Snow Woman remembered it very clearly.
That Four-tailed Fox... the Four-tailed Fox named Uesugi Tetsu had definitely been killed by her.
She had even felt somewhat regretful at the time, so she had deliberately kept a small piece of ice behind.
Snow Woman silently pinched a crystal-clear shard of ice from inside her kimono. On it lingered a faint trace of Uesugi Tetsu's aura, which she had gone to great lengths to preserve.
--It was exactly the same as the aura of the fellow standing in front of the inn not far away.
Her instincts told Snow Woman that this Four-tailed Fox named Uesugi Tetsu was fundamentally different from both the monsters within Kisaragi Station and the ordinary monsters that had wandered in by mistake.
She rubbed the ice crystal with her nearly pure-white fingers, her cold eyes half-lowered. For the moment, she made no rash move, neither choosing to speak nor attempting to ambush and kill the Four-tailed Fox again.
Instead, she restrained the chill and aura surging from her body into the outside world. Like an ice sculpture, she stood behind a thick tree, silently observing Uesugi Tetsu.
It had already been three or four hundred years since she had come to this territory, this mountain forest.
Even Snow Woman, who was naturally detached and fond of quiet, occasionally found herself thinking, I should go outside and take a look.
But Snow Woman herself still did not know how to leave this special territory.
Since that was the case, she was happy to see what kind of surprises Uesugi Tetsu could bring her.
--If all he did was a bunch of pointless nonsense, she could always act later.
Inside the Mountain Inn, Ye Chun sat curled up on the bed, clutching her head with vacant eyes.
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