32 I Adore You

Luo Qinghan nodded, but his sharp senses detected something. Catching hold of Zhe Huo's wrist, he brought it up for a closer look. Upon her fair, delicate skin, a tiny cut had appeared, oozing slightly with blood.

"How did you get hurt?"

Zhe Huo stared as well. It was only after he'd pointed it out that she began to feel the wound smarting a bit. Frowning with consternation, she said, "Maybe I took a careless hit from one of those flying spines just now."

Qinghan's eyes narrowed, his sight turning unbidden to the flowers behind her. A moment's ire flitted past his eyes.

Zhe Huo made to retrieve her hand, but Qinghan maintained his grip on her fingers. He looked into her eyes with an intense, hypnotizing gaze. "Don't move."

And then, she watched as he pulled her hand close, luscious red lips parting as he leaned in, and began to suck on the cut. It felt gentle, ticklish, invigorating on her skin. A hush seemed to fall over the world. It was difficult to define, hard to explain this secret little moment they were sharing together.

When he released her hand, she couldn't be sure if it had really worked, or if she was just imagining that it had, but the pain was gone—and the wound was fading out of sight. It was at once mysterious and enchanting.

As they stepped through the portal, Qinghan rubbed his fingers together, a cold light in his eyes. With a surreptitious little motion, he scratched one finger, so that a tiny droplet of blood appeared on the fingertip. Casually, he flung it behind himself, so that his blood fell upon the petal of one of the flowers.

Zhe Huo led him through to the other side.

The bloodstained flower swiftly withered and blackened away into nothing, producing great gouts of fumes which rode upon the wind, and soon engulfed the entire labyrinth of flowers. In moments, the entirety of that meticulously tended garden had been reduced to a vast swathe of fetid rot.

For the moment, no one noticed what he'd done.

***

Entering into the Valley of Blossoms, they found to nobody's surprise that the villagers and their elder were all busy fussing over that team of demon hunters, introducing themselves as they formed a crowd. No one paid any heed to Zhe Huo, who remained at the periphery, and she couldn't help muttering, "Really, now! It's their master who's famous—there's no need to get so excited over the disciples! Do they actually plan on doing any real work?"

She harrumphed, and then led Qinghan away with her. "Let's go find that wasp demon. Once we've caught it, we'll see whom the village elder thinks is worth his attention!"

"Is it attention you want, Zhe Huo?"

"Um, it's not like that… but everybody wants to be adored by somebody, don't they?"

"I adore you, Zhe Huo."

Zhe Huo paused, and turned to see the boy with his cute little mouth half-open, gazing up at her with unblinking azure eyes overflowing with affection. Feeling a blush instantly rising up to her ears, she made a show of indifferently rubbing one eye with a finger. "Well, I knew that."

A grown woman and a young boy, chatting as they made their way up the valley. Unlike how the other demon hunters were scrambling up and down trying to smoke out the wasp demon, they instead searched for farms that grew spider flowers.