Carnivorous Girlfriend

Lu Yao really wanted to open the door and see what was going on outside. But his instinct to put safety first still suppressed his curiosity.

The kitchen knife kept chopping against the cutting board, and the sound came through to Lu Yao with unusual clarity.

He could even judge from the friction between the knife and the ingredients that it was a Potato being cut, and into slices at that.

Oh, now the slices were being cut into shreds.

He caught the scent of meat broth. It was pork ribs stewed with lotus root, rich and fragrant.

Lu Yao poked his head out the window. Outside his room was a small living room, and the living room connected to a small kitchen on the other side, so he could see the kitchen window from where he was.

However, the kitchen glass was covered with floral window film, making it impossible to see inside.

The kitchen light was on, and a silhouette was cast onto the window film.

The figure had her hair pinned up and a fairly slender build. She stood steadily as she cooked in the kitchen.

Lu Yao suddenly realized that his eyesight had become exceptionally sharp. It was as if his vision had gone from 720p to 1080p.

Even from a shadow cast on the window, he could instantly make out the contours of her body, as well as the precise angle and rhythm of every chopping motion.

Had he entered the legendary athlete's zone?

No.

It was not just his eyesight. His hearing and sense of smell had also become far sharper than before. His body's overall sensitivity to the outside world had risen by an entire level.

This was completely different from yesterday. Why had such a drastic change happened overnight?

The only explanation Lu Yao could think of was that reminder.

[Population is the vessel; faith is the power.]

Before this, he had thought it was a description of the God role.

In the Pixel Game world, the larger the population, the more it could boost productivity and advance civilization. That would reveal many hidden game rules and turn them into visible data.

Faith was even easier to understand. Gods needed faith to unleash the power of Miracles. Faith was a strategic resource and ammunition—the more, the better.

Lu Yao now realized that perhaps those words did not apply solely to the lower-dimensional Pixel World.

They also included the real world where he lived.

The fact that all kinds of [Sacrificial Offerings] and [Blessings] could break through dimensional barriers via the Temple showed that this game was indeed sustained by unimaginable power.

Then it was not hard to understand that the changes brought by faith and population would directly feed back onto the player acting as a God.

Once he understood that, Lu Yao found the reason.

This change in his physical perception had to be a physiological transformation brought about by the more than ten thousand people in Ghost City Sanilo.

He sorted through his thoughts and turned his attention back to the kitchen.

Lu Yao had already confirmed that the shadow on the window belonged to Zhou Qiang's girlfriend, Miss Yu Yao.

Zhou Qiang had dated a girlfriend in college, but later some rich second-generation heir had stolen her away from him. It had been both fortunate and unfortunate.

The fortunate part was that his girlfriend had revealed her gold-digging nature now rather than after marriage, so his losses had not been too great. The unfortunate part was that having his partner stolen was a blow to any man.

Later, Zhou Qiang had thrown himself into running his online shop, getting up early and working late every day. He had never dated another girlfriend, partly because of that experience.

Before today, Lu Yao had never even heard of a woman named Yu Yao.

Coupled with her strange behavior of cooking and humming songs in the middle of the night, she seemed even more suspicious to Lu Yao.

When Lu Yao returned from work the next day and opened the door, he found the living room table covered with dishes: Boiled Shrimp, pork rib soup, Braised Carp, Taro Chicken, Salted Duck, sliced meat with mushroom, and some fresh-looking green vegetables.

"Sit down, sit down. Let's eat together." Zhou Qiang said smugly, "Yu Yao made all this. Not bad, right?"

"The presentation and color are impeccable... Where is she?" Lu Yao looked around but did not see Yu Yao.

"She went out to buy some things. There aren't enough seasonings in the kitchen, and we're also short on toiletries, a mop, and stuff like that."

Zhou Qiang opened a can of beer and took a drink.

Lu Yao sat beside him and set down his backpack. "Old Zhou, how did you and Yu Yao meet?"

"It was fate."

A smile appeared on Zhou Qiang's face.

He and Yu Yao had started dating a week ago.

It had been raining that night. Zhou Qiang went downstairs to collect some returned goods and saw a girl standing beneath the eaves. She wore a short black spaghetti-strap dress and stared blankly at the ground, looking utterly lost and homeless.

Zhou Qiang hesitated before asking whether she needed help.

The girl answered with silence.

When Zhou Qiang returned home, however, he discovered that the girl had followed him upstairs.

He jumped in fright and hurriedly pulled out his phone. "Don't try anything funny. I'm calling the police."

Zhou Qiang had been an online merchant for several years, so he knew all kinds of people existed in this world. One could never be too careful. Just because she was a young girl did not mean she was harmless. For all he knew, this could be some honey-trap scam, and one careless move might get him extorted.

But she said, "Didn't you say you wanted to help me?"

Zhou Qiang explained that it had only been a polite remark. Everyone was just going through the motions, so she should not take it seriously.

As he spoke, he turned on his phone's recorder to avoid getting dragged into some new kind of scam.

The girl said, "Oh," then turned and left.

Before leaving, she said she was hungry and asked Zhou Qiang for something to eat.

Zhou Qiang thought, That trick is way too old. Let's see how I deal with you. Just wait.

So he stuffed a pack of sausages, two bags of Milk, and a bag of sliced bread into her hands. Generously, he told her to eat as much as she liked and not hold back.

The girl ate every last bit of it right in front of him.

"Is there any more?"

Zhou Qiang was stunned.

This woman was pretty bold.

Fine. If you dared to eat, then I dared to give you more.

Zhou Qiang dug out some instant noodles and made her a huge pot. The girl slurped them all down.

He found a pack of meat floss cakes, and the girl ate them one by one with plain water.

Finally, he took out the two cans of fermented herring he had been saving away. The girl scooped them up with a fork and ate them, even chewing the fish bones to pieces before swallowing them.

Zhou Qiang was convinced.

He said, "No, please, don't compete with me anymore. I surrender, okay? Go throw it up in the bathroom. Eating that much could kill you."

The girl said, "It's fine. Thank you. You're the first person who gave me food. Everyone else just gave me money."

Zhou Qiang was completely bewildered.

He could not tell.

Was something wrong with her stomach, or was something wrong with her head?

The girl said her name was Yu Yao, that she was twenty-one, and that she had not gone to school much. Someone had introduced her to work in the city, but a shady employment agency had confiscated her ID and tricked her into becoming a hostess at a nightclub. She sensed something was wrong and ran away, then wandered the streets until she got hungry.

After chatting with her, Zhou Qiang found that Yu Yao truly displayed a kind of innocent ignorance. It was not Camouflage; she genuinely had no reaction to many things everyone else knew.

For example, she did not know how to use a water heater or a smartphone. She ate bananas with the peel still on. She did not deliberately avoid exposing herself or observe boundaries between men and women... She was like a female Wildman who had stumbled into modern society.

A very beautiful female Wildman, at that.

Hearing this, Lu Yao could not help but remind him, "Old Zhou, don't blame me for speaking out of turn. Is it possible... she's pretending?"

"Possible."

Zhou Qiang grinned. "Women are born knowing how to act. I understand that."

"If she really is pretending, then her acting is Oscar-worthy. If she performs in front of me every day without revealing a single flaw, then I'll accept my loss."

Lu Yao saw a quiet kind of happiness on Zhou Qiang's face.

He really liked Yu Yao.

"She's hardworking, really. She's the most hardworking person I've ever met." Zhou Qiang became endlessly talkative whenever he mentioned his girlfriend.

"After we got together, she washed all the clothes by hand, and she got them incredibly clean."

"She cooks too. She has a gift for cooking—she learns it the moment she sees it."

"She even fights to do all the heavy lifting around the house. Honestly, she's stronger than I am, and she has a much bigger appetite too..."

"She's really good to me."

Zhou Qiang took a drink of beer. "I've had bad luck for several years. I guess things are finally turning around."

Lu Yao could not shake the feeling that it all seemed a little unreal.

"Doesn't she have any demands?"

"She has one."

Zhou Qiang put down his beer. "She likes eating meat, so she wants me to buy more meat."

Just then, the front door was pushed open, and Yu Yao returned carrying bags in both hands.

Lu Yao's nose twitched.

The smell of blood.

The strongest scent of blood came from Yu Yao's lips.

Thanks to Chongyang Shennong for the 100 Qidian coins.