Chapter 24 - COME TO THE PALACE

"What the…" She gawked at another shirtless man besides Wu through her bewildered gaze.

The man had hair exceeding the length of Yue's own hair, and were drowsed in a shiny black. He was about the same height as the man beside her. They were both oddly tall to her.

He was a slightly more muscular built as compared to Wu. His biceps flexed as he walked towards them, her eyes took a cursory glance to study his physique. His thighs were thick enough for the fabric to hug his form, giving a vivid view of the outline of his bottom physique.

This inconclusive man as well, had an inked chest. Yet, unlike Xian Wu, who's tattoos stretch across his chest to his left arm, this guy had a stamped-like tattoo, a small patch of pure black ink on his left chest. On probing it for an elongated period, it appeared to be a impersonation of some sort of badge like structure. Could it be that he belonged to some guild located within somewhere this terrain? Given his strong muscular built, it wouldn't be surprising he was to be a worker in an iron mine or factories of the same. Who was he and how did he emerge as soon as the wolf disappeared into thin air?

While Yue was engrossed in analyzing his inked torso and his origin, his bewitching teal eyes stared right at her as the corner of his lips curves into a seductive smirk.

Wu followed his gaze and turned his head back towards Yue, to notice her gaping at his physique or that's what he thought while Yue was only zoned out in her own meditations. On feeling another sharp gaze peering at her she instantly broke the ephemeral eye contact with the hitherto wolf, and looked at Wu instead.

Wu's eyes were almost envious, she could feel the covetous desire through his gaze. She shook herself out of her constant spacing out and shifted her view towards her feet, avoiding the piercing glares from him. Despite relocating her sight, her mind remained embedded in the shackles of the abundant incongruous thoughts of analysing the uncanny encounter.

"Who is she?" A new masculine voice fills the eerie silence of the forest. Yue glances up at the owner of the arousing voice but immediately look away as he already had his eyes aiming for her.

"Shouldn't concern you." Yue is unable to examine Wu's facial expressions, standing behind him. But his tone is imperatively irksome. She switches her glance between the two bare chest guys, conversing proficiently.

"Right." The other guy lowly nods his head in response, "It's just that I thought you were in the forest for solidarity. Didn't expect you to have...." he takes a pause to fix his gaze at girl hiding behind Wu before proceeding further "...such an adorable company."

Yue blinked startled at the precipitous indirect compliment and grateful to the dark environment, he didn't notice the intensity of blood rush in her face. It was profoundly an uncommon word to be associated to her, despite her charming features, she never had been confronted so clearly of her characteristics. 'Adorable?' Yue shifts closer behind Wu to conceal her facial expressions of evident elation.

At the same moment, she hears a heavy exhale from the man right in front of her. "Get to the point, Shuang."

The atmosphere grows heated between the two despite the lingering smirks on their face. Yue knits her brows together in the perplexity of the name calling situation.

Shuang, she mumbles the name in her mind. She wondered if somehow the wolf that just faded from view, and the seraphic man that emerged out of nowhere were by some means related. Well, Yue shrugs at my own thoughts. Given the eerie happenings up till now, anything is by far possible in this plot.

"Your presence is requested at the Palace." An abrupt shiver goes down her spine at the thought of the palace. 'Li Mei must be there, what if I am still playing as the side character? Might as well accompany him and meet my so-called sister.' But she also knew contrasting her wants to visit the palace that given her relation with Wu being fraught with nothing but disputes, it was highly unlikely he would take her along.. She frets at her own contemplations.