What Did She Do?

Kexi's pupils widened abruptly.

He instinctively shoved the person straddling him away and rolled halfway across the bed, his back hitting the wall.

Her hand was still clamped around his throat, her nails digging into the skin of his neck, but her grip was much weaker than he had expected.

She was probably too weak. Even with all her strength, she could only make it slightly harder for him to breathe.

The girl's voice was hoarse and low, every muscle in her body taut as a bowstring stretched to its limit. Her golden eyes shone startlingly bright in the darkness, and tears spilled silently from them, running down her cheeks and dripping onto the front of Kexi's robe.

Kexi assessed the situation in half a second.

First, this was the woman he had peed all over yesterday. She had followed him here; it was no coincidence or chance encounter.

Second, the fact that she had found his exact room at the inn meant her tracking abilities were far beyond anything he had imagined.

Third, she kept saying, "Pay for my family's lives"-wait.

A crucial circuit suddenly connected in Kexi's brain.

Yesterday, by the lake, he had landed on a patch of "white pebbles." Then those "pebbles" had suddenly moved and lunged at him.

He had thought he was under attack and instinctively drawn his sword to fight back, knocking down all the white seals-no, some kind of white animal-that had pounced on him.

Only then had he gone to the lake to pee.

Then this pink-haired girl had leaped out of the lake and strangled him, shouting, "I'll kill you."

And what had she said after that?

"Why am I so weak?"

"Why can't I kill you?"

And just now she had said, "Pay for my family's lives."

A bolt of lightning split through Kexi's mind, illuminating all the details he had overlooked.

Could it be that those white animals weren't wild, aggressive beasts, but had been stationed by the lake to keep watch for her?

Yangyang had told him that some spirit beasts could take human form once their cultivation reached a certain level, and that they would be weak for a while after transforming.

She had hidden in the lake because she was transforming, and she had no fighting strength after taking human form.

And at that very moment, he had fallen from the sky, knocked out her family members who were keeping watch, and then stood over the lake where she was hiding and peed.

From her perspective, this was how it had gone:

A strange man fell from the sky, slaughtered all the family members keeping watch for her, then swaggered over to the lake where she was hiding, undid his pants, and peed on her, humiliating her in the most degrading way humans could.

Kexi closed his eyes and forced an extremely faint groan from his throat.

He suddenly understood why this pink-haired girl was hunting him down.

Anyone would bear a grudge that deep.

In the brief moment he was distracted by his reflections, Aemeath seized the chance and lunged at him again.

She opened her mouth, baring a set of gleaming white teeth, and bit at his neck.

She didn't have the strength to strangle him, so she would bite through his throat instead.

There was nothing wrong with the tactic itself, but she hadn't accounted for one variable.

Her sharp teeth found Kexi's neck.

But he instinctively turned his head, and her teeth missed the vital spot, sinking into the softest part of his neck instead.

Then both of them froze.

Aemeath's lips were pressed against his neck, her teeth embedded in his skin. She could feel his carotid artery pulsing beneath the tip of her tongue, fast as a beating drum.

He smelled faintly of soapberries and mountain pine, probably from washing himself in a stream somewhere during the day's journey.

She had expected him to reek of sweat, but to her surprise, he smelled clean and fresh, even a little pleasant.

The realization short-circuited her brain for a fraction of a second.

Kexi, meanwhile, had frozen because of the pain.

Although she was very weak, her bite still hurt, especially since the marks from her fingers were still on his neck. With fresh wounds over old ones, the pain made him suck in a sharp breath.

But at the same time, he felt a sensation that had no business being there at a moment like this.

The two lips pressed against his neck were soft, so soft that he couldn't help recalling a certain night he shouldn't have been thinking about.

Enough.

I can't let her keep biting me.

He put a hand on her forehead and pushed her face away from his neck.

He didn't use much force, but it was enough to send her exhausted body completely off balance.

After Kexi pushed her away, Aemeath fell backward, her back hitting the foot of the bed with a muffled thud.

Unwilling to give up, she writhed and clawed at the air with both hands. Her nails scraped across his arm, leaving several faint white marks.

Kexi caught her wrists and pinned both hands to the bed.

The position forced him to lean over, looking down at the girl beneath him as she continued to struggle desperately.

Moonlight filtered through the gaps in the window lattice and fell directly on her face, giving him his first chance to see her clearly up close. Aside from her golden eyes, her features were actually very delicate, with a straight, graceful nose, thin lips, and skin as white as fine porcelain.

But her face was now covered in dirt and tear tracks, with a shallow scrape on her left cheek and several dead leaves caught in her hair. She looked utterly disheveled.

"You-" Kexi opened his mouth and found his voice a little hoarse. "Calm down and listen to me. First of all, your family isn't dead."

Aemeath's struggles stopped abruptly at those words.

She stared at him with wide eyes.

"You're lying." Her voice was shrill and hoarse. "I saw it with my own eyes-they were lying on the grass, not moving, and their bodies had gone cold-and you still dare say they're not dead?! I buried them with my own hands-I-"

"I used the back of my sword." Kexi interrupted her, his tone calm and certain. He spoke every word slowly and clearly, as though defusing a bomb. "When I landed, your seals-no, your snow leopards-suddenly pounced on me.

"I thought they were wild beasts attacking me, so I drew my sword and fought back.

"But I used the back of the sword the whole time, not the blade.

"I didn't cut them. I just knocked them out.

"When I left the lake, they were lying on the grass, that's true, but that was because they'd been knocked unconscious.

"They weren't dead. If you don't believe me, you can go back and check. They really are perfectly fine."

Aemeath lay beneath him, her chest heaving.

Her pupils trembled, and her lips parted and closed again.

He didn't kill my family?

He didn't kill my family.

My family isn't dead.

My father, mother, third uncle, second aunt, and all my younger cousins who haven't transformed yet-they aren't dead.

If what he said is true, if my family really was only knocked unconscious by him...

Then what have I done?