Silence returned to the nook, but it was no longer the electric, screaming silence of an impending kill.
It was the heavy, exhausted silence of a mortal body realizing that the battle was already over, and that the enemy had refused to take the field.
Yan Zhiqiu remained pressed against the base of the glow-stone base, her knees drawn up to her chin. Her small frame shook with an uncontrollable, rhythmic shudder. The fight-or-flight rush that had propelled her across the floor moments earlier was draining out of her veins like water from a punctured bladder, leaving behind an overwhelming, crushing weight of physical weakness.
Her hand, still clutching the jagged stump of shale, felt as heavy as a lead anchor. Her fingers refused to obey her commands. The muscles in her forearm were spasming with sharp, cramp-like pains where the torn tissue had been restitched by Qiao Ming’s linen bandages.
She looked at the man sitting three paces away.
He hadn’t moved. His bare feet remained flat upon the soapstone floor, his hands resting loose upon his knees. He looked less like a warrior or a fighter than an ancient, weathered piece of the room itself. A living statue carved from grey hard speckled rock and amber oilskin, possessing the infinite patience of the bedrock.
