Chu Ge really was "wrapping" her up.
On a normal day Qiu Wuji looked close to one hundred seventy centimeters, and Chu Ge was just over one eighty—a gap of a dozen-odd centimeters, nothing unusual at all. Walking side by side, they looked like a fine match.
But the moment she curled up a little and hid in his arms, she was like a fledgling shielded beneath a hawk's spread wings, wrapped up on every side with not a single gap left open.
Chu Ge had no other tools; all he knew were the movement technique and the Golden Bell Shield, so his instinctive defense could only be his own body. It had been much the same when he shielded Zhang Qiren, actually—except he hadn't put an arm around him.
Qiu Wuji had long since stopped noticing that now. What she remembered instead was the time they'd been shoved by the crowd at the movie theater, and he had shielded her like this too, and then said something so bluntly, hopelessly straight-male that it made you want to hit him.
This time it went a step further: one arm locked tight around her, his body bent slightly to cover her beneath him, wrapped up airtight, as if afraid the ambusher might try some other angle and let her take the slightest hurt.
That feeling of safety was like being tucked inside a warm home while a storm raged outside.