Chapter 57: Eaten or Slept

There were two young men, looking to be around twenty years of age, and they were extraordinarily handsome.

Too handsome. Xining had never imagined that such stunning men could exist in this world. Even though she had already laid eyes upon quite a few handsome men during her missions, these two were so gorgeous that they hardly seemed real.

One of them looked like an elf stepped right out of a storybook, clad in a dark green slim-fit robe with light green leaves embroidered on the wide cuffs and collar. His skin was fair, his nose high, and his long golden hair was straight and silky.

The other wore a snow-white traditional Chinese robe, his raven-dark hair tied up and secured simply with a dragon-headed jade hairpin. A faint smile hung upon his rosy lips; even before he spoke, his silence was already more eloquent than words.

Both of them possessed an otherworldly beauty. They were completely different types, belonging to two entirely separate worlds, yet they had appeared before her at the exact same moment.

This dark and desolate place seemed to light up because of them!

Xining stared at them in utter bewilderment, only to hear Moming's warning: "What are you standing there like a fool for? Run!"

Run? What did that mean?

Before she could snap out of her daze, the two figures were already right in front of her. They moved with terrifying speed, as if their robes had never even fluttered at the hem. Were they walking, or were they gliding?

Instantly, Xining felt an immense wave of pressure wash over her, her chest aching as though it were about to burst, sending her crashing to the ground.

The man in the dark green robe spoke. His voice was pleasant to the ear, yet laden with disdain: "So weak."

She was well aware of her weakness; Moming never failed to mention it several times after every mission, so there was no need for a reminder.

The heavy pressure vanished as abruptly as it had come, leaving Xining with a chest that still throbbed like mad and a brain that felt as though its contents were churning inside her skull.

A hand reached out, gently pinching her chin and forcing her face upward. Her gaze met the flawless face of the man in white.

He studied her closely, as if pondering something. Yet Xining had a persistent feeling that when those bright, enchanting eyes looked at her, they were gazing at a dish on a dinner table.

The man in dark green grew somewhat impatient: "Are you planning to devour her, or bed her?"

Xining was momentarily startled. She understood what "bed her" meant, but "devour her"… what on earth did that signify? Though, admittedly, "devouring" and "bedding" sometimes amounted to the same thing.

The man released her chin with a hint of regret: "Her looks are passable, but her body is in a soul state. How can one bed her?"

"Then let's eat her." The dark-green-robed man bent down, grabbed Xining by the collar, yanked her straight up, opened his mouth, and took a bite right out of her cheek.

***

That "bite" was literal. The moment his teeth sank in, Xining felt a burning agony flare across her cheek.

"Ah—!" The pain wrung a scream from her lips. "Who are you? What are you doing?"

Unfazed, the man in dark green chewed twice before taking another bite out of her face.

"Leave some for me!" Acting as though he had stumbled upon a gourmet feast, the man in white grabbed one of her arms and sank his teeth into it. In a single chomp, he bit off one of her fingers and began chewing it in his mouth.

Man-eating monsters! Help me, somebody!

Terrified and horrified, Xining looked down at her hand, which was now missing a finger. Both her hand and arm remained semi-transparent, allowing her to see whatever lay directly behind them.

Inside her mind, she heard Moming's ice-cold voice: "Hold on! I'm going to find reinforcements!"

Reinforcements? There wasn't even a ghost in sight around here—where on earth were reinforcements supposed to come from?

At that moment, the man in dark green took another chunk out of her, this time biting away her nose entirely.

The pain in the mutilated areas was every bit as agonizing as it would be for a living human. Tears welled up instantly, spilling from her eyes. As her semi-transparent tears fell to the ground, they vanished without a trace, failing to dampen even a speck of the barren earth.

The man in white bit down upon her palm, leaving an immediate, semi-circular chunk missing.

Hold on? How was she supposed to hold on when she didn't even have the ability to fight back?

At this rate, she was going to be eaten alive, piece by piece!

What kind of damned world was this, and who on earth were these two? Xining was completely broken, shrieking aloud from the torment. She struggled frantically, but her hands were pinned in their grasp, impossible to wrench free. Furthermore, with one hand already consumed, her wrist ended in empty air; when she raised it, she could see the "muscles" and "bones" inside, yet they were all entirely translucent, completely devoid of blood.

The two of them intended to devour her flesh by flesh, bite by bite!

Yet they remained as picturesque as ever, paying not the slightest heed to her agonizing, desperate struggles.

They kept a firm grip on her gradually fragmenting body, chewing her flesh methodically without even a frown, taking it slow and steady, one bite after another...

Suddenly, an oppressive force far more colossal than the previous one descended. The two men simultaneously released their grip on their "meal" and dropped straight to their knees.

As for Xining, she collapsed onto the ground, feeling nothing but pain—pain where she had been bitten, pain in her chest, pain in her head, pain throughout her entire body. The agony rolled over her like a tidal wave, pinning her down, robbing her of all movement, and pushing her to the brink of unconsciousness.

***

Gathering every last ounce of her strength to keep her consciousness from fading, she forced herself to look up. A shadowy figure hung suspended in mid-air...

It was a man clad in a black British vintage slim-fit suit and a black shirt, floating in the empty air. A black tie cord was knotted at his collar, secured right at the center by a large, gleaming ruby accessory. His dark hair was combed straight back, giving him the air of a dominant corporate titan whose wealth could rival nations.

Compared to the other two, this man was unfathomably handsome—handsome to the point where he could only be described as a god. Or rather, he exuded the kind of ethereal aura unique to divine beings: supreme, aloof, and utterly unapproachable.

With pitch-black, bottomless eyes, he glanced down at the three figures below. His gaze was entirely devoid of emotion, as if, in his eyes, the three of them were nothing more than insignificant, lowly ants.

Could this be the "reinforcement" Moming had spoken of?

All three of them were suffering agonizing torments, but Xining's vision was already beginning to blur.

Just as she was about to give out, that suffocating, monumental pressure finally vanished!

"Save me!" Xining could barely hear her own voice. Her body was mutilated and incapable of rising; even half of her chin had been bitten away, exposing white bone and a portion of her gums.

Yet this might be her only chance at survival. Rather than being eaten alive piece by piece by these two hypocritical monsters, she would rather be consumed by this formidable being instead.

Though, before he ate her, could he please utterly destroy these two wretches first?

"P-Please forgive us!" The man in dark green, who had previously looked down on everything with utter contempt, began to plead from his knees. "We were wrong! Spare us this once!"

The man in white did not dare to stand either. Kneeling on the ground in a posture closely resembling prostration before a monarch, his entire body trembled relentlessly like a leaf in an autumn wind. "We beg the Divine Lord for mercy! We had no intention of killing her; we were only taking a tiny bite to replenish our energy."

"Divine Lord"? Though she had no idea what kind of deity a Divine Lord was, he was unquestionably far more powerful than these two.

Even if she died, she had to drag these two wolves in sheep's clothing down to hell with her!

Feeble and weak, with her lips partially missing, making her speech slurred and slightly whistling through the gaps, Xining managed to choke out: "If you keep eating, will there even be anything left of me?"