Trafford's Trading Club

Chapter 895: The Bond of the Immortal (7)

It was a clear morning after the snow.

White frost clung to the branches outside the window, but thanks to the indoor temperature control system, Tu Shenyi didn’t feel a hint of cold. Instead, he felt a pleasant appreciation for the scenery.

He slightly drew the curtains open when he heard Karen’s lazy voice, “Don’t, it’s too bright.”

Tu Shenyi glanced back. A sliver of sunlight was casting a beam on the carpet at the foot of the bed, stretching straight to the door. Karen was curled up under the blanket like a cat.

“Sorry, I forgot,” Tu Shenyi apologized with a smile, closing the curtains again. The room instantly became dim. He turned on the bedside lamp and slipped back under the blanket, embracing Karen’s cool body and kissing her forehead. “Do you really have to sleep during the day?”

“Staying up is bad for the body,” Karen yawned, wrapping her arms around Tu Shenyi’s neck, making herself more comfortable.

Tu Shenyi shook his head and chuckled. “I always thought you guys slept in coffins during the day... Well, that’s what the books say.”

“Some do have that kind of quirk,” Karen muttered, barely keeping her eyes open, speaking as if she were half asleep. “We don’t exactly have to avoid the daytime. I can move around for a few hours when it’s overcast. But in direct sunlight, it’s shorter. If we stay out too long, the skin burns, and after more time, we could even self-immolate…”

“That’s pretty terrifying,” Tu Shenyi said, shaking his head and looking at Karen again.

He noticed her breathing had become completely steady—she had fallen asleep. Smiling softly, Tu Shenyi quietly slipped out of bed.Until it became unbearable, he would leave.

Or until it became unbearable, she would turn him into a real vampire.

This was the promise they made to each other in the early hours before dawn.

...

Tu Shenyi began to survey Karen’s apartment, knowing he might be living here for a while. All in all, it was a very nice place to stay.

In the study, however, he came across an oil painting hanging on the wall.

The woman in the painting sat quietly by the window, holding a white cat in her arms. She seemed to carry the loneliness of a thousand years. As he looked at it, Tu Shenyi felt a strange echo of the scene from that Christmas Eve, where Karen had sat alone at the bar, resting her cheek in her hand.

After a while, Tu Shenyi sighed and left the study.

Karen’s apartment came fully equipped, but none of the kitchen appliances had ever been used...

After a night of exhaustion, Tu Shenyi was already starving and wanted to find something to eat, but he couldn’t find anything. In the refrigerator, however, he did find a few containers.

Curious, he opened one and took a sniff… He couldn’t taste anything, but his sense of smell was still intact.

It was blood…

Tu Shenyi froze for a moment, feeling a little dizzy—not because he had a fear of blood, but because seeing fresh blood stored this way was quite jarring.

He stared at the container of blood for a while, then grabbed a small cup and poured a little. Taking a deep breath, his hands fidgeted nervously before he finally grabbed the cup and downed the blood in one go.

With his eyes shut, he didn’t try to register the sensation of the blood in his mouth, just swallowed it like it was yogurt.

Once he overcame the mental block, it wasn’t too hard to drink. Tu Shenyi wiped the blood from his lips, and his stomach growled in protest.

He couldn’t help but laugh at himself... he was still not a vampire.

But suddenly, an idea struck him, and he began to mess around in the kitchen. After a while, too hungry to wait, he grabbed his coat and stepped out.

...

When the evening came, and the sun was setting, leaving a brief afterglow in the sky, Karen slowly opened her eyes.

She stretched lazily in bed, then noticed that Tu Shenyi wasn’t by her side. Curious, she got out of bed and walked barefoot through the apartment—though she could easily sense whether someone was still inside the house, she preferred to use her eyes to confirm it.

To prove that he wasn’t there.

She, too, had moments of insecurity, though she rarely let them show… She simply didn’t have the courage to say it out loud.

She couldn’t even find a note… Maybe, once the passion had cooled, fear set in and then, he left?

That thought was frightening, and Karen wanted to banish it from her mind, but she told herself that if it were true, it might actually be a good thing.

Karen smiled bitterly… Whether Tu Shenyi had quietly left or not, she couldn’t escape the fact that, as a vampire, she needed to feed. That physical need was nearly impossible to suppress.

The blood in the fridge was what she had purchased from a dark merchant, pure blood from one of the Thirteen Clans… Normally, unless her instincts became uncontrollable, Karen preferred drinking pure blood, much like humans who preferred homemade meals over unhealthy fast food.

But she noticed that one of the containers of pure blood had been used… quite a bit.

Karen frowned and sniffed the air before quickly opening a nearby cabinet and pulling out a cup.

It was clean, but she could still smell the faint scent of pure blood—it wasn’t the cup she normally used for drinking blood.

There couldn’t have been any other vampires here besides herself, so how had this cup with traces of pure blood ended up here… Karen immediately deduced the cause.

That man had tried drinking blood… for her. But had he drunk too much? He probably didn’t realize how precious pure blood was.

Karen was momentarily lost in thought, even forgetting that she had originally intended to feed.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps outside.

Tu Shenyi had returned.

The sound of the door opening.

Karen quickly tidied up the place and didn’t have time to drink blood... Although some things had been made clear between them, she instinctively didn’t want to drink blood in front of Tu Shenyi at this moment.

“You’re awake.”

Tu Shenyi walked in, looking a bit disheveled, carrying a bunch of bags—mostly filled with food.

He said, “You eat yours, I’ll eat mine, OK?”

Karen didn’t respond, she just gently hugged him. Tu Shenyi, holding her hand, suddenly said, “Come, let me show you something.”

Under Karen’s puzzled gaze, Tu Shenyi led her by the hand to the living room, carrying a small bag. He had her sit on the sofa and began fiddling with the TV.

From the small bag, he took out a video camera. Tu Shenyi connected it to the TV and sat excitedly beside Karen, then turned it on with the remote.

“What’s this?” Karen asked curiously.

Tu Shenyi casually replied, “The world during the day... to be precise, my world during the day.”

As the sound played and the images appeared, Karen stared blankly at the TV, where scenes of Tu Shenyi appeared.

He took it to various places, talking to it as if he were talking to her.

“So, how is it? Pretty good, right?” Tu Shenyi smiled and said, “This camera is new; the picture quality is pretty good, isn’t it?”

“Is this all you did today?” Karen suddenly asked.

Tu Shenyi thought for a moment and then said, “Wait here.”

Karen watched as he quickly ran to the kitchen… an open kitchen, where she could see what Tu Shenyi was doing. He opened the fridge door, squatted down, and took out a box from the lower compartment of the fridge.

He brought the box back to Karen’s side and opened it in front of her... she immediately smelled blood.

Pure blood.

“These are…” Karen was momentarily stunned.

It was a mold for making ice cubes, but it was filled with blood frozen into small petal-shaped ice cubes. Tu Shenyi used tongs to pick up one of the petal-shaped blood ice cubes, “Hmm, it turned out well... Here, try the taste.”

He held the petal-shaped blood ice cube to Karen’s lips, and she instinctively opened her mouth and swallowed it.

When vampires drink blood, they look quite peculiar, almost like they’re intoxicated. Tu Shenyi watched Karen with great interest, and perhaps because of the blood’s stimulation, her fangs slightly protruded.

She tilted her head back and slowly slumped onto the sofa, her eyes half-open, as if in bliss. Tu Shenyi gently stroked her hair, waiting for her to regain consciousness, though she seemed unwilling to wake up, eventually curling up in his arms.

Watching the daytime world on the TV, listening to the strong heartbeat of the man, and eating the blood popsicles he made for her, Karen felt as though time had stopped, allowing her to indulge in laziness and slowness.

Days passed by.

...

...

...

Her consciousness felt trapped deep in the ocean, desperately swimming upwards, like bubbles. Suddenly, a crazy voice echoed in her mind.

She… Karen Yishel recognized the owner of the voice—a gambler, arrogant but with extraordinary skills.

Jin Wucheng had been defeated by Tu Shenyi, cut off his own finger, and eventually became Tu Shenyi’s lackey… It had been many years.

During those years, Karen Yishel had traveled the world alone. But upon returning to the vineyard castle one time, she found that such a person had joined Tu Shenyi’s side.

Jin Wucheng desired immortality… because he was diagnosed with liver cancer. Despite years of research, Tu Shenyi hadn’t discovered true blood, but he had concocted a potion from his own blood that could suppress Jin Wucheng’s cancer.

Only by staying with Tu Shenyi could Jin Wucheng survive. So, this proud gambler had long been defanged, becoming a domesticated hound.

In fact, all vampires had human servants to handle daytime affairs for them—or more accurately, agents.

Jin Wucheng was the agent chosen by Tu Shenyi.

Upon first meeting Jin Wucheng, Karen Yishel warned Tu Shenyi that Jin was highly ambitious and keeping him around might not be a good idea.

But Tu Shenyi, ever the optimist, said, “If keeping him means one less person ruining lives at the gambling table, it’s actually a good thing.”

After becoming a vampire, Tu Shenyi was probably the one Karen had seen who most stubbornly clung to his humanity.

“You’re awake, Miss Karen,” Elizabeth exclaimed in surprise nearby.

Karen finally regained full consciousness, surveying the carnage in the lab before finally focusing on Jin Wucheng, sitting on the floor, insane.

Breaking free from the support of Zhong Luoyue and Elizabeth, Karen stumbled to Jin Wucheng, grabbed his shirt, and coldly asked, “Jin Wucheng, what did you just say... Who killed him?”

“Who are you?” Jin Wucheng stared at Karen Yishel, silent for a moment, then suddenly laughed foolishly, “I remember you! You’re the grape-picking girl, hahaha! Butterflies fly, butterflies fly, fly fly fly!”

“Don’t play dumb!!” Karen Yishel angrily threw Jin Wucheng to the ground.

Her eyes were now filled with killing intent. She directly grabbed her sword from Luo Qiu’s hand; throughout this process, Luo Qiu merely blinked, saying nothing… though he hadn’t had enough fun with the sword yet.

“Speak!!”

The blood-patterned long sword stabbed into the ground beside Jin Wucheng’s face. Under Karen Yishel’s murderous gaze, Jin Wucheng seemed to feel a shred of fear, shrinking back and beginning to sob uncontrollably.

However, Karen showed no mercy, slicing open Jin Wucheng’s hand. The sudden pain sent him into convulsions, writhing on the ground in agony.

A woman filled with murderous intent is truly terrifying...

Luo Qiu shook his head, making no move to intervene.

Instead, Elizabeth suddenly spoke up, “Miss Karen, this guy is almost dead. If you keep torturing him, he’ll die faster... You might not get any answers.”

Hearing Elizabeth, Karen Yishel abruptly stopped, her lips twitching, her fangs fully exposed... Her eyes had already turned blood red.

Suppressing her anger, she finally stopped tormenting Jin Wucheng.

“Miss Karen… What’s going on?” Elizabeth asked bravely, “Why are you pretending to be Mr. Tu... Why are you…”

“I’m looking for the killer,” Karen Yishel muttered, “The one who killed Tu Shenyi.”

“The killer…” Elizabeth seemed to realize something, quickly asking, “You mean, you suspect someone among us killed Mr. Tu?”

“At first, I thought so,” Karen Yishel said coldly, “But now… I’m afraid it’s not the case. If what this guy says is true.”

With a wave of her sword, she sliced off another piece of Jin Wucheng’s arm, not even blinking.