Chapter 140: Bit Off Its Head in a Single Bite

With a ferocious, defiant tiger roar, the decaying building shuddered with even more palpable vibrations, as if it were about to collapse under the strain.

Li Tianque was struck with absolute horror, never imagining that the vicious beast possessed such tenacious vitality!

Having forcibly broken free from the metal wires binding its body, the fierce tiger completely disregarded its agonizing pain and recklessly hurled itself at Chu.

The metal wires Chu used were razor-sharp; in its struggle to break free, the greater part of the beast's dark hide had been torn away, exposing mangled, gruesome layers of red and white flesh.

By this point, the blood-soaked, mutilated tiger bore little resemblance to a normal creature, looking instead like a terrifying demon crawled straight from the depths of the abyss.

That final roar had torn its already-fractured gills even wider, ripping its jaws apart as warm blood gushed down its throat.

It opened its mouth in a furious gape, though its voice had reduced to a faint wheeze.

Yet, the frenzied beast’s tenacity remained inexhaustible, growing even more ferocious.

From breaking the wires to lunging at Chu, less than two seconds elapsed.

Caught off guard by the sudden snapping of the wire, Chu had been thrown to the ground by the momentum, leaving her entirely without a chance to dodge.

"Watch out!" Li Tianque cried out, but his warning came far too late.

The beast had already pinned Chu to the ground.

At that moment, Li Tianque felt as though a massive tub of ice water had been dumped over his entire body.

It was truly over now. Not only was Chu undoubtedly dead meat, but he himself stood little chance of escaping unscathed.

The cancer-cell strength within Li Tianque had not yet recovered; his arms remained numb, and his legs felt weak and drained.

If Chu were to die here, Li Tianque knew he had zero hope of escape.

Stunned, Li Tianque stepped backward, desperately praying that the beast was merely in its death throes and would soon collapse of its own accord.

After all, a vast portion of the tiger's flesh had been scraped away, leaving its internal organs exposed. While it still looked menacing, it surely couldn't hold out much longer.

Alas, the beast's body was still twitching with kinetic energy, seemingly capable of holding on for a while longer.

That mass of blackened flesh pressed down upon Chu like a vat overflowing with hot tar. The tiger's powerful, muscular front paws were shredded, their flesh peeled back, but it felt no fear, pinning Chu down with unrelenting weight.

Li Tianque felt his blood pressure skyrocket, knowing he was about to witness something unimaginably horrific:

Without the slightest hesitation, the tiger's cavernous maw clamped down directly onto Chu's head, accompanied by the loud, sickening snap of fracturing bone.

Li Tianque had seen no shortage of such gory spectacles while wandering through dark corners of the internet, but witnessing it with his own eyes turned his stomach inside out.

A burst of blood splattered before him, and Li Tianque clearly saw a thick mist of crimson erupt from where Chu's head had been. That bloody vapor blossomed like a flower of death—horrifying yet strangely dazzling.

Li Tianque's heart turned utterly cold, knowing his own demise would follow shortly...

He refused to accept the reality, yet there it lay right before his eyes:

Chu had been brutally torn apart and devoured by the ferocious beast!

Her head must have been swallowed straight into the tiger's jaws!

Everything had happened so swiftly that Li Tianque didn't even have time to process any coherent thoughts or reactions.

At this moment, only raw bodily instinct sustained his movements.

Li Tianque trembled violently, his stomach churning with the urge to vomit, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. Sweat had soaked through his protective rodent suit, streaming down the waterproof lining all the way into his trousers.

It’s really over now. I’m dead for sure...

Meanwhile, that vague, indistinct white shadow continued to draw closer, as if foretelling the fate awaiting Li Tianque.

At that instant, Li Tianque felt his eyeballs slip out of his control; his gaze locked into a rigid, vacant stare.

Terrified as he was, longing desperately to close his eyes,

his eyelids remained stubbornly peeled back wide, staring fixedly at the gruesome, lacerated monster while quietly awaiting the final verdict of death.

Li Tianque even felt a pang of regret; had he known it would end this way, he should have saved the final tranquilizer dart for himself.

Run... run with all your might...

Maybe there's still a chance...

The moment this thought formed in his mind, Li Tianque prepared to spin around and bolt...

Yet before he could take a single step, his right leg caught on a stray piece of metal wire, and he crashed heavily to the ground.

With his arms completely numb, he found himself utterly unable to push himself back up.

Damn it... Is he really just waiting to die here?

Li Tianque curled up and thrashed about, resembling a cicada pupa trapped by a natural predator with nowhere to hide.

Following Chu's death, the pitch-black stairwell plunged into sudden silence. Straddling Chu and having crushed her skull, the tiger ceased making any further sounds.

This terrifying silence stretched on for nearly two minutes before the sound of a woman struggling fiercely broke the quiet from that direction.

"Mmh... Hah..."

It sounded as though the woman was exerting all her strength to pry something apart...

Chu!

Could Chu possibly still be alive?

Why wasn't she killed?

A mix of shock and elation washed over Li Tianque as he immediately whipped his head toward the source of the sound.

Amidst the dim light, a pale hand extended outward from the mass of dark, mangled flesh—a chilling sight straight out of the opening sequence of a horror game.

Yet, to Li Tianque, catching sight of this image brought an overwhelming sense of relief.

The very woman who had constantly threatened his safety moments ago now represented his greatest hope.

Blood oozed like molten lava as Chu struggled, squeezing her way out from beneath the tiger's carcass.

As it turned out, at the exact moment the tiger had moved to crush her skull, Chu had somehow managed to blast a hole clean through the beast's head—which explained the burst of blood mist Li Tianque had witnessed earlier.

That spray of blood had erupted from the tiger, not from Chu's severed neck.

Unfortunately, Chu's head had still been trapped within the tiger's massive jaws, requiring her to struggle for a considerable while before finally crawling out from under the dead monster.

Standing up from the tiger's remains, Chu was drenched entirely in gore, resembling a terrifying rakshasa emerging from a bloodbath. Her long hair, which had concealed her face, was now soaked and matted together like a ragged piece of felt plastered across her features, rendering her a pitiful, disheveled sight.

Chu shook the blood and chunks of flesh from her body, twisted her hair together, and squeezed it forcefully from root to tip.

A thick stream of blood gushed out in a steady cascade.

Reaching her slender hands into the tiger's hide, she fumbled around for a moment before slicing through a tiger tendon with a piece of metal wire.

Using the tendon to tie up her hair, she finally revealed her deathly pale face.

Though it was only a profile view, Li Tianque found Chu's complexion startlingly, frighteningly white, resembling a paper funerary figurine devoid of any human coloration.

Her eyebrows were faint, her lips drained of color, and while her profile could hardly be called conventionally beautiful, it wasn't particularly ugly either.

Having swiftly secured her hair, Chu turned her back to Li Tianque and commanded:

"Follow me."

Her voice was cold and calm, yet it ignited a surge of warmth within Li Tianque.

Rolling across the floor, Li Tianque planted his knees against the ground and finally forced himself up with a desperate struggle.

As Chu's figure slowly melted into the darkness, Li Tianque hurried to keep pace behind her.