If you want to see Xue Fei's face at night, there are two angles.
The first is the instant Fei Xueying pulls her head off—before it transforms into a child's head—using the whip to adjust the angle and glimpse her face.
The second is to run right up to her, push aside her hair, and look.
Ning Su discussed it with the two girls: Tang Xin would kick the door open, Fei Xueying would lash out with her whip, and Ning Su would enter the room. They had to see the face she didn't want them to see.
Qin Wu raised his hand. "I can protect you two girls from the back."
Last night, Fei Xueying had torn off the Desire Monster's limbs and head, and the monster showed no reaction. But there was no guarantee that if they pulled her head off again, she still wouldn't attack.
Ning Su glanced at him.
While most players were quite anxious, Qin Wu—who was by no means a slow-moving person—was not anxious at all.
His combat ability must be very high for him to have such composure.
The Cannibal Corps had only five players, yet they ranked third among the player squads. Each one must be formidable.
Someone like Qin Wu, who didn't seem particularly clever, surely possessed considerable fighting strength.
Ning Su looked over at Ling Xiao again. Ling Xiao leaned against the old tree trunk, a blood-red four-petaled flower blooming and withering, then withering and blooming again on his fingertip.
Ning Su suddenly felt at ease.
No need to worry about going hungry anymore.
Just like last night, when they went, there were two people in Room 612.
That was exactly the moment they had been waiting for.
Qin Wu chased away the person in the empty Room 611, and the players gathered around Room 612.
They prepared themselves.
Without a second's hesitation, Tang Xin kicked the door open.
"Ah!—Who's there?! I was seduced!"
A whip and a white silk ribbon shot into the room simultaneously.
The man on the bed, his face flushed red, pushed Xue Fei away in agony.
Her hair flew up like black satin sailing through the air before cascading down.
Just as Xue Fei turned and sat down, the ice-blue whip coiled around her neck, and the white silk bound her body.
The neck was like cracking ice; the head was ripped off alive by the whip, passing by Ning Su in opposite directions.
The thick black hair shrouded the head midair, so Ning Su saw nothing.
The whip danced through the air, its ferocious force lashing gusts of wind across the room, yet still it failed to fling the hair aside.
That long, dense mane, instead, in the midst of the violent, frenzied thrashing, tangled itself chaotically around the head—black, thick, matted hair twisted into a ball so tightly wound that only a few lines of flesh showed through.
Then, the head bounced twice on its own.
The hair vanished, revealing the infant's head inside.
He saw nothing.
All the players looked toward Ning Su.
When the white silk shot forward and the blue whip wrapped around the head to yank it backward, Ning Su had already entered the room.
The youth was agile. Amid the whip lashing wildly in every direction, he flipped over the bed curtains and landed before the long-haired creature.
Most of the hair hung down her back; only a little draped over the front, falling along both sides of her cheeks, half-obscuring her face.
When Ning Su flipped over, he landed in a half-crouch on the floor.
His line of sight traveled upward, past the body bound in white silk, past the curling hair, and reached her chin.
Unexpectedly, it was not the horrifying grotesquerie he had imagined. It was fair and smooth—the chin of a normal human being.
That fair, smooth skin covered the entire face.
And that was what made it abnormal.
Fully covered.
Not a single facial feature exposed.
Ning Su stared blankly at that smooth, fair expanse—or rather, that "face" which was merely a sheet of skin.
That patch of skin was suspended.
Connected to the thick black hair, upon closer inspection, one could see a gap where the skin met the cheek—at the spot where an ear should have been. Inside the gap was emptiness, nothing at all.
Before this moment, they had always wondered what was going on with Xue Fei's head—why, when it was plucked off, a new one would grow in its place.
They had also wondered what Xue Fei's face looked like at night—why she always had her back to them, and why she would never turn around, no matter what happened.
So she had no head, and no face either.
Just an empty shell made of a sheet of skin and a head of hair.
"Ning Su, what does she look like?"
"Holy crap! Must be terrifying—look, he's completely petrified!"
"He was always petrified to begin with!"
"Say something!"
"Ning Su, get out of there!"
Xue Fei's hair suddenly whipped upward, shooting toward Ning Su in an instant.
Ning Su pushed off the ground with one hand, leaning backward to the right. The hair sliced past his face like a black blade, missing by a single centimeter.
Just as he was about to roll away, Ning Su suddenly froze.
From this angle, he could see Xue Fei's stomach.
Before charging in, he had bound Xue Fei completely with the White Silk—wrapping it around her arms and every inch of exposed skin.
The Heaven-Piercing Silk was light and thin. When it clung tightly to the skin, even the smallest folds underneath would show clearly through the fabric.
And there on her stomach, the silk had molded itself around the distinct contours of a human face.
Xue Fei's face was growing on her belly.
Her eyes were pressed against the silk, squirming faintly. Her mouth seemed to be opening and closing, roughly forming the curve of a smile.
It wasn't the kind of horror that hit you at first glance—but the longer you looked, the more deeply unsettling it became.
"Ning Su, get out!"
Gripping the Heaven-Piercing Silk, Ning Su vaulted over the bed canopy and leaped out the door. Ling Xiao slammed it shut with a kick, blocking the human head that had been snapping at Ning Su's heels.
"Well? Well? What did you see?"
"Was she really that hideous?"
Ning Su was still stunned and didn't answer. Someone reached out to grab him, but Ling Xiao pulled Ning Su to his side. "Can't even wait until we're downstairs? Why not go take a look yourself?"
Under Ling Xiao's icy stare, the person sheepishly withdrew their hand.
Only when they reached the old elm tree in the courtyard did Ning Su finally speak. "She had no head. It was just an empty shell of human skin and hair."
The others all froze for a moment.
Qin Wu asked Fei Xueying, "Didn't you feel any weight when you cut her head off?"
Fei Xueying replied, "My whip is very heavy, and there was ice on her head. In a moment like that, who has the energy to notice something so subtle? But now that Ning Su mentions it, it did seem a little light."
She recalled, "When it first hit the ground, there wasn't a very heavy sound either. I thought it was because her hair was so thick. It wasn't until it turned into a child's head and bounced on the ground with two thuds that it made a sound like it had real weight."
Jia Yahua asked, "Was it precisely because she had no head—because she was an empty shell—that a child's head could grow out from inside?"
Ning Su added, "There was no face on the head yet."
Jia Yahua said, "So that's why Li Ming's face could grow onto that child's head?"
Ning Su replied, "Her face grew on her stomach."
The group was stunned once again, utterly unable to grasp any deeper meaning behind this.
When Ning Su saw the facial features on Xue Fei's stomach, a painting immediately came to mind.
Ning Su had once read a book—The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The book's contents hadn't left much of an impression on him, but one illustration from it had always stayed in his thoughts.
People with their chests as heads.
The painting depicted a group of headless men the author claimed to have seen in a certain region. They had no heads; their faces grew on their chests.
Ning Su had always remembered several of them, their faces on bare chests smiling with great joy.
His dazed expression when going downstairs had been him contemplating the desire monster.
Xue Fei also had no head; her face grew on her stomach.
The system said that desire monsters are composed of desire and stories.
Without a head, without thought, untroubled by worries, existing solely by desire.
That is what a desire monster truly is.
T/N: Sorry for the super late update for this. >_<
