The Vampire Tycoon Secretly Loves Me - Chapter 1

“Whoosh— Whoosh—”

The sound of the wind tore at Ye Linghan’s ears like the roar of a wild beast.

He was running incessantly through the darkness. The path ahead was pitch black, appearing to have no end.

Gradually, his physical strength failed him. Feeling exhausted, he stopped in his tracks, propping his hands against his knees as he leaned over, panting heavily. He lifted his head slightly to survey his surroundings. This wasn’t the first time he had run along this black road, yet every time it felt like a “ghost wall” encounter—no matter how he ran, he could never find a way out.

There was nothing around him. It was empty, like an isolated space of sheer nothingness. The only light came from a single beam shining from behind him.

Ye Linghan turned around. He watched as that halo of light grew smaller and smaller. According to common logic, most people would choose to yearn for the light and walk toward it, yet he did the exact opposite. This was because a certain voice, possessing a strange magic, was drawing him to fall into the endless abyss.

“Han-er, come a little closer…”

A woman’s ethereal voice echoed in Ye Linghan’s ears.

Do I really need to go further forward? He turned back to look at the spot where the light should have been, feeling confused.

“Who are you?” Ye Linghan narrowed his eyes, asking tentatively.

Even though he knew he had asked this question countless times, he never received an answer.

The ethereal female voice continued to repeat that same sentence.

Ye Linghan followed the sound forward when, suddenly, his footing vanished.

“Ah!!!”

A sense of weightlessness flooded his entire body, causing him to break out in a cold sweat.

Ye Linghan sat up abruptly. Small beads of sweat covered his forehead. His thin lips parted as he gasped for air, his chest heaving violently.

However, he wasn’t that terrified, because he knew that the scenery around him had already materialized.

He was well aware that what he had just experienced was merely a dream.

In his memory, his experiences before the age of nine were almost a blank slate. Consequently, he didn’t know when this dream had started haunting him.

The process of detaching his thoughts from the dream was something he had experienced countless times; he had long since grown accustomed to it.

Ye Linghan picked up his phone from beside his pillow to check the time. As expected, it was only 3:30 AM. He frequently woke up during this period.

He got out of bed and went to the living room to pour a glass of water. Being gripped by a nightmare often left him with a dry throat.

As the cool water slid down his throat, Ye Linghan felt a bit better. He turned to look toward the study; the crack under the door was pitch black.

He didn’t come back again today…

Because he was distracted, he placed the glass on the coffee table without conscious thought. The crisp sound of glass clinking echoed through the empty room. The harsh noise entered Ye Linghan’s ears, giving him a start.

Now completely awake, Ye Linghan forced himself to withdraw the thoughts and fantasies he shouldn’t have. He brushed the sweaty strands of hair from his forehead, running his hand back through them, adding a hint of a lingering, moody charm to his appearance.

At the transition between night and day, a sliver of faint light from stars struggling to pierce through the clouds appeared in the sky over East City. People were immersed in dreams—some sweet, some heavy. The roads were peaceful and silent, save for the occasional roar of a car speeding by, which was quickly swallowed back into the belly of the night.

Ye Linghan walked down the street, draped in a thin white shirt. Since his sleepiness had vanished, he planned to wander around.

However, the nights here weren’t exactly peaceful. In a world where the Human Race and the Vampire Race coexisted, conflicts were inevitable. Fortunately, the Vampire Hunter families acted as a check and balance in the middle, preventing the vampires from stirring up even greater storms.

Ye Linghan kept his head down, kicking pebbles on the ground with the tip of his shoe as he calculated the days in his mind. If he recalled correctly, that person had been gone for three days…

He didn’t know why he had such thoughts. His emotions during his youth had been ignorant and hazy, but recently, they had become increasingly intense. It was a feeling close to longing, even a bit of dependency; when they weren’t meeting, he couldn’t control his desire to think about him.

This feeling is so strange, Ye Linghan thought. Why would he develop such a feeling for that person? Or rather, he shouldn’t be producing such emotions at all.

“Ugh…” Suddenly, a muffled groan reached Ye Linghan’s ears, breaking his train of thought.

What was that sound? He looked around.

The hour wasn’t early. Aside from himself, who had been startled by a nightmare and had nothing better to do than wander the streets, or perhaps some “Ghost Fire” punks racing bikes, who else would be fooling around outside at this time?

The sound occurred only once and then fell silent.

Just as Ye Linghan thought he was hallucinating, the muffled groan came again. This time, he keenly memorized the direction of the sound.

He lifted his legs, quickening his pace toward the source, eventually stopping at the mouth of a deep, dark alley.

A rustling sound emerged, accompanied by intermittent low panting.

Could this be a literal outdoor “play”? Playing that wild? At the same time, the face of “that person” instinctively surfaced in Ye Linghan’s mind, and his Adam’s apple bobbed unconsciously.

After realizing what he was thinking, he originally wanted to turn back and return the way he came. However, driven by strong curiosity, his legs moved faster than his brain, choosing to walk straight past the alley entrance. As he passed, his eyes reflexively glanced into the gray, dim alley.

But with just that one glance, Ye Linghan sensed something was wrong. This wasn’t the “outdoor play” he had imagined; rather, it was a situation that might involve whether the two races could continue to live together in harmony.

He saw two dark figures in the alley. One was lying on the ground, two legs kicking desperately against the pavement in an attempt to escape, while the other person was in the superior position, exerting maximum effort to pin the person beneath them.

Seeing this scene, combined with the faint smell of blood that subsequently drifted through the air, caused Ye Linghan’s cerebral cortex to instantly explode. Due to his special identity, he was exceptionally sensitive to the scent of blood. This was clearly a vampire feasting on a human’s blood.

While this process wasn’t theoretically fatal, if the feeder didn’t show care, it would be agonizing for the victim. If one encountered a vampire with ill intentions, there was even a risk of death.

Regardless, the Vampire Race and the Vampire Hunter Race had signed a treaty hundreds of years ago: unless the victim was willing, vampires were not allowed to harass ordinary humans who lacked combat power or self-defense capabilities.

Of course, from what Ye Linghan saw, the person pinned to the ground didn’t look willing in the slightest.

Driven by a sense of justice—the belief in helping those treated unfairly—a wave of empathy surged within him. Consequently, his toes abruptly pivoted as he walked lightly into the alley.

A short distance behind the two, Ye Linghan was just about to speak, intending to scare the vampire away. But just as the words were about to leave his mouth, the sound of footsteps suddenly came from the distance, accompanied by the sound of people talking.

“Quick, over there!”

It was a male voice, and he sounded quite young.

“Okay.”

A female voice immediately responded.

Ye Linghan paused. Hearing the footsteps getting closer and closer, he thought about hiding first. After all, if no one else was around, at most, he would just scare off a harmful vampire. But now that people were coming, meddling in others’ business might lead to unnecessary trouble.

But just as he wanted to turn and leave, he suddenly felt an abnormal gust of wind from behind. Immediately, he felt his collar tighten, as if someone had grabbed him by the “scruff of destiny.”

Somewhat startled, he turned his head with difficulty, only to find a face that was tightly masked—rendering the features invisible—very close to his own. Simultaneously, a voice whispered in his ear.

“Sorry about this! Since you’re the only one here, I’ll have to ask you to take the fall for me~”

The person spoke in a suppressed, tiny voice that only Ye Linghan could hear.

Hearing these words, Ye Linghan’s hair instantly stood on end—not from fear, but from being disgusted.

“You…” He wanted to say how “green tea” (manipulative) the person was, but before the words could come out, he was violently flung backward by that person. It all happened too suddenly; Ye Linghan had no time to react. He only managed, by instinct at the moment they crossed paths, to grab the person’s arm, leaving two bloody scratches on it. At the same time, his hand tightly gripped a piece of fabric from the person’s clothing.

“Whoosh—” Ye Linghan flew through the air like a blurry afterimage.

He struggled to curl his body up mid-air, stuffing the scrap of fabric into his shoe.

Because he knew he was definitely going to be the scapegoat for this.

“Bang—”

“Damn…” After a bout of dizziness, Ye Linghan’s vision went dark, and a wave of warmth spread through his nasal cavity.

He, a 183cm tall adult male, had actually been tossed out like a little chick by that vampire. He crashed into the person who had been pinned to the ground—who was currently trembling as they tried to get up—and the impact even gave him a bloody nose.

As for the other person, due to the massive impact combined with the slight anemia from having blood sucked, they were knocked unconscious immediately.

Ye Linghan took a while to recover. He stood up unsteadily, covering his nose, with several drops of blood dripping onto his palm.

What is even happening…

Before he could steady himself, the sound came from behind again. Simultaneously, in the dimly lit alley, a flashlight beam shone directly onto him.

“Don’t move! Get down! Put your hands up!”

Judging by the tone, it was that young-sounding male.

Ye Linghan felt helpless, annoyed, and aggrieved. Had he known, he wouldn’t have meddled. “No, I…” Just as he wanted to turn around and argue, he felt a cold sensation against the back of his head.

“Don’t move!”

He knew exactly what that was.

“Eh, alright.” Ye Linghan was quite cooperative. He put his hands behind his head and crouched down under the gaze of the black muzzle.

A wise man doesn’t fight against the odds; a timely surrender was better than losing his life. If the other party couldn’t control their trigger finger and the gun went off, that would be a real problem.

Ye Linghan kept his head down, glancing at the ground in front of him out of the corner of his eye. A girl walked up to the person lying on the ground beside him, crouched down, and reached out to check their breathing.

“Brother, they’re still breathing.” The girl looked up at the boy behind Ye Linghan.

“Hurry up and call to have him sent to the hospital first.”

“Okay,” the girl replied.

“You, put your hands down.” The boy tapped the back of Ye Linghan’s head with the muzzle.

Ye Linghan obeyed. Subsequently, his hands were cuffed behind his back by the boy.

The boy holstered his gun, walked around to the front of Ye Linghan, and shook the flashlight in his face. Because the beam was too bright, Ye Linghan instinctively tilted his head and pulled back.

“Heh, sucked so hard you got a nosebleed from the supplement?” The boy’s tone wasn’t great, carrying a hint of resentment.

Ye Linghan frowned. “What did I suck?”

However, as his gaze fell on the unconscious person in front of him, he understood. It seemed the boy had mistaken him for a member of the Vampire Race.

The boy curled his lip. “Aren’t you a vampire? Weren’t you sucking this person’s blood?”

Hearing this, Ye Linghan couldn’t help but find it slightly hilarious. He had roughly guessed the identity of this young pair, but were members of the Vampire Race really that easy to catch?

“Where’s the evidence?” Ye Linghan raised an eyebrow in retort. Since he didn’t have a gun to his head anymore, and a straight shadow fears no crooked light, he had nothing to be afraid of.

The boy replied righteously, “I saw it with my own eyes!”

“Is seeing always believing?” Ye Linghan countered again.

The boy was momentarily speechless. After all, the details of the situation hadn’t been investigated clearly yet. Concluding so easily wasn’t a responsible way to handle a suspect.

Moreover, under Ye Linghan’s forceful questioning, he actually felt a bit unsure of himself.

However, the boy was young and had a bit of pride. His words remained stubborn. “Whatever you have to say, explain it back at the station. If you can’t explain it clearly, don’t even think about coming out again.”

Ye Linghan was taken by the two to a place that looked like a residential building. He followed them up to the second floor. The interior layout had been renovated into an office style, but it looked very new. There weren’t many signs of work being done—it didn’t even have much “human presence.” It likely remained cold and quiet most of the time.

Ye Linghan looked left and right. Although his hands were cuffed behind him, he maintained the demeanor of an old man strolling in a park—perfectly composed. He had already guessed ninety percent of what this place was.