Cutting Through the Fog

Blurb 1: [All it takes to make the aloof male lead lose his composure is a single “You smell so good”]

A teenage swordsman dead for sixteen years * A slightly autistic, highly intelligent paper-cutting artisan

With just a few words, Ji Chen cut out a paper portrait of the greatest swordsman in the martial world, who had met an untimely death sixteen years ago. From then on, she could smell a faint, fleeting scent of pine.

She became the only person in the world who knew what the young swordsman looked like, which meant Li Huaiping could do nothing but stay by her side.

Ji Chen was born with exceptionally keen senses. She could tell how the male lead was feeling by the scent he gave off.

She discovered that whenever the aloof young man fell silent in anger, the scent of pine around him grew stronger.

Apparently, she was the only one who could notice.

The daily life of an aloof assassin and an autistic girl: her blunt honesty turns into a roundabout kind of scheming.

“You smell so good,” Ji Chen said frankly.

Li Huaiping, wearing a stern expression as he fumed: “...Could you stay a little farther away from me?”

Ji Chen took a tiny step back. “Oh.”

“Is this far enough?”

Li Huaiping: “...”

Blurb 2: [Highly intelligent version: I can definitely find the hole where you were buried]

The greatest swordsman in the martial world was buried on a pine-covered mountain.

When the wind rose, spring mist billowed, and the sea of trees howled.

Li Huaiping was no paragon of loyalty or filial piety. In the storytellers' tales, he was a villain who had betrayed his ancestors, murdered his master, and wiped out an entire family. They said that after he died, his bones would be ground to dust. So when he died, the mask he had worn his entire life was nailed to his face.

In his hometown, the elders said that anyone who died far from home would never return if no one in the world remembered what they looked like.

No one had ever known the face of the famed swordsman who wielded his blade and plucked flowers.

Until one early spring, nine years later, when a paper-cutting artisan recreated his image from other people's descriptions.

In everyone's eyes, Ji Chen had lived a strange, solitary life.

She was cold toward others, yet exceptionally gifted.

The first time Li Huaiping saw Ji Chen, she was holding his paper portrait between her fingertips.

He had never met her, and he did not believe anyone could still remember him.

Later, she crossed countless mountains and rivers, carrying a hoe as she searched the vast pine forest for the tree beneath which he was buried. Then she turned and told him, “See? I never get it wrong.”

Note: Definitely a happy ending!

Theme: Even buried in the mire, keep growing with resilience