Zhezhu set Shang Rong down and walked into the courtyard with languid steps.

Shang Rong did not follow. She held up the lantern and looked at his back; suddenly, she crouched down, picked up a broken twig, lowered her head, and began to write and draw on the snow.

The lantern rested quietly on the snow, the lamplight casting her vivid shadow. She lifted her head and discovered that the youth had already turned around—now standing not far away with his arms folded, watching her with a pair of clear, limpid eyes.

She stood up at once, walked to him, grabbed the tassel of the soft sword at his waist, stepped in those oversized black boots, and pulled him back to the courtyard gate.

Zhezhu lowered his lashes and, on the snow spread beneath the lamplight, clearly saw the two characters she had written stroke by stroke.

“Zhezhu (折竹).”

Shang Rong looked at him. “My name is Shang Rong.”

Another solitary lamp was added beneath the eaves, swaying through half the night beyond a window. The room was dim; the youth’s shadow was cast upon the gauze of the window. With his back to her, he pulled aside half his robe, revealing his smoothly contoured right arm.

Half of Shang Rong’s face was hidden under the quilt, only her eyes showing. In the hazy light, she faintly saw a ferocious wound on the youth’s arm.

From her angle, she saw only that he lowered his head slightly, then turned his face aside. He bit out the cloth stopper of a small porcelain bottle he did not know from where he had taken, sprinkled the medicinal powder onto the wound. Blood seeped from the cracked scab and wound down along the crook of his arm.

Perhaps sensing something, he turned his head abruptly.

No matter how dim the light, he could still clearly see her eyes silently watching him.

Beads of fine sweat had already gathered at his temples; his face appeared pale in the warm glow of light, yet he remained exceedingly handsome.

She met his gaze directly, then quickly turned and shrank back into the quilt.

The youth stared at the back of her head, a trace of suspicion appearing in his eyes, yet he said nothing, only turned back to gather his clothes around himself.

The bamboo couch creaked for a moment, then suddenly there was no sound at all.

Shang Rong did not turn back, yet she knew he had lain down.

After waiting a long while, she listened carefully again but heard no sound of the youth’s breathing. She cautiously turned over, and before her eyes was a patch of light and shadow shining in from beyond the window gauze.

That light and shadow fell upon the youth; he was like distant mountains in mist, unmoving at the boundary where brightness and darkness intertwined.

Drowsiness had long weighed heavily on Shang Rong’s eyelids, but this secret run out into the night had left her hands and feet icy cold, even the gaps of her bones chilled. Sleep could not overcome the stiffness and cold throughout her body; wrapped in the quilt, she endured it stubbornly, only truly falling asleep when dawn grew faintly bright.

But she had not slept long when the bamboo bed creaked; she abruptly opened her eyes again. Outside the window, the morning light was dim. She had not fully awakened when she saw the youth extremely alert, rising with the quilt in his arms, like a wolf ever lying in wait.

His fingertip lightly touched the window gauze but did not pierce it, as though listening for some sound. Perhaps the faint rustle of Shang Rong’s clothes brushing the quilt drew his attention; he turned his head, saw she was about to say something, and promptly pressed a finger to his lips. His cold, sharp eyes fixed on her as he shook his head.

Shang Rong immediately pressed her lips together, not daring to make a single sound. She pulled the quilt up to cover half her face, watching his every movement with only her eyes.

With a “chi-la” sound—

Shang Rong suddenly saw a long sword pierce through the window gauze, pointing straight at the youth’s face. Her eyes widened, yet she saw him tilt his head deftly to evade it, then grasp the blade with his bare hand and yank hard.

Blood flowed over the youth’s entire hand. The person outside was shocked by his internal force; his head crashed through the wooden window, wooden splinters piercing his throat. His eyes lost focus, and he died on the spot.

Shang Rong’s breathing tightened, her face deathly pale.

“Don’t come out.”

The youth glanced at her, spoke hurriedly, then lifted the sword and leapt out through the broken window frame like wind, like drifting blue-gray mist dispersing.

More than a dozen people stood rigidly in the cramped courtyard—they were the same assassins who, yesterday on the official road of Nanzhou, had attempted but failed to intercept and kill a traveling party.

“Protector Seventeen.”

The man in the brown robe at the front looked sinister. “You killed Protector Eleven and sank his corpse in the Yuliang River. Acting so willfully—are you not afraid the Tower Master will punish you?”

“Protector Seventeen! You’re forcing us onto a dead end! Protector Eleven is dead—does that not mean we must return to the Blood Pool?” someone shouted angrily.

The reputation of Zhifeng Tower as the number one assassin tower under heaven was earned through years of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

There were seventeen Protectors in the tower. Some died often, and others exhausted every effort to become one of them.

From one to seventeen were blood-soaked numbers. Beneath them were buried many assassins who bore those numbers from birth to death. From beginning to end, those never replaced—aside from the Second—was the Seventeenth.

Seventeen was the youth before them, and yet he was only sixteen this year.

Not everyone could become a Protector of Zhifeng Tower, and within the tower there was a rule: if a Protector died while on a mission outside, everyone who had followed them on that mission must return to the Blood Pool.

The Blood Pool was the hell within Zhifeng Tower. Anyone who came out from there would never want to go back.

“The Blood Pool counts as a dead end?”

The youth slightly moved the hand that had been cut by the sword’s edge. Drops of blood rolled down along his pale finger bones, and there was always a faint curve to his eyes. “If you had participated yesterday, that official road would have become Zhifeng Tower’s dead end.”

“What do you mean, Protector Seventeen?”

The brown-robed man frowned.

The youth’s brows and eyes were handsome yet sharp. “Zhifeng Tower never inquires into the employer’s identity, but the identity of those about to die cannot go unchecked. Yet who in the tower handled this verification?”

“This job came in urgently. The employer offered thirty thousand taels of silver to buy the lives of two people. Protector Eleven was in a hurry to return to the tower—he said it himself, it was the Gu clan of Guning Prefecture in Yongxing,” the man’s eyes shifted slightly as he answered truthfully.

“Thirty thousand taels of silver, only to take two lives?” The youth stood holding his sword, robes fluttering. “A merchant clan of Guning Prefecture in Yongxing—are they truly worth thirty thousand taels?”

“What exactly are you trying to say?” The man could no longer suppress his irritation.

The youth paused, lowered his head to look at the soft sword in his hand. The thin blade’s rippling cold light reflected in his eyes. He sighed in regret. “You really are foolish.”

“Brother Yun, I think he’s just trying to deceive us!”

A young assassin could no longer endure it. “The serious injuries he suffered in Pingchuan shouldn’t have healed yet. Let’s just kill him now! Protector Eleven, after all, had ties with the Tower Master. If we avenge Protector Eleven today and then return to the tower, perhaps we can avoid the punishment of returning to the Blood Pool!”

In Zhifeng Tower, merits and faults could offset each other.

Roused by his words, everyone’s gaze gathered once more on the youth—cold and terrifying like hawks.

The wind and snow grew heavier. The sounds of battle, even through a wooden door, clearly reached inside the room.

Shang Rong shrank into the corner of the bed, nerves stretched tight, not daring to move. But the cold wind blowing in through the broken window carried an ever-thickening stench of blood.

Yet she could not help listening closely—hearing blades clashing outside the door, hearing people scream, or the heavy thud of bodies hitting the ground. One by one she distinguished the cries—some deep and broad, some rough and coarse—not a single one belonged to the youth’s voice.

The commotion suddenly vanished, like a violent storm abruptly cut off. She could not help raising her head to look toward the blood-streaked window frame.

Suddenly—“bang.”

Shang Rong instinctively turned her head, just in time to see the door panel crash down with a thunderous sound. A biting cold wind wrapped with icy snowflakes rushed straight toward her face. She saw a strange man on top of the fallen door spit out a mouthful of blood. When he turned and discovered Shang Rong on the bed, something flashed through his mind in that instant—she saw him make as if to rise and come toward her.

She immediately ran barefoot off the bed to dodge him, then grabbed the teapot from the brazier. The water inside was boiling; she was badly scalded, yet before she could grip it tightly, she flung it straight at him.

The man’s forehead was smashed open by the teapot; boiling water splashed over his face and body. Scalded, his features twisted in agony as he screamed.

Shang Rong was still blowing on her burned palm when his wailing suddenly stopped. She looked up and saw a bloody hole torn open at his throat. Within the flesh, there seemed to glimmer a faint, cold silver light—the very thing that had pierced through his neck.

She almost froze in place, watching as the man’s eyes bulged wide before he collapsed heavily to the ground.

Her legs lost their strength, and she staggered and fell sitting down. Only then did she notice that outside the broken doorway, more than a dozen corpses lay scattered in disarray. Each was covered in blood, their faces indistinguishable. The flowing blood had nearly dyed a vast stretch of snow in the courtyard red.

“Come here.”

Suddenly, a low, languid voice sounded.

Shang Rong abruptly turned toward the sound—

By the railing of the corridor to the right outside the door stood the youth, his appearance like carved jade mountains, yet half his face was smeared with blood. Several strands of black hair fell in disarray by his temples. One beautifully structured hand held that soft sword; its vermilion tassel was soaked with blood, dripping drop by drop down the steps.

He did not move at all, though the mountain wind stirred his hair and snow clung to his clothes.

In the still dim and shadowed morning light, the eyes with which he stared at her were like a ghost’s—enough to chill one’s very bones.

“Last night, did you see where I put the medicine?”

His gentle voice carried a trace of weariness as he leaned against the railing without moving.

After changing his medicine last night, he had casually placed the porcelain bottle by his pillow. Shang Rong needed only his mention to remember at once. She had not moved yet, but seeing his expression grow colder, she became like a startled bird. “I saw it.”

Supporting herself on a pillar, Shang Rong stood up. She turned her face away, not daring to look at the corpse on the ground. Her brows knit tightly as she took small steps, avoiding the winding trails of blood, edging toward the bamboo couch.

She was like a little snail.

Zhezhu felt that his blood was nearly drained. Watching her coldly as she stepped out the door, still making sure to avoid the large, burly corpse, unwilling to let even a speck of blood stain her feet—when she finally reached him, she crouched before him. The hand that opened the porcelain stopper trembled, and the medicinal powder scattered messily across him. Bitter dust filled the air, and she could not help but sneeze.

The wound on his arm was ferocious and blood-red. Shang Rong poured the powder over it in a rush, the white granules thickly covering the wound before she dared to look at it properly, then secretly let out a small sigh of relief.

Gripping the porcelain bottle again, the scraped skin on her palm from when she had fallen brushed against the powder remaining on its surface. The pain made her hiss softly.

Did this medicine hurt this much when sprinkled on a wound?

Shang Rong suddenly lifted her head to look at him. But his refined brows were relaxed, though there was no smile now. His eyes were lowered; his thick, long lashes stirred faintly in the wind. His blood-stained face radiated an extreme coldness.

Such a deep wound—didn’t it hurt?

Shang Rong could not help wondering.

He said nothing now, carrying a kind of inexplicable solitude. She did not know what he was thinking, only saw him turn his face slightly to look at the corpses scattered across the snow.

Gradually, a certain dull, flavorless expression surfaced on his face.

“Shang Rong.”

The youth’s voice was clear and pleasant.

The wind threaded through the branches, cold mist drifting, snow falling with a soft rustle.

Suddenly, the curve beneath his eyes deepened, clear glimmers of light rippling in their depths:

“Do you want—”

“to go play with me?”