"You," he said, with quiet, genuine feeling, "are extraordinary."
Then he moved.
The first thrust drew a sound from Lixue that she would later refuse to think about, loud and unguarded and entirely beyond her control, torn from somewhere beneath composure and pride and every carefully constructed wall she had ever built. The sword intent surged with the motion, the resonance amplified by movement, and she felt it, every ridge of him, every point of contact, filtered through the living lattice of her own soul-energy and returned to her as something that was almost too much to contain.
"Ahhh....Shen Yu—"
He groaned. Low and involuntary, the sound resonating deep in his chest, and hearing that, hearing him stripped of control by something she had done, sent Lixue's cultivation base spinning into a higher gear entirely.
