Phantom Bar.
Night had fallen, and the neon lights began to flicker, casting the entrance of the bar in a mysterious purple glow that beckoned passing pedestrians.
Nighttime was the optimal hour for vampires to venture out.
Cen Jin stood at the entrance of Phantom, looking up at the cube-like architecture. Dim, undulating bands of light flowed across the walls like waves, casting an illumination that felt like an underwater world.
He wore a plain white shirt with the hem tucked into his knee-length shorts, hugging the delicate line of his waist.
Dressing like this to come to a place like this was thoroughly incongruous.
Cen Jin uncomfortably tugged at his shorts; they were far too tight, leaving him struggling for breath.
He never expected that after slumbering for hundreds of years and awakening once more, he would be wearing clothes like these.
“Do I really have to go in?”
The young man frowned slightly, his naturally plump lips parting in a way that looked just like he was pouting.
Yet his voice was neither dainty nor bright.
Especially when he was in a foul mood, it carried a soft, slightly raspy quality that exuded a faint, languid lethargy, making him sound completely drained of energy. At the same time, it effortlessly stirred a protective urge in others.
He remained unaware that the gazes of everyone around him were lingering on him in a desultory fashion, slithering over him from top to bottom like serpents.
Cen Jin had stood here for a long time, locked in a stalemate with the voice echoing relentlessly in his sea of consciousness.
(You must go in.)
(I will say it again: you are the second young master of the Lestrange family, a vampire family hidden in modern society. You are a dissolute and unprincipled rake whose favorite pastime is making boyfriends. You bully the weak and fear the strong, acting arrogant and conceited, and you love to humiliate vampires whose family influence is inferior to yours, as well as helpless humans.)
Cen Jin’s head was throbbing.
He had simply been drinking a bit too much on the rooftop of his apartment complex, accidentally using his abilities to teleport to an unknown location where he spotted something resembling an altar. Tied right in the middle was what looked like a massive, pitch-black chicken with a reddish sheen or perhaps a large dark duck. Having missed dinner, the sudden sight of food had made him ravenous. Coincidentally, there was a fire pit nearby, so he had simply torched the brushwood piled around the altar.
He just wanted something to eat; what possible crime had he committed?
As it turned out, that thing was neither a chicken nor a duck. Once it was burned to a crisp, nothing remained not even a speck of dust, not even bones.
And then, this voice had popped out of nowhere.
Claiming that he had incinerated the physical body of its master, the Demon God, it demanded that Cen Jin take responsibility and accept his punishment.
But Cen Jin was merely a weak, useless succubus. Where on earth was he supposed to find a new physical body for this so-called Demon God? Not even a scrap was left behind, nor were there any clues, so could they please just let him off?
(There is a way. You are currently inside a sacred artifact personally forged by the Demon God: the Book of Platinum. What you are in right now is one of the worlds contained within the book. You need to accumulate a certain amount of malice points across five different worlds to reshape a new physical body for the Demon God.)
(Malice points are people’s malice, negative emotions, and extreme desires.)
(You can also choose to do nothing, in which case you will simply be trapped inside the Book of Platinum for the rest of your life.)
“How am I supposed to accumulate them?” Cen Jin resigned himself to fate. Knowing how to bend with the circumstances and possessing an extreme capacity for adaptation were his greatest strengths.
Rather than calling it a strength, it was more of a survival skill.
(Inside the leather schoolbag on your back, there is a bottle that allows you to monitor your malice point progress in each world.)
Cen Jin swung the small leather schoolbag from his back to his chest, preparing to open it.
(This bottle is vital; you must keep it safe, otherwise there is no way to collect malice points.)
Cen Jin quickly buttoned the schoolbag back up and swung it behind him once more.
“What about my powers? Can I still use them?”
He was a succubus after all. Although not particularly powerful, forcing him to become an entirely ordinary mortal was a difficult pill to swallow.
Being human was far too exhausting.
(The sacred artifact will seal your powers, but you will inherit the abilities of the role you are playing. For instance, you are currently a vampire.)
“But…”
If my powers are sealed, I won’t be able to suppress my inherent abilities as a succubus.
(All you need to do is enter the bar, find boyfriends, and feed on their blood.)
“What if they hit me? Can I hit them back?”
Even a mosquito drinking blood would be slapped to death if caught. Cen Jin felt that his fragile little physique lacked any semblance of combat capability.
True to expectation, the voice in his sea of consciousness stated:
(You are an ignorant, good for nothing vampire weak, willful, and unreasonable. You can only rely on your appearance and clumsy seduction tactics to trick fools who are even more foolish than you.)
“I suspect you have a personal bias against me.”
Cen Jin figured that what he had to do was relatively straightforward: commit misdeeds and carry out the persona of the villain all the way to the end.
In the world he came from, novels and movies called this kind of person a villain.
It was just that his previous world lacked vampires; those ancient creatures had completely perished during the Middle Ages.
Now, finding himself transformed into one of these archaic beings felt rather bizarre.
Cen Jin grabbed the straps of his schoolbag and gave them a light tug.
Just as he was about to step inside, a group of people walked out of the bar. They appeared to be looking for someone. The person leading the pack held a phone to his ear, but since the other end seemed unanswered, he irritably kicked the steps beneath his feet as he strode forward, cursing under his breath.
The group practically blocked the entire entrance. To get inside, Cen Jin would have to squeeze past them.
Keeping his hands hanging by his sides, he wove through the group while keeping his eyes lowered to avoid stepping on anyone in the dim light.
Cen Jin minimized his presence, hoping only to slip inside without getting entangled with them in any way.
Yet, he still managed to catch someone’s attention.
Several tall young men watched as a cat-like youth slipped past them, freezing in place for a brief second before snapping their heads around to exchange bewildered glances.
A few who stood slightly deeper in the doorway harbored mischievous thoughts and took a half-step sideways, perfectly blocking Cen Jin’s path.
Cen Jin furrowed his brows and looked up at the figures barring his way.
It was too dark to make out what they looked like, nor could he tell if the people blocking him realized he was staring at them.
“Excuse me, could you please move aside?”
The person directly meeting Cen Jin’s gaze started, then instinctively grabbed the arm of the companion beside him. That companion let out a sharp hiss, whether from pain or something else.
Cen Jin frowned, assuming they hadn’t heard him, and raised his voice slightly. “Could you please make way?”
His tone this time was less pleasant than before.
Even a small animal would scratch when angered.
Not to mention he was a vampire.
If these obstructionists continued to act as if they were deaf, Cen Jin was prepared to take a bite out of them directly.
The individuals who hadn’t initially noticed Cen Jin now turned to look, including the guy who had been making phone calls out front.
From a distance, he saw his friends gathered in a cluster at the entrance, unresponsive to his calls, huddled together with lowered heads as if under some sort of spell.
Putting away his phone, he walked over.
“Talon.”
“What are you guys doing?”
Talon shoved past the group, but before he could vent his irritation, the breath caught straight in his throat.
Trapped in the center of his buddies was an exceptionally obedient-looking boy, standing around 1.75 meters tall not particularly short, by any means. Yet with his schoolbag on his back, crew socks, and shorts, he looked utterly underage.
His little shirt was tucked neatly into his shorts, giving him an immaculate, crisp appearance. How well-behaved.
When he lowered his head, his hair partially veiled his eyes, though one could still see his eyelashes trembling slightly, tinted purple under the dim illumination.
Talon bit the tip of his tongue and tapped his temple with the corner of his phone to snap himself out of it.
“What’s going on?”
Cen Jin turned his head and caught sight of the person who had looked so ill-tempered just moments ago.
He pressed his lips together and fell silent.
For this group to block the bar entrance meant they clearly intended to give him a hard time, so what else was there for him to say? He also wanted to know why he had caught the eye of these inexplicable individuals.
“What are you doing? Do you know him?” Talon asked the person standing deepest in the group.
He reined in his infatuation just enough to avoid looking as foolish as the others. Even though he feigned a deeply impatient expression, his gaze remained pinned to Cen Jin, refusing to budge an inch.
“Don’t know him ” Mann started to say before his friend shoved him with an elbow.
Yet the words were already out, too late to take back.
The person beside him whispered under his breath, “Idiot, use this chance to get to know him properly, then.”
Talon put on a stern face. “Then why are you blocking the entrance? Anyone passing by would think you were trying to bully someone.”
A narrow gap cleared in front of Cen Jin. As he squeezed through, he inevitably brushed against them.
“I got a WeChat message from Wei Xin saying he’ll be here soon, telling us to go inside first.”
“He’s not here yet? I thought he was already inside.”
“Let’s hurry up and head in, then.”
The voices behind him faded, though none of them concerned him anymore.
To evoke the deep-seated desires of living beings within a certain range, whether directed at oneself or others.
This was an innate ability belonging to Cen Jin. As long as he remained a succubus, this power would never vanish.
In his previous world, it was much the same: monsters hidden within modern human society. The only difference now was that he had become a hybrid of a succubus and a vampire.
He used to be able to suppress this ability with his own power, but now he couldn’t.
Passing through the long, narrow corridor, he entered a world entirely detached from the outside.
Near the entrance was the bar counter, where bartenders in black shirts skillfully mixed drinks of various brilliant colors. In this space saturated with electronic psychedelia, even the cocktails looked hallucinatory.
Cen Jin took a seat at the bar.
His arrival quickly drew attention, and most of the gazes converging on him were far from innocent.
Remembering the instructions whispered by that voice, Cen Jin unhooked the small schoolbag from his shoulders and clutched it to his chest.
He rested his elbows on the counter, held up a single finger toward the bartender, and said, “I’d like a…”
(Bloody Mary.)
“Bloody Mary.”
Cen Jin parroted the words.
The bartender hesitated, studying Cen Jin’s lifted face, which bore an unmistakably student-like appearance. Seeing that the bartender didn’t react, Cen Jin shook his finger in front of him. “A Bloody Mary.”
Cen Jin wasn’t sure if he had said anything wrong, but his voice dropped lower.
Is the bartender hard of hearing?
It seemed working in an environment like this for long periods took a heavy toll on one’s health.
The bartender snapped back to reality. “Are you sure? That drink has a rather complex profile spicy, sour, and salty. Will you be able to handle it?”
Cen Jin grew hesitant.
Just the description sounded bizarre.
“Do you have anything that tastes a bit better?”
He curled his fingers inward, pulling his hand back until his entire forearm retreated into the gap between his schoolbag and his torso.
“Then how about we stick to a tomato juice base, omit the hot sauce and pepper, and just add a small amount of Worcestershire sauce and salt?”
“Does a Bloody Mary have tomato juice in it?”
“Yes, the tomato juice cocktail made for you does as well, but the flavor will be a bit lighter.”
Tomato juice was red, much like blood.
It fit the identity of a vampire rather well.
Cen Jin nodded in satisfaction, curving his eyes slightly into a smile. “Alright, thank you.”
Hearing that soft, milky note of gratitude, a wave of heat rushed to the bartender’s face, and he hurriedly turned around to face the back wall.