ceiling.
He had already drunk the Blood Serum. A bit of rest, and he'd be back to full strength soon enough.
"Mo Fan, why did you just let Liu Ru walk off on her own?" Zhao Manyan paced the living room, visibly on edge.
"I couldn't catch her."
"You couldn't catch her?" Zhao Manyan stared at him, baffled.
"No. She was too fast. I already used the Blood Beast Boots getting her out of there."
"Look, I know you were always saying I'd be all over her if I were the one watching her," Zhao Manyan said, "but I'm not blind. It's obvious she has feelings for you. She just didn't want to be a burden…"
"If I ever get my hands on that Vampire, I'm going to peel the skin off him one strip at a time." Mo Fan had a bellyful of rage with nowhere to put it.
He was already feeling much better. Right now, all he wanted was to find that Vampire.
"Mo Fan, I've tracked the Vampire." Just as Mo Fan sat there stewing in his frustration, Lingling's voice cut through with exactly the news he'd been waiting for.
Mo Fan shot up from the couch, a murderous light burning in his eyes.
"I'm not Mo Fan if I don't put you in the ground!" He didn't waste a single second — didn't even bother with the elevator. He vaulted straight off the balcony.
As his body plunged toward the base of the building, he slipped seamlessly into the shadows stretching along the lakeside. Something skimmed across the glittering surface of the lake — a shape cutting through the reflected light like the shadow of a night hawk, fluid and impossibly swift.
By the time Zhao Manyan sprinted to the balcony, Mo Fan had already reached the far side of the artificial lake. In the pale glow of a streetlamp, a sleek, powerfully-built wolf emerged from a rift in the moonlight, and Mo Fan — still mid-stride — sprang onto the Swift Star Wolf's back.
Star-silver fur streaming in the wind, carrying Mo Fan's towering fury, they tore away at full gallop and vanished into the tangle of streets below.
"What the hell — wait up!" Zhao Manyan shouted furiously at Mo Fan's retreating silhouette.
A Mage with Light Element as his primary and Water Element as his secondary wasn't about to leap off a building the way Mo Fan had. He had to do the sensible thing and trudge to the elevator.
"Damn it — a Mage who still has to drive a car. What kind of joke is this?" Zhao Manyan grumbled as he went.
He fired up the engine, slammed the accelerator, and roared out of the parking garage — only for a toll barrier to drop squarely in front of his car.
Zhao Manyan snapped. He pictured Mo Fan's image just now — that furious, effortlessly cool figure blazing off into the night — gritted his teeth, and floored it.
**CRACK!**
The barrier shattered on impact, its debris scattering across the ground before his dark hood.
If he couldn't glide through shadows or race through the city astride a beast, then he'd better at least have the nerve to smash a parking barrier and gain himself some time — or Zhao Manyan might as well give up calling himself a player in this world.
Liu Ru becoming a Vampire was something he, Zhao Manyan, bore a share of responsibility for. Who knew when the Hunter's Association would ever get around to sending someone to handle this. Mo Fan had already charged straight in — the least he could do was get in on the fight himself.