In this study, we compare the behavioral reality of metaphorical processing during reading in PPC and RAC economic discourse within and between groups based on eye-tracking. The intra-group study focuses on investigating the semantic access of metaphorical and literal word processing in the early and late stage, while the inter-group study mainly explores the cognitive load of metaphorical and literal word processing. It can be found that different semantic types are activated in the early stage of lexical processing, whereas only the literal meaning can be preferentially accessed in the late stage. The activation process of metaphorical meaning is dominant in the late stage and the effect is restricted to the late stage. Participants are required to put more cognitive load on the processing of RAC metaphorical words in comparison with that of PPC. Although PPC and RAC share family resemblance in terms of discourse type, their respective behavioral representations of metaphorical processing still show significant differences.