Li Piaoqing shifted her stunned gaze to the man's face, and then even her breathing stopped.
For an instant, everything around her felt unreal. She had not actually returned to the Martial Arts Hall, but was still beside the lake, still facing this corpse.
She had not killed him with the Wind and Snow Order and the little sword either, or why was there only one wound on his throat?
When had she fainted and dreamed all this? Or... was she still dreaming now?
"He wanted to harvest some fruit, so he came to kill me." The boy's clear voice continued from a little above her beside her. He stood very close, so his voice was low. "I killed him."
The girl turned her head blankly. She felt the ground receding from her feet. The trees, the courtyard walls, the faces around her all spun, hazy and blurred. Everything seemed like a dream.
Only the boy's gentle face remained real in her vision, clear down to the finest detail, and the hand holding her icy arm felt warm and solid.
The girl anchored herself with that face and that hand. She clutched his clothes tightly and said in a daze, "You said..."
"I thought this was the man you wanted to kill, so I brought you here to identify him." The boy tilted his head to look down at her, his voice still low and clear, as though afraid of shattering her.
"..."
"Is it him?" The boy tilted his head to glance at the corpse, thinking he should not have made a mistake, then turned back. "This was at the Moon-Catching Tower the day before yesterday-"
His voice abruptly cut off, because before his eyes, tears brimmed over from the girl's eyes. She bit her lip hard, but her