Raven blocked Arabella's line of sight, but Nicholas turned his head and could see clearly. After a few glances, he turned back to meet Arabella's eyes, smiling with a hint of irony. "It really is a beautiful pair of eyes."
With the conversation reaching this point, everyone present, being sharp-witted individuals, understood. Raven cast a cold glance at Nicholas, then silently stepped aside, waiting for Arabella's orders.
Arabella looked at the woman on the street, who was being kicked and beaten, for a long while. After a moment, she smiled and said, "Indeed, a beautiful pair of eyes."
Except for Norris, who was clueless, the other men's eyes were fixed intently on Arabella, waiting for her reaction. But to their surprise, Arabella spoke, asking Norris, "Can foreigners buy and freely dispose of these women?"
Norris assumed that Arabella was showing rare compassion and wanted to save the woman. He sighed and explained, "Although women in Jingle have no status, these women are different from those kept as housewives. They've had their rights as human beings stripped away. They can be bought and sold like property, or even slaughtered at will. Of course, foreigners can buy them and do as they please, but buying one won't make a difference. Are you planning to take her with you?"
"Raven." After listening to Norris's explanation, Arabella just commanded, and Raven immediately understood and took a step forward to approach the man who was already beating the woman's buttocks in preparation to extract his genitals.
Nicholas and Julius remained silent, continuing to stand by and watch. Bramwell kept a wary eye on Nicholas, fearing that the other might suddenly turn hostile. Norris, realizing a bit too late that something was off, shrank his head and fell silent. He was solely passionate about invention and creation, and his collaboration with Arabella was purely to fulfill each other's needs. He wasn't interested in delving into Arabella's personal matters; he only cared whether she had the ability to maximize the potential of the weapons he invented.
The negotiation for the sale went smoothly, though the woman wasn't extraordinarily beautiful. With the large sum of money that Raven offered, the man quickly pulled up his pants, handed over the transaction tag for the woman to Raven, grabbed the money, and hurried off to catch up with the group of traffickers to buy a few more women. Raven led the woman back on a leash and made her kneel at Arabella's feet.
The woman's features were rather plain, but her eyes were truly captivating. Nicholas lowered his head to take a close look at her eyes, which seemed to be cast from the same mold as his own. He sneered, unsure whether he was mocking himself or mocking Arabella, and leaned in to ask, "Master Unknown, was it because of these eyes that you noticed me at the auction? How do they look? Beautiful, right? They're quite enchanting, aren't they?"
Arabella glanced at him with a half-smile, but her attention was fixed on the woman's eyes. The woman seemed to possess a certain cleverness, faintly aware of the allure in her gaze. As her eyes drifted over the men staring at her, there was an almost imperceptible shift in her expression, a subtle hint of seduction in her movements. But when her gaze met Arabella's, she glanced away immediately, perhaps realizing that she was powerless against Arabella, and that looking at her would do her no good.
After staring at the woman's eyes for a long time, Arabella finally withdrew her gaze and answered Nicholas's earlier question, "If you had treated these eyes like that back then, I would have taken action long ago."
Before anyone could understand the meaning of her words, a miserable scream rang out. The woman who had been kneeling obediently just moments ago was now frantically clutching her eyes, writhing on the floor like a worm, with fresh blood seeping through her fingers. Upon closer inspection, Arabella was holding a sharp, gleaming knife, and the tip was skewering two blood-soaked eyeballs.
The two bloodied eyeballs, still connected by the optic nerves, were casually tossed to the ground by Arabella. She calmly reached over and grabbed Nicholas's shirt, pulling him closer, as she wiped the blood from the knife onto his clothes. While doing so, she leaned in to whisper in his ear, "Make good use of these eyes of yours." With a smiling warning to Nicholas, Arabella lightly tapped the clean blade against his face, before swiftly sheathing it. She glanced at Raven standing beside her, and without a word, he stepped forward. In one fluid motion, he gripped the shrieking woman's neck with a single hand, twisting forcefully to snap her spine.
At this point, it was clear that the meal could no longer continue. The commotion at their table left the diners at nearby restaurants stunned. The sudden eye-gouging act by Arabella especially caused the proud men of Jingle to break into cold sweats. Had foreign women become this powerful? They had never heard of such a woman before.
In the dead of night, Arabella left alone and made her way to the desolate graveyard outside Jingle's industrial zone. Unclaimed bodies or dead women were often burned and buried haphazardly in this area. It was rare for Arabella to light a cigarette. She also had a bottle of alcohol in her hand. The cigarette from Jingle was harsh, and Arabella took a shallow puff, only to cough. She glanced at the glowing tip of the cigarette and couldn't help but chuckle. She had already drunk three bottles of hard liquor on the way here, and now the alcohol mixed with her blood, causing her repressed murderous aura to burst forth uncontrollably.
After walking for a short while in the cold, biting wind, Arabella stopped, her gaze fixed fiercely on a new grave, her eyes filled with murderous intent. That was the spot where Raven had someone burn the woman's corpse in the afternoon before casually burying the remains. She inserted the half-burned cigarette into the soil and casually sat down beside the grave.
Though she had smiled warmly during the day, surrounded by admirers and flattery, in this moment, her heart was a boundless wasteland of desolation. The vast expanse of the world pressed down on her, while memories surged like relentless tides, crashing into her with an unforgiving force. At last, when no one was watching, she allowed a trace of savage hatred to seep through her expression.
It was those eyes again—always those eyes, testing her, probing her. Arabella leaned against the mound of the grave, finishing yet another bottle of liquor. She pulled another from her backpack, where at least a dozen more waited, and with one hand, she effortlessly twisted off the cap. Instead of taking a drink, she poured a circle over the haphazardly piled grave.
"Cyrus," she murmured, tilting her head as she gazed at the grave, "if I hadn't killed you back then, what would things be like now?"
Of course, no answer came. Only the eerie, sharp caws of crows pierced the stillness. Around her, the night was as black as ink, the sparse stars above casting a cold, merciless light that seemed to intensify the oppressive, deathly silence.
Arabella has always known that her life is hard to kill, not easily killed, and very easy to survive. Back when she was imprisoned by the Ackerley family in the deep mountains, her skills were far from enough to face a hungry tiger head-on, and without any weapons, she couldn't survive the tiger's explosive attack.
One time, when she went out hunting, she coincidentally encountered a tiger also hunting. The two met face-to-face in a narrow path, and she almost exploded with astonishing survival instincts, quickly climbing up a tall tree to the top. The tiger roared below, unable to reach that height. Its gaze was fierce and arrogant, staring at her on top of the tree. The tiger wouldn't leave, so she wouldn't come down. In the violent storm at night, the heavy rain pounded her forehead, and the thunder splitting the sky seemed as if it could strike her down at any moment.
After a standoff lasting two days and one night, the tiger gave up and left. Arabella climbed down the tree like a drowned dog, barely escaping with her life. However, she had several scratches on her body, each one burning with an excruciating pain. Since then, she knew that only with a body of iron and beast-like skills could she possibly survive and escape from the deep mountains. In the days that followed in the mountains, she learned to hunt at night, mastered quick jumps, and climbing to high places. As she was repeatedly chased by lions, tigers, and other large ferocious beasts, her explosive power grew more and more impressive.
After drinking another bottle of liquor, Arabella coldly fixed her gaze on the distant leaves swaying in the wind, showing a sinister smile.
Raven actually didn't have the ability to track Arabella; he was simply hiding something in his heart and hadn't rested all night. When Arabella left, he couldn't notice it. Her skill was on full display, and she moved like the wind, something he was unable to catch. However, because he couldn't sleep, he got up and pushed the door, planning to take a walk. As soon as he stepped outside, he immediately realized something was wrong—Arabella was gone.
At dawn, it was the coldest time of the day. Raven looked at the pitch-black sky in the distance and thought of a place. At this moment, he stopped at a distance from the mass grave. If he moved forward, it would be too easy for Arabella to notice him. At this point, Raven couldn't help but be consumed by longing. He believed that he would always stay by Arabella's side, whether in death or life, his presence would be shocking and entangled with her forever. Just like now, she sat by the grave, reminiscing about the past, while he stood beside her, thinking about the future. From the agonizing, fiery hell he once endured to the calm of returning to the living world, Raven silently exhaled a breath of turbid air in the darkness.
On the other side, Nicholas and Julius had stayed up all night, both waiting for news. When Nicholas received the intelligence from the informant, he grinned and said, "She really went to the mass grave."
"It looks like the trap we set today has worked."
Nicholas nodded. He knew how much effort he had put into finding a woman in Jingle who resembled Cyrus's eyes so closely, just to provoke Arabella. If Arabella openly went to Scalien like this, she would surely die. If they didn't provoke that woman, should they just let her continue wandering aimlessly?
Julius gazed quietly at the red sun gradually rising in the sky and said calmly, "This time, we'll cut off her thoughts completely, so she will never think of Scalien's dead corpse again."
