Wei Xun dawdled slowly over. With the window between them, Baozhu reached out both hands to cup his face. Her mind was hazy, and she did not know quite what she meant to do; she simply wanted to nestle against him. Her face burned, and his cold nose touched hers, which she found wonderfully amusing.
Caught in her grasp, Wei Xun had completely forgotten how to breathe. His chest burned fiercely; one spark to the fuse, and he would shoot into the sky like a firework and burst into a shower of stars.
She was drunk. Did she know what she was doing? What should he say to stop her? Two impulses tugged back and forth in his mind: one urged him to take to his heels and flee, while the other urged him to break through the window and draw closer still.
Just as heaven and human desire were locked in battle, Baozhu pressed her lips toward his. At the instant of contact, the clash between flight and fight overwhelmed his reason, and the instincts honed by years of martial training gained the upper hand. Wei Xun swept a hand across the Heavenly Tripod and Supporting Prominence points on the side of her neck. Baozhu's arms immediately fell limp, and she sank into unconsciousness, her body slowly crumpling.
Panic-stricken, Wei Xun caught her in his arms and stared incredulously at his right hand. Before his mind had worked out how to respond, his body had acted first and knocked her unconscious by striking her pressure points. Why? How could this happen? What in the world was he doing?
Bewilderment mingled with an inexplicable regret. Holding the unconscious Baozhu, Wei Xun crouched on the eaves in a daze. A voice cried out inside him: *This was a rotten thing to