After a long while, looking at the boy's silent, stony face, Qi Zhaohua smiled again and continued, "Then did you feel that gazes don't have the same 'weight' as cheers?"
"Hmm?"
Qi Zhaohua sipped her tea. "You fought very gently today, and people still don't feel much about you, so you haven't experienced it-when every stroke of your sword is accompanied by a towering wave of sound, you feel as though you hold thirty thousand people's emotions in your hand, all tethered to a single sword. At that moment, what you want most is to sweep away everyone who dares compete with you and enjoy those immense cheers alone."
"...Sounds like it would set your blood boiling." Pei Ye drew a deep breath, pulling himself out of his memories.
"Yes, because-" Qi Zhaohua smiled, then abruptly stopped too.
Both fell silent.
A sheet of silver frost spread across the ground.
Over an area three to five zhang across, it looked as though cascading moonlight had been captured here, forming a silver platter upon the earth.
Yet there truly was nothing spread over it. This color sprang directly from the soil, casting a thin, luminous sheen over the plants in the dark woods.
This is Bright Frost Ground. The words lingered in Qi Zhaohua's throat, but she did not speak them.
For at the center of that silver frost, a black-clad figure sat cross-legged with his head bowed. Moonlight had dusted him with a thin layer of frost as well. A long, deep-red scabbard lay beside him, and the man gripped a sword hilt, its blade thrust deep into the earth before him.
He raised his head to look at them, the smile on his deeply chiseled, stern face slowly fading.
It had been an entranced absorption, a rapturous joy, and