When the campfire crackled and sent sparks flying, Ye Fan was tending to Chǔ Hóngzhuāng's damp hair, wet from the night dew. The blush on the tips of her ears had not yet faded, and the silver bell between her strands jingled softly, like a restless butterfly in hiding. "Back in the forest, when we were hiding from the Iron-masked Man, your heartbeat was faster than the beating wings of the Golden Silkworm Gu," she suddenly lifted her face, the tear mole at the outer corner of her eye flickering in the firelight. "And now you're acting all composed?"
Ye Fan's fingertips paused in her hair. He remembered the figure in the illusion who had blocked a thousand Gu worms from devouring his heart, and the fleeting shadows her eyelashes cast when she bit his wrist to summon the Golden Silkworm Gu—shadows that concealed an ache far deeper than the poisonous miasma of Southern Xinjiang.
"Hóngzhuāng," he took her drooping hand, his palm feeling the warmth of the Golden Silkworm Gu at her wrist, "when I attained the Dao in my past life, my greatest regret was not walking a stretch of the road with someone I truly cared about."
Chapter 90