A drop of blood on a pine needle rolled down the leaf veins and hit the ground, staining the rotting leaves with dark brown spots. Ye Fan lowered his gaze to the handkerchief in his palm. The embroidered light-green wisteria flowers still retained the warmth of Lin Zhaoyue's palm—when he had brushed a stray piece of grass from her hair a moment before, he had touched the skin behind her ear, thin as cicada's wings and cooler than the morning dew.
"Elder Chén's poison..." Lin Zhaoyue turned abruptly, the scabbard of her Qingfeng Sword striking the stone edge with a soft clatter. Mud splatters stained the hem of her pristine white skirt, yet she stood as straight as a bamboo stalk bent by wind and rain but stubbornly springing back up.
"It is nothing serious now." Elder Chén steadied himself against a tree trunk and straightened up, swallowing the last half of a detox pill in his throat. Black blood was seeping from the wound on his left shoulder, staining his cyan robe with a blotch the size of a palm. "That fellow Zhao used snake poison from the Miao territory. We owe this to Zhaoyue's detox pills."
Chapter 58