Deviant: No Longer Human-Chapter 800: Beating Eveline: The Day a Goddess Learned Fear! (4)

Back inside the villa!

Eveline's severed head lay on the floor, blue eyes frozen, half-lidded, staring into nothing.

Wang Xiao crouched beside her, his voice low, too calm for what he'd just done.

"Did I allow you to die yet?"

For a moment, there was only silence.

Then—

"—gh…!"

A wet gasp escaped her, her eyes snapped into focus. Terror rushed in like a flood as breath returned to her lungs that weren't connected.

Her lips shook as she tried to speak.

"…W–why…?"

Wang Xiao grabbed her head by the hair, lifting it effortlessly.

Her expression contorted, fear, humiliation, and a strange, involuntary relief.

He looked directly into her trembling eyes.

"You think you can run from me just by dying? Did I not just ask you a question?"

Eveline's voice quivered, barely a whisper.

"…I-I wasn't… trying to run…"

Lies.

Both of them knew it.

Wang Xiao turned toward her body slumped on the couch, blood dripping slowly down the torn neck.

"You're mine," he said simply, as if it were obvious.

"My dog. My bitch."

She sucked a cold breath, half fear, half something worse... Reality.

He pressed her head back against the raw stump of her neck. Her whole body jolted violently as tendons, nerves, and flesh reattached with a sickening shimmer of divine energy.

Her fingers clawed at the couch cushions.

"Ah-! I can feel... I can feel again... !"

He ignored her excitement.

He held her jaw firmly and spoke quietly:

"But don't misunderstand."

His thumb brushed her lip, nudging past the pink glaze of her lipstick, parting her mouth and revealing the clean white of her teeth beneath.

"Just because you're my bitch…"

His eyes narrowed, tone turning colder.

"…doesn't mean I'd hesitate to slaughter a rabbid-bitch simply because her fur is shiny."

Eveline froze.

His words hit harder than the death.

"I-I don't understand…"

But she did.

And the thrill it sent through her made shame spark in her eyes.

She had a second, one second, of relief that she was alive again.

Then-

CRACK!

Her head snapped sideways.

He'd punched her.

Right across the nose.

Eveline let out a sharp scream as she fell from the couch, rolling onto the floor with zero grace.

Blood splattered across the tiles.

She clutched her nose, eyes wide in pain and disbelief.

"Cough—! You… you cough… hit my—face…!"

Wang Xiao rose to his feet, wiping his knuckles with a faint, amused smirk.

"You were getting too excited," he said, voice excited. "And we've only just started."

"!!"

Eveline's face twisted. Just started?

What did he-

She didn't finish the thought.

His foot drove into her abdomen, knocking the breath from her lungs, folding her body over itself.

Before she could gasp, his other foot pressed down on her face, pinning her cheek to the floor.

"Ugh!"

Her hands scrabbled uselessly against the tiles as his toe forced her lips open, prying into her mouth. Her eyes watered instantly; even for an old goddess, this humiliation hit deep.

Wang Xiao chuckled.

"I've never understood what you're so arrogant about," he murmured, pressing harder. "Look at yourself. Look at me. Where do you think you stand?"

She coughed against his foot, voice muffled and shaking.

"…W–wait-"

"Is it your past that props up that pride of yours?" he continued. "That single fleeting age where you believed you were stronger?"

His tone was soft, too soft.

"Who were you even comparing yourself to back then? Someone a hundredth your age? Is that what your dignity is worth?"

Eveline's throat tightened.

He wasn't shouting.

He wasn't angry.

He was recounting facts.

And that hurt more.

Wang Xiao leaned down a little, voice almost conversational.

"You've carried this resentment for so long. I know why. When Aurora handed you over to me, I wasn't strong enough yet to suppress you fully."

His foot pushed harder against her cheek.

"And you never let go of that moment, did you? You really thought it meant you were above me."

Her fingers shook. Her eyes glistened with the shame of being read so precisely.

"Aurora was right," Wang Xiao said. "You need a beating. And a reality check."

Before she could react-

BANG!

He grabbed her by the hair, yanked her head up, and swung her body across the room like she weighed nothing.

Eveline crashed into the far wall with a brutal crack, sliding down the plaster in a heap.

Dust fell around her.

Her breath slowed, shallow and pained.

Wang Xiao stepped forward, unhurried.

"We are just getting started."

"..."

"..."

"..."

At that moment, the entire villa turned still.

No one moved.

No one breathed.

Those on the ground floor froze on their seats, too afraid to climb the stairs.

Those on the third floor stood pressed against walls, clutching their robes, unwilling to take even one step downward.

Because the screams did not sound human.

The first scream ripped through the house like a fault-line splitting open.

High, sharp, and jagged, tearing the silence apart.

Then came the second.

A wet, choking sound followed, a harsh crack, like something heavy snapping in two.

Footsteps shifted upstairs, someone whimpered.

No one dared even whisper who it belonged to.

Another scream, shorter this time, drowned in a strangled gasp.

And then-

Silence....

Dead, suffocating silence.

But it lasted only a breath.

A dull thud echoed next, followed by a shuddering inhale, someone being forced back into consciousness.

Eveline.

Even without seeing, everyone knew it was her.

Something in the way her breath broke at the end told them she had just returned from somewhere worse than death.

"Wh-why… why is he doing this?" she whispered, voice shaking like glass in a storm.

Wang Jiarong had her back against the wodden chair on the dining, eyes wide, pupils trembling.

Every scream carved itself into her bones.

She wanted to run.

Her legs wouldn't move.

Only Mary stood at Yue's side, though her hands were trembling so violently she nearly dropped to her feets.

She stared straight ahead, refusing to look behind her into the room.

For some reason...

For some terrifying, incomprehensible reason...

Wang Xiao was tearing Eveline apart…

…then bringing her back.

Slowly.

Methodically.

Over and over.

Wang Xiao wasn't punishing Eveline.

He was teaching her.

A lesson from the Graveyard of Gods.

Where death was not the end, and survival was the torment. And as another scream tore through the villa, a scream that cracked somewhere halfway through, broke into a sob, and fell into silence...

a cold realization washed over everyone:

Eveline had stopped begging.

Not because she accepted it.

But because she finally understood...

This would not end until he decided it would.

"Who did you think was coming to save you…?"

Wang Xiao's voice dropped into a soft chuckle.

"Him?"

The sound rolled through the room, cold and taunting, enough to make everyone flinch and look in his direction despite themselves.

What they saw at his feet made several people gasp.

A skull.

Only her skull.

The rest of the body was nothing but charred, blackened bones, flesh stripped away as if burned clean. Inside the ribcage, impossibly, a single heart still beat.

Slow... Laborious.

One of her own ribs was piercing straight through it.

But that wasn't the part that broke them.

Above the bones shimmered a translucent projection, almost like a mirage.

A figure kneeling in the same posture, except still in flesh.

White hair like crackling thunder.

Body sliced open in several places, barely holding shape.

And when Eveline, reduced to a reattached head and trembling limbs, saw it, her mind shattered.

Because she knew that face.

"Z–Zeus…?"

Her voice cracked.

Her breath stuttered.

Her eyes widened with a terror deeper than any pain he'd inflicted.

Was the King of Gods himself… being cut down?

Her knees nearly buckled again.

She swallowed hard, trembling, and looked at Wang Xiao with a fear she couldn't hide anymore.

The psychological blow was far sharper than the physical one.

Wang Xiao didn't bother correcting her.

It wasn't Zeus.

It wasn't even close.

Just someone wearing the shell.

But he let her believe it.

Because that belief served his purpose.

He wanted her to understand something simple:

"No one was coming for you..."

"No king."

"No god."

"No dead."

Her arrogance, her imagined protection, meant nothing here.

"who do you even have left?"

"Athene?"

"You think Athene would save you?" he murmured, amused."You can go find her. Whenever you want, ask her to shield you, and she if she dares!"

His smile sharpened.

"I'll rip both your spines out and nail them to my wall if she tries."