Perhaps because she felt she would not survive the day, Xiao Wu currently carried a rather reckless "might as well go all out" attitude.
One table was nowhere near enough to hold every dish from the menu.
To satisfy Xiao Wu's request, the restaurant staff dragged several additional tables into the private room from outside and pushed them together before finally managing to create enough space.
The kitchen fires in the restaurant blazed nonstop, while cooks and workers of every position bustled around so frantically they almost left afterimages behind.
After spending a long while cooking, the dozens of dishes from the menu were finally mostly completed.
Even then, some dishes were obviously rather sloppy—either overcooked or undercooked.
Clearly, for chefs whose skills were only average to begin with, preparing an entire menu's worth of dishes within such a short time was simply too rushed.
"Delicious! Delicious! This one's good too! This… this one's not good, it's overcooked."
Xiao Wu sprawled over the table, stuffing food into her mouth in an utterly unrestrained manner while giving comments between bites.
"Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey! This one looked fine on the outside, but it's raw inside. That's so annoying… And this one—I've wanted to try it for so long. But it's way too expensive. One serving costs fifty Gold Soul Coins. I could never bear to order it before…"
Xiao Wu continuously stuffed all kinds of food into her mouth. Sauce and crumbs stained her pretty face and even the clothes she usually treasured dearly.
Her stomach was already swollen tight from overeating, even starting to ache. But faced with what she believed was the "last meal" of her life, Xiao Wu still desperately shoved food into her mouth without caring about anything else.
Even if she had to die, she was determined to die as a full ghost.
Watching Xiao Wu eat with such wild abandon, Dugu Bo—who in this lifetime was seeing a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast in human form for the first time… no, more accurately, seeing a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast for the first time—felt like his brain wasn't working properly anymore.
Even after entering human society… did Spirit Beasts still eat this boldly and without restraint?
People always said that transformed Spirit Beasts who entered the human world were extremely difficult to detect, and only true experts could see through them and discover their real bodies.
But looking at Xiao Wu's starving-ghost style of eating, Dugu Bo found it impossible to believe those rumors.
After quite some time, when Xiao Wu finally couldn't eat another bite—when merely opening her mouth made it feel like the contents of her stomach were about to surge back up her throat—Chen Ming, who hadn't touched his chopsticks even once, finally spoke.
"Xiao Wu, what are you in such a hurry for? Haven't eaten in years or something? We're just catching up. Do you really need to act like you're facing death?"
"You know what I am, don't you?"
Xiao Wu refused to believe that Chen Ming—who had a Titled Douluo beside him—did not already know her true identity. She simply gave up trying to hide it and reached up to touch the rabbit-ear decoration on her head.
"That's right. I'm a legendary hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast transformed into human form. Stop testing me already. I admit it—I'm not human. So what do you want to do to me?"
"Why do I have to do anything to you? Just because you're a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast in human form, I have to do something? After all these years, do you really think I'm the kind of person who's completely heartless?"
"I haven't even asked you to repay the money you borrowed from me when you were greedy for food in the past."
"Are you not interested in my hundred-thousand-year Spirit Ring and Spirit Bone? Or rather, do you want to do something else to me?" Xiao Wu crossed her arms, her entire person immensely vigilant.
"I don't believe there's a single human Spirit Master who wouldn't be tempted after seeing me. A little over ten years ago, wasn't the previous Pope of the Spirit Hall killed by that Tang Hao precisely because he hunted a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast?"
"And isn't that Tang something Hao still a wanted criminal of the Spirit Hall even now?"
"Even the Pope of the Spirit Hall was like that. Are you saying you can resist that kind of temptation?"
"You really know too little. You only understand the surface, not the core of the matter."
"The reason Tang Hao was wanted wasn't because he colluded with a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast. It was because he beat the Pope of the Spirit Hall to death." Chen Ming shook his head.
"And the reason the Pope of the Spirit Hall relentlessly pursued Tang Hao and the Blue Silver Empress was because he understood that once Tang Hao returned to the Clear Sky Sect, the matter would become impossible to pursue further due to the sect's influence and strength."
"So before Tang Hao could return home, he continuously tried to kill the hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast first and frame the entire matter as merely a struggle over a Spirit Beast."
Cases of hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beasts transforming into humans and leaving descendants within human society were indeed rare.
But throughout human history, things like this had actually happened dozens of times, perhaps even more.
In truth, many powerful beast-type Martial Souls were theoretically impossible for human bodies to withstand. Long ago, these Martial Souls were considered absolutely impossible for humans to possess. Yet over time, more and more of these supposedly impossible Martial Souls began appearing among humans.
Why? Because some transformed Spirit Beasts had infiltrated human society, married humans, and left behind their bloodlines. Their descendants were then able to awaken Martial Souls that humans theoretically should not have been capable of bearing.
During the Douluo 2 era, the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear had already been explicitly stated to be a Martial Soul impossible for humans to endure. Yet in the Douluo 4 era, the Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear Martial Soul still made an appearance.
The root cause was simply that a Dark Gold Terror Claw Bear had once transformed into human form and left behind a bloodline.
It was the same principle behind the Titan Giant Ape Martial Soul possessed by the Yuan'en Famliy.
Humans in the Douluo world indeed possessed racial prejudice.
But this prejudice did not stem from believing humans were inherently supreme.
Rather, it was because humanity could only survive by uniting against other races.
Humans referred to all Spirit Beast races as a single group, but in reality, Spirit Beast races numbered in the thousands, even tens of thousands. They hunted one another, fought one another, and coexisted in constant hostility. Only collectively were they labeled as "Spirit Beasts."
The Spirit Beast race had never truly been a unified race at all—
It was merely humanity's umbrella term for countless different species.
Just like the Dragon Clan and Phoenix Clan. Or the Dragon Clan and Tiger Clan. Or the Dragon Clan and Behemoth Clan.
Between these races existed deep blood feuds and long-standing grudges. Mutual slaughter, opposition, and suppression had never ceased.
Even though they were all called Spirit Beasts, the Dragon Clan, Phoenix Clan, Tiger Clan, and other Spirit Beast races absolutely did not share the same interests or positions.
The reason the hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beasts and ferocious beasts within the Star Dou Forest could stand upon the same side was largely because the future path of Spirit Beasts had already been severed.
By relying solely on their own power, they could never break through that limitation.
Therefore, any Spirit Beast that wished to continue advancing and surviving had no choice but to cast aside racial prejudice and place their hopes upon the Silver Dragon King, believing that she might one day break the existing rules.