Chapter 62: Chapter 61: Centipede Bone Tomb Princess
"Flaky fried cakes! Three coins each, two for five!"
"Sticky rice bowls! Ten coins each! Made fresh to order with the freshest ingredients!"
"Got free samples of our flaky fried cakes, cut up just for you! Come on by and have a taste!"
A plainly dressed woman, whose beauty was like a ripe peach, was hawking her wares on a street corner in Liu Nan Lane of the Lower City District.
Liu Nan Lane was one of the most densely populated areas in Starlight City’s Lower City District, with a relatively bustling commercial scene.
The collection of food stalls that appeared on Liu Nan Lane at night was even more extensive than the market at a Third Level Secret Realm Entrance.
"Huh? Don’t an old couple usually run this stall? How come it’s you today?"
The woman’s eyes crinkled in a smile as the customer approached, but when she heard him ask, "How come it’s you?" a vicious glint surfaced in their depths.
But she suppressed the viciousness as quickly as it appeared, though not before the customer in front of her felt a sudden chill.
"They’re sick and couldn’t make it out, so I’m here helping."
The regular customer still looked a bit puzzled as he asked,
"Whenever the old couple couldn’t make it before, wasn’t it their daughter who would help out? Why isn’t she here?"
The woman pursed her lips, her patience clearly wearing thin.
"Their daughter is sick, too. They’ll be back themselves in a couple of days when they’ve recovered."
Hearing this, the regular didn’t press further. He pointed to the round, thick, flaky fried cakes and said,
"I’ll take six. They’ll be perfect for breakfast tomorrow."
Just as the woman handed over the six packed flaky fried cakes, a gruff voice sounded beside her.
"What’s in these sticky rice bowls of yours?"
"They smell amazing. I’ll take six bowls to start."
The man who approached the stall was burly and still stained with blood. Not far behind him, five others were sitting at a table next to the stall.
All five of them were travel-worn, their eyes tired but unable to hide their excitement.
They were clearly a squad of Guardian Beast Masters, just returned to the Lower City District after exploring a Secret Realm.
Judging by the way they were laughing and chatting, they must have made a decent haul in the Secret Realm.
"The fried dough bits in my sticky rice are all homemade, and the minced pork is stir-fried from the tenderloin of a Black-backed Wild Boar."
"I also add half an Extraordinary Tier Fire-winged Ostrich to the broth. I guarantee the flavor is rich and savory."
As she spoke, the woman noticed the blood-stained man and the other members of the Adventurer squad greedily eyeing her body.
But the woman wasn’t annoyed. Lowering her head to prepare the sticky rice bowls, she eyed the Adventurer squad from the corner of her eye as if *they* were the ingredients.
All evening, many diners and shopkeepers in Liu Nan Lane complained. There were always more bugs in the summer, but even the little spiders that usually hid in the corners seemed to have lost their fear of people.
They were brazenly crawling right onto people’s clothes!
As the night wore on, the number of stalls in Liu Nan Lane began to dwindle.
Like the other vendors, the woman packed up her little stall and returned to her home, located just a short distance behind it.
The lights inside were bright, but the food laid out on the dining table facing the door had clearly spoiled.
Inside, three people lay in a stupor on a bed, their bodies carrying the smell of flaky fried cakes and sticky rice.
The woman walked through to the storeroom at the back of the house, opened a floor hatch, and only let out a sharp sigh of relief after she had descended into the cellar.
A faint, eerie glow illuminated the cellar, where a White Bone Centipede nearly a meter wide and of unknowable length crawled up to the woman.
A high-pitched, sharp voice, like the clattering of thin bone shards, rang out.
"Qin Ruyao’s Night-Cutting Spider hasn’t found this place yet, but it’s only a matter of time."
"I can’t consume this Rule Deceit Embryo. The disturbance it would cause would certainly be detected by the Night-Cutting Spider."
"What are we going to do? Just keep hiding like this?"
Upon hearing this, faint cracks appeared on the woman’s beautiful, coquettish face, and something wriggled violently beneath the surface.
It was as if her lovely features were merely a thin membrane, but the cracks soon smoothed over.
"Keep hiding? How?"
"That madwoman, Qin Ruyao, plans to have her Night-Cutting Spider hatch its young to cover all of Starlight City just to find me. The Moon Purifying Gu in my body will activate in eight days at the latest."
"Qin Ruyao knows I can’t afford to drag this out!"
"Hmph. Even if I can’t have this Rule Deceit Embryo, Qin Ruyao can forget about getting her hands on it."
At this, the woman seemed to make a decision. She asked,
"Centipede Bone Tomb Princess, if I could create an environment where you wouldn’t be disturbed for a full day, could you assimilate this Rule Deceit Embryo?"
As soon as she finished speaking, a Bizarre figure emerged from the far corner. It stood about three meters tall, its body constructed entirely of white bone and draped in the skinned faces of beautiful women.
The figure cradled a frantically throbbing, blackish-red embryo that shimmered with an iridescent light.
The bone-white body suddenly shifted, and the women’s faces covering it immediately moved, stretching out.
This transformed the three-meter-tall Bizarre figure into a humanoid creature, a being of coexisting horror and beauty.
Its gaping maw was filled with ghastly white fangs. It had no tongue, but a viscous, saliva-like fluid constantly dripped from its mouth onto the iridescent, blackish-red embryo in its arms.
It shot a greedy look at the incessantly throbbing embryo in its arms, and the high-pitched, sharp voice, like clattering bone, spoke again.
"One day is not enough. The Rule mastered by the Order Beast that the original Bone Element Bizarre creature devoured is completely different from my own Abilities."
"Fortunately, that Bone Element Bizarre creature absorbed the Order Beast’s Rule and gained the corresponding authority. It’s only because I am also of the Bone Element that I even have a chance of absorbing it."
"If I absorb this Rule Deceit Embryo, I will need a minimum of seven days just to digest it enough to prevent its Energy from leaking out."
"Fully assimilating it would take three months at the very least, and possibly as long as three to five years."
Hearing this, the woman glanced with a complicated expression at the Rule Deceit Embryo she had risked life and limb to obtain. Then, her voice turned bone-chillingly cold.
"Centipede Bone Tomb Princess, it seems this Rule Deceit Embryo truly isn’t fated to be ours. But there’s no way I’m letting that bitch Qin Ruyao get it for free."
"I had you leave a Ji Bone Clone outside Starlight City. Go use it to leak the news of the Rule Deceit Embryo to the Evil Blood Sect. Let them get involved and muddy the waters."
"Those short-sighted fools from the Evil Blood Sect... no matter how cautious they are, I refuse to believe they can resist the temptation of a Rule Deceit Embryo."
The three-meter-tall, horrifically beautiful Centipede Bone Tomb Princess hesitated upon hearing this.
"Shi Mi, if we lure the Evil Blood Sect here, the Celestial Destiny Seekers of Starlight City will surely not stand idly by."
"This Rule Deceit Embryo..."
Before the Centipede Bone Tomb Princess could finish, Shi Mi cut it off sharply.
