Jixiang knew her scent and would never sniff at her this way.
She felt a stir of apprehension. She squeezed Zhongli Jing’s hand firmly, and he slowly opened his eyes, his gaze settling on something behind her head — but still said nothing.
Xiao Nanhui’s eyes shifted from side to side, uncertain what was behind her. The next moment she felt the back of her clothing seized in a tremendous grip, and something began dragging her out of the mud pool. The force separated her hand from Zhongli Jing’s, which she had been clasping all this time.
Xiao Nanhui had no time to struggle — she was hauled free of the mud pool all at once. Her long-compressed lungs finally drew breath freely. She gulped deep mouthfuls of air and pushed herself up — her body heavy, waterlogged with mud — and raised her head to look.
It was a young stag, with a pair of large, liquid eyes. It shook its great antlers gently, then stepped toward Zhongli Jing and pulled him free in exactly the same way.
Xiao Nanhui hurried over to help Zhongli Jing up. By the time she raised her head again, the deer had already walked away, those great antlers disappearing among the waist-high artemisia, like some solitary strange creature.
In this extraordinary moment of survival against all odds, Xiao Nanhui murmured two soft words: “Thank you.”
The words were for the deer, and they were also for Zhongli Jing.
Only the other party seemed to have no time at the moment to acknowledge her thanks. He was struggling painstakingly to remove his outer robe — the mud had saturated the fabric, and the sash had become all tangled up, soaked and heavy, wrapped around him so that it simply would not come off.
Seeing this, Xiao Nanhui thought nothing of it, stepped forward, grabbed the cloth of his robe on both sides with both hands, and gave a forceful pull to each side. The “mud robe” finally tore in two with a sound.
Zhongli Jing froze for a moment, then lowered his head to look at the inner garment he still had on. When he raised his head again, the expression on his face was decidedly peculiar.
Xiao Nanhui belatedly looked at the two strips of torn cloth in her hands and wondered if she had frightened him, and patiently explained: “You could not have gotten it off that way — it would have been wasted effort. Out here in the wild, there’s no point in being particular.”
Zhongli Jing was quiet for a moment, then exhaled two words.
“Never mind.”
And without looking at Xiao Nanhui, he got to his feet and glanced around in all directions.
Xiao Nanhui took it as him simply being prickly, and bent her head to pick up the jade seal she had gone through so much hardship to obtain, cradling it in her arms, and also looked around in all directions. “What is it — do you know the way out?”
“I do not.”
The other party answered with complete matter-of-factness. Xiao Nanhui was barely able to keep herself from rolling her eyes. “The way you look, it doesn’t seem like you don’t know—”
Zhongli Jing said nothing, but walked a few paces to stand behind Xiao Nanhui.
Xiao Nanhui noticed that when this man stood upright he was actually quite tall — his spine straight, his shoulders broad and level. He was not powerful and sturdy like a martial artist, but he did not look like someone of frail health either.
He stood very close — so close that he was nearly chest to back with her. Close enough that Xiao Nanhui could feel the warmth rising from his body, and that distinctive scent of his was more noticeable than ever.
For some reason she could not name, Xiao Nanhui instinctively held her breath. Zhongli Jing, however, indicated that she should look toward the depths of the marshland.
Tonight there were drifting layers of cloud, and the moonlight was dim. Every blade of grass and tree in the marshland had lost its outlines, blurring into a murky, undifferentiated mass.
Suddenly, amid the murk, a faint blue light blinked into being. It rose slowly and drifted in circles, lingering among the rotting water grass and shallow streams.
Another blue light appeared, chasing after the first. Then a third, a fourth flickering into life in quick succession, drifting and dancing through the vegetation, filling the marshland that had been lost in darkness with flickering points of pale radiance.
“Fireflies.”
“Mm.”
Zhongli Jing took a few steps forward, and Xiao Nanhui tensed and grabbed his arm. “Visibility is still nothing like daytime — walk like that and the two of us will be right back sitting in a pit.”
Zhongli Jing lowered his gaze to the hand gripping his arm, and tried to make his voice sound as normal as possible. “Weixiang searched nearby during the day — he will not be coming back again so soon. Waiting here in place is the same as waiting to die.”
Only then did Xiao Nanhui realize, belatedly, that the body beneath her hand was trembling.
The temperature had dropped, and he was a man entirely without martial training, wearing wet clothes, who had lain with her in a mud pit for several hours. He truly could not afford to wait any longer.
But what to do? Find something to probe the way? In this pitch darkness, how long would that take?
“Have you heard the saying, ‘fireflies are born of rotting grass’?”
Xiao Nanhui nodded.
Fireflies favored damp, rotting vegetation, and came out to feed when night fell.
“If we avoid the places where fireflies are, it should be the firmer ground.”
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