Chapter 13: The Budding Covenant
Dawn's amber fingers had scarcely brushed the horizon when Xu Ling concluded his nocturnal vigil. Having cultivated his qi through the moonlit hours, torrents of primordial energy now coursed through his meridians like spring floods through thawing riverbeds. He rose from his lotus position, limbs unfolding with the supple grace of willow branches swaying in a zephyr.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The assault on his chamber door shattered the morning calm. "Elder Ling!" boomed Xu Long's baritone, vibrating through the aged timber. "The nursery caravans approach!" The hammering ceased abruptly as rustling within answered the summons.
The portal yawned open, revealing Xu Ling's countenance, radiant as mountain snow kissed by first light.
"You greet the morn before the roosters, brother."
"Merely harmonizing body and breath," Xu Ling demurred, fingertips brushing imaginary dust from his hemp sleeves.
Xu Long's eyes narrowed with a conspiratorial gleam. "Truly, the phoenix hides among sparrows!" His calloused palm descended on Xu Ling's shoulder with camaraderie forged in childhood orchards. "Let me walk your path, blood of my blood. My comrade-in-arms secured me a comfortable position tallying rice sacks in the magistrate's storehouse – five thousand coins monthly to shrivel into a human abacus. Better to die standing beneath open skies than live centuries as a bureaucrat's ink-stained ghost."
Xu Ling's gaze deepened like twilight pooling in forest glades. He recognized the restless spirit mirrored in his clansman – the same untamed fire that had driven them to steal persimmons from Old Chen's grove in their ninth summer.
"The road we tread is paved with flint and thorns," he cautioned, though approval warmed his words like winter wine.
Xu Long's laughter rang clear as temple bells. "Hardship? When the northern barbarians breached the Jade Pass, our battalion stood forty days without relief. We drank horse blood and chewed saddle leather until our gums bled." The nonchalant shrug couldn't conceal the shadow crossing his face, fleeting as a hawk's silhouette over wheat fields.
Xu Ling's throat tightened. He saw the unspoken epics in those battle-hardened eyes: the midnight watches, the frozen corpses of messmates, and the slow erosion of hope in a conscript's soul.
"Walk with me, then," he vowed, sealing the pact with clasped forearms, "and we'll till fortune's field together."
As morning matured, the cousins oversaw the sapling distribution. Xu Dahai, his weather-beaten face grave as ancestral tablets, presented the census scroll. "The Viper's brood stirs," the elder murmured, knotty finger tracing vermilion marks beside certain names. "These jackals prowled the granaries yesternight – their hunger bodes ill."
Xu Ling nodded, impressed by the old farmer's perspicacity. By high sun, the village sprawl had transformed into a living tapestry of agrarian industry – furrowed earth swallowing root balls as women sang planting chants older than the Han dynasty.
Xu Long frowned at the burgeoning orchards stretching toward distant foothills. "Brother," he ventured as sparrows quarreled in the scholar trees, "these tender shoots won't fruit before three harvests pass... Should silver reserves dwindle... He hesitated, then plunged onwards: "My betrothed safeguards ten myriad coins in her dowry chest. Let this humble one contribute to our shared destiny."
Xu Ling's response illuminated the courtyard like sudden sunlight through storm clouds—a smile that promised spring's inevitability after winter's longest night.
Revelations in Vermilion and Jade
"Anchor your doubts, Little Dragon." Xu Ling's voice resonated with the quiet authority of temple bells beneath snowfall. "Have I ever charted courses through stormless seas? Serve as my adjutant—eight thousand celestial coins monthly, with jade tokens of merit worth two thousand more."
Xu Long's military-cropped head jerked backward as if struck by an invisible palm. "Elder Brother... This sum exceeds a garrison commander's annual tribute!" His battle-scarred fingers convulsed around an imaginary rifle stock, betraying decades of barracks austerity.
A knowing smile played upon Xu Ling's lips as he realigned the nephrite phoenix at his throat. "The universe rewards those who dare pluck stars from heaven's vault. Distinguish yourself, and I shall personally commission crimson palanquins for your bridal procession."
At the nuptial reference, scarlet fury blossomed across Xu Long's neck like peonies on sacrificial silk. "There exists... a battlefield surgeon. Daughter of the magistrate's archivist." His index finger traced the outline of a bullet-pierced medallion hidden beneath rough-spun cloth.
Xu Ling's pupils contracted. The celestial union quadrant* above his cousin's left brow now resembled cracked celadon—its once harmonious contours fractured by ominous declivities. "Present this lotus blossom ere the next full moon," he commanded, crushing dark morel mushrooms into ebony powder. "The orchards thirst for eighteen moonwells by third-night watch."
When twin dawns had birthed and buried themselves, the newly christened springs wept liquid silver across thirsty loam. At the appointed hour, Xu Long appeared at the apothecary threshold—a conscript-turned-courtier drowning in borrowed brocade. "Elder Brother! The scholastic convocation approaches! Madam Zhang herself implores your presence—she who prophesied your hands would mend the moon's cracks!"
Xu Ling ground cinnamon bark to sacrificial ash. "What care I for the prattle of ink-stained scholars?"
"By the Nine Heavenly Generals!" Xu Long grasped his shoulders with the fervour of drowning men clutching driftwood. "Our mathematics oracle wept salt rivers when you abandoned the imperial exams! Shall we let her heart fracture anew?"
The clinic's bronze wind chimes screamed protest as their sputtering steel steed vomited blackened clouds across twilight's peach-blossom cheeks.
**Bo Rui Mei Palace** rose before them—a monstrosity of gilded cornices and vulgar opulence, its scarlet stairs patrolled by eight serpentine figures sheathed in thigh-revealing damask. "May prosperity rain upon noble patrons," they crooned in practiced unison, painted smiles never reaching kohl-rimmed eyes.
Xu Long's throat convulsed like a toad swallowing fireflies. "Guo Ziyu presides over this gilded brothel? By the ancestors—the lunch-money thief now impersonates a mandarin!"
Elevator mirrors multiplied Xu Ling's smirk into infinity. Within their mercury depths, flickered memories of stolen copper coins exchanged for counterfeit Nike emperors.
"Sweet Guanyin's mercy," Xu Long breathed as they traversed corridors paved with malachite tiles, "these succubi could tempt the Buddha himself to defrock!" His combat boots left sacrilegious scars upon jade-inlaid floors.
Behind lacquered sandalwood doors, a cacophony of drunken poets and clashing wine cups assaulted their senses. Xu Ling froze mid-stride—ambushed by fragrance memories: osmanthus blossoms pressed between forgotten love letters, inkstones kissed by a maiden's midnight tears.
"Do phantom chains bind your feet, Young Master Ling?"
The voice flowed like quicksilver through winter reeds. Xu Long's elbow connected with the ribcage cartilage. "Lin Banhua! The Snow Fox of Class Seven! Did I not vow she'd emerge from her ice palace?"
As they breached the chamber's threshold, a hundred whispered blades unsheathed—admiration and malice intertwined like mating vipers. There stood the herbalist prodigy cloaked in shadow silk, flanked by the decorated soldier desperately smoothing non-existent creases in his ill-gotten finery.
Veils Torn in the Hall of Mirrors
The banquet hall's atmosphere curdled when Xu Ling and Lin Yuqing materialized at its heart.
"By the Nine-Tailed Fox's cunning!" hooted Qi Chao, his wine-stained cravat vibrating with glee. "The Recluse Scholar finally plucked our Celestial Peony?"
Forty-eight pairs of chopsticks froze mid-air. These twin phantoms of academic legend—she who dwelled in frost-kissed towers, he who walked shadowed paths—now stood united where alumni gossip flowed thicker than shark fin soup.
Lin Yuqing's gaze ascended toward Xu Ling's stony profile, adoration radiating brighter than the disintegrating Swarovski constellations above.
"Still masquerading as Confucius' heir?" Yu Zhe's reedy voice slithered from the monitor's right hand. "Even after being cast from the Ivory Tower?"
Golden spoons clattered against bone china. Xu Ling—the once-undisputed heir to Peking University's throne—dishonoured?
Necklaces of eyeballs swung toward the sallow-faced provocateur. Yu Zhe basked in borrowed limelight, his tongue flickering like a serpent's: "My maternal aunt's concubine's wet nurse served tea at Xu's institution. Shall I unveil our prodigy's disgrace?"
He let the silence ferment, relishing forty held breaths.
"What mortal sin toppled our demigod?"
Xu Ling's fingernails carved crescent wounds into palms. Lin Yuqing's pearl earrings shivered.
"Voyeur!" Yu Zhe spat. "Caught ogling nude muses in the bathhouse! Expelled with scarlet letters nailed to the academy gates!"
The accusation exploded like firecrackers in a gunpowder vault.
"Scholar's robes cloaking satyr's heart!"
"Preposterous! He spurned even the chancellor's daughter!"
"Yet truth wears many masks..."
Xu Long's tactical boots shook through the hush. "Spin another lie, viper, and I'll fashion your entrails into apology banners!"
Yu Zhe's chair legs screeched retreat across onyx tiles. "T-truth needs no weaver's loom!"
The cannonade of Xu Long's open-handed strike reverberated through suspended time—Yu Zhe's skull cracking marble, splintered mahogany mimicking shattered ancestral tablets.
"Brother Long! We're cultured gentlemen here!" The monitor grappled with Xu Long's quaking biceps.
"Cultured?" Xu Long's grin mirrored tiger bones bleaching in wastelands. "Had you leashed this rabid dog sooner, Monitor, his jaw might yet remain hinged."
Whispers of Redemption
Xu Long's declaration hung like a blade, pivoting every skeptical gaze toward the class monitor.
Trapped beneath the weight of collective scrutiny, the Monitor's weathered face flushed crimson, his dignity crumbling like parchment in flame. "I... presumed Yu Zhe's words were mere jests," he faltered, the feeble justification dissolving into the charged air.
A ripple of silent derision passed through the assembly before eyes retreated, their judgment rendered without utterance.
"Xiao Long—retreat." Xu Ling's measured command sliced through the tension, his posture regal amidst the chaos. The sole unruffled figure at the banquet table extended an imperious hand toward his tempestuous sibling. "This table was laid for sustenance, not spectacle. Let grievances simmer until after the feast."
The mountain of muscle that was Xu Long dipped his head in deference, though his knuckles whitened as he leveled a final glacial stare at Yu Zhe. The latter cowered on his chair, a pitiful creature scrambling from floor to dignity. The classmates exchanged covert glances—this colossus bore no resemblance to the slight boy they'd once tormented. Time had forged Xu Long into a shield and weapon for Xu Ling, his loyalty an electrified fence none dared breach.
"Yu Zhe." A mellifluous voice, soft yet resonant, bloomed in the stillness. Lin Yuqing rose like moonlight incarnate, her porcelain features illuminated by the chandelier's glow. "Must you mock the scars Xu Ling earned defending me? We shared classrooms—does that warrant such venom?"
Twenty heads swiveled in unison, the revelation hanging crystalline. Here was their academic goddess unveiling forbidden history, gliding toward Xu Ling with steps that whispered of unspoken chronicles.
"Forgive me," she murmured, her timbre weaving through the clink of silverware. "You were always the blade-breaker, the oath-keeper. My debt transcends words."
Though elliptical, her confession wrought alchemy upon the room. Sneers softened into reluctant reverence—what was a delinquent's taunt against the testimony of their paragon?
The class monitor's pen cracked under his grip, jealousy curdling his features. Lin Yuqing tilted her head, dawn-lit confusion marring her brow. "Monitor, surely you recall how Xu Ling—"
"Enough."
Xu Ling's chair shrieked against marble as he surged upward, a storm contained within tailored sleeves. His profile, carved from winter moonlight, turned from her. "Let dead embers lie. Some blindness merits its shroud."
Tears jeweled Lin Yuqing's lashes as she deciphered the subtext—the rigid set of his jaw, the violent poetry of veins beneath his death grip on the wineglass. Here stood not rejection, but armor forged through fire.
A laugh, fragile as spun sugar, escaped her. "Fret not, Xu Ling," she vowed, each syllable a hammer stroke. "My lifetime shall be your ledger. Every breath—an installment."
She withdrew, leaving her breath throbbing in the perfume-laced air. Before silence could congeal, Qi Chao vaulted up, brandishing his goblet like a jester's scepter. "Mourning at a reunion? Heresy! Let nectar drown your solemnity!"
Glasses collided in forced merriment as conversations fractured into competitive recitals—corporate conquests, entrepreneurial ventures, the unspoken calculus of post-academic worth. Yet eyes kept straying to the frozen prince and his weeping muse, hungry for subtext.
The fragile equilibrium was shattered with the door's violent recoil. There loomed their erstwhile pedagogue—a walrus of a man swimming in a cheap suit, his leer oilier than the duck's grease glaze. "Apologies, fledglings! Your mentor's delayed audience begins!"
The Unseen Scars
When their erstwhile homeroom teacher materialized in the doorway, a wave of revulsion swept through the assembled alumni. Nevertheless, they rose in perfunctory deference to the woman who'd once governed their adolescent years, courtesy veiling their contempt.
"Marvellous ascension, our class president! How prescient I was to recognize your promise when lesser pedagogues doubted," the teacher crooned, descending upon Yu Zhe like a carrion bird spotting weakness. Her saccharine smile curdled as she appraised his rumpled attire, talon-like nails digging into his shoulder.
Oblivious to the venomous scrutiny at his back, Yu Zhe blinked owlishly until the teacher's theatrical cough shattered his reverie.
"Certain specimens never acquire basic decorum during formative years," she declaimed, her voice dripping vitriolic concern. "Who could anticipate such social atrophy persisting into adulthood?"
The barb pierced Yu Zhe's fogged consciousness. With furtive glances toward Xu Long—still engrossed in his drink—he shuffled to peripheral seating like a chastened spectre.
The teacher commandeered the presidential dais, her unctuous praises cascading over the class monitor. Behind her rigid coiffure, a silent symphony of raised eyebrows and suppressed sneers played out—a familiar dance from their schooldays, now amplified by the bitter wine of adulthood.
"Your magnanimity overwhelms, Madam Instructor," the monitor parried with practiced humility. "My modest achievements pale before Xu Ling's erstwhile brilliance." The conversational gambit hung in the air, razor-edged.
The seasoned educator pounced like a raptor sighting wounded prey. "Ah, our three-time valedictorian! Do regale us with your current triumphs—last we met, you were Jiangnan Medical University's golden protégé."
A glacial silence descended. All present recognized the impending evisceration—this pedagogical harpy's signature blend of academic sadism and class prejudice.
From the shadows, Sun Jun's reedy voice pierced the tension: "Expulsion terminated that fairytale, Teacher Liu!"
The revelation detonated like shrapnel. "Expulsion?" The teacher's contralto soared to shrill triumph. "What execrable transgression warranted such censure?"
"Peeping Tom antics in the dormitory baths!" Sun Jun crowed, savouring each syllable. "The tribunal's verdict—"
"Preposterous slander!" Lin Yuhan's contralto cracked like a duelling pistol. "Shall we consult your father regarding this calumny?"
Sun Jun blanched, the ghost of paternal discipline coiled in his marrow. Undeterred, the teacher pressed her advantage, scenting opportunity to ingratiate herself with the monitor's new paramour, scion of the Education Directorate.
"Truth fears no inquisition," she purred with honeyed malice. "Surely our disgraced scholar can illuminate this... academic divergence?"
Xu Long's chair screeched in protest as he surged forward, only to be arrested by his brother's mercury-cool grasp.
"Visionary discernment eludes Jiangnan's administrators," Xu Ling countered, his diction precise as a neurosurgeon's scalpel. "I defer to their testimony—should curiosity outweigh decorum, Madam Instructor?"
Calculus of Truth
Xu Ling's terse riposte hovered like quicksilver in the charged atmosphere, parrying the pedagogue's malice with lethal precision. Female peers suppressed tremulous sighs, unexpectedly enthralled by his stoic magnetism—volcanic resolve veiled beneath arctic detachment.
"Verbose prevarication!" The instructor hissed, porcelain teacup fracturing under her grip. "Your ethical erosion eclipses even your academic disgrace."
Xu Long's imprisoned fist quivered against damask linen, sinews straining against his brother's liquid-cool restraint. Ghosts of adolescent torment resurged—this harpy's relentless pecking at his insecurities, thwarted only by Xu Ling's impervious academic armour.
*Bide,* Xu Ling's genetic Morse code pulsed. *Let venom consume its master.
A subcutaneous vibration:
**[Nana: Chrysanthemum Suite primed. Lens apostles are positioned. Let the purgation commence.
While the harridan spewed vitriol, Xu Ling's gaze conducted spectral autopsies on time-warped countenances. His sternum constricted at Ms Zhao's spectral absence—until the class president's poisoned honey dripped through Peking duck vapours:
"Madam Liu, does Ms Zhao's... nocturnal pedagogy explain her current maternal tribulations?"
The instructor's vermilion-smeared lips twisted. "Certain educators confuse dormitories with boudoirs. Her spouse merely formalized that curriculum."
The detonation of scandalized breaths stilled Xu Ling's fingers—his geomantic sight tracing obsidian tendrils through the instructor's matrimonial pressure points. A susurration in Xu Long's auricle ignited conspiratorial fire.
"Bovine excrement!" Xu Long's chair shrieked metallic dissent. "We recall your graduation tango with Principal Wang! How fares your matrimonial audit?"
The instructor's cosmetic façade fissured. Twin revelations detonated—her fiscal malfeasance tribunal suppressed through the principal's carnal concessions, and Ms Zhao's damning testimony buried beneath bureaucratic complicity.
As toxic silence congealed, the oaken portal sighed its revelation.
Ms Zhao materialized in a nimbus of fluorescent light, her threadbare cardigan outdazzling Baccarat crystal. A synaptic rush of reverence electrified the room—former pupils metamorphosing into awestruck neophytes before the mentor who'd traded sleep to illuminate transcendental numbers for janitors' progeny.
"Forgive the intrusion," she murmured, jade-bracelet wrists anchoring squirming twins. Her kohl-rimmed eyes speared the instructor. "The audit manifests you demanded, Madam Liu. Complete with notarized bank trails from our... pedagogic renaissance year."
Xu Ling's mobile thrummed—livestream metrics cascading as six faux waiters materialized, their hidden lenses transmuting the banquet into a grand inquisition. Peking duck carcasses became forensic exhibits, with oolong puddles crystallizing into haematite evidence tags.
Algebraic Kindness
Ms Zhao hovered at the doorway, a fugitive blush staining her gaunt cheeks. Behind her, celestial twins—a boy and a girl carved from moonstone and coral—peered through the banquet hall's chiaroscuro lighting.
"My apologies," she demurred, shepherding the children forward like startled fawns. "Their father's night shifts leave me no alternative."
The girl, bold as a magpie at dawn, trilled, "Greetings, elder siblings!" Her brother's murmured echo clung to the air like morning mist. A dozen hands reached instinctively—female classmates metamorphosing into protective nymphs, their manicured fingers brushing away imagined dangers.
Xu Ling relinquished his seat with a silent ceremony, his clinical gaze cataloguing the frayed hem of Ms Zhao's overwashed blouse. Across the table, the homeroom teacher's complexion mottled like spoiled milk, his earlier grand entrance now eclipsed by this proletarian Madonna's arrival.
"Educators scavenging meals with progeny in train?" The teacher's sneer curled around the twins like poison ivy. "How admirably... frugal, Liu Jing."
Ms Zhao stiffened, her hands fluttering toward her children's ears. Xu Ling's voice cut through the thickening malice:
"Fascinating calculus, Madam Liu—where hospitality equals charity minus dignity." His index finger traced phantom equations in spilled tea. "Shall we graph your compassion coefficient?"
Guffaws erupted. "Even paupers tip better than your empathy!" someone crowed. The twins giggled at the unfamiliar wordplay, their laughter crystallizing the air.
A server materialized bearing alabaster fruit—globular winter jujubes gleaming like forbidden knowledge. "With the proprietor's compliments."
"Laughable largesse!" The teacher crushed a jujube beneath his signet ring, carmine pulp staining the linen. "This establishment peddles peasant fare as..."
His diatribe drowned beneath the twins' delighted shrieks. They'd discovered the smashed fruit's resemblance to a drunken firefly, their innocence refracting the teacher's spite into harmless prismatic fragments. Xu Ling intercepted Ms Zhao's exhausted gratitude—a silent theorem waiting to be proven.
The Dendrology of Dominance
Chen Chaodi, the heiress whose wrists jingled with generational wealth, plucked a winter jujube with jewelled fingers. The fruit's nectar ignited synaptic fireworks behind her eyelids. "Ambrosia incarnate!" she breathed, already violating social decorum with a second theft. "Father's lobbyists failed to procure these at Beijing's fruit auctions!"
The porcelain platter transformed into a Darwinian arena. Homeroom Teacher Li's claw-like hand petrified above the empty dish, his greed fossilised mid-gesture—a taxidermied monument to missed opportunity.
"Each orb concentrates twelve-fold the USDA's daily vitamin quota," the server proclaimed, unfurling laboratory scrolls stamped with ceremonial wax. "Harvested under lunar auspices at our proprietor's private grove."
The dossier alighted before Teacher Li with forensic intentionality. His ocular muscles spasmed, deciphering the biochemical hieroglyphs—selenium concentrations suggesting alchemical transmutation, carotenoid levels defying photosynthesis. A carotid artery pulsed Morse code regret.
"Eight hundred RMB per kilogram at Tian Tian Xian," the server murmured, observing pupils metamorphose into human Geiger counters. Their radiation detectors bypassed Xu Ling's faded cotton shirt, triangulating instead on Xu Long's parade-ground shoulders.
Only the server noted Xu Ling's index finger tracing Fibonacci spirals in tea-stain residue. Her employer's maxim reverberated: *"That village physician tastes soil composition through persimmons."
"Paltry portions!" Teacher Li's adenoidal whine pierced the citrus-scented tension. "Beggars' rations for—"
"Microclimatically cultivated," the server interjected with orchidaceous poise. "Cryovacuumed during the solar eclipse's totality."
Chen's fourth jujube punctuated the air like a papal bull. "Even Switzerland's fruit sommeliers lack access!" Her lament carried the gravitas of dethroned royalty.
Xu Ling's smile sharpened—a scalpel catching theatre lights. His phone illuminated with Nana's communiqué:
Nana: Geological survey confirms selenium-rich strata beneath your clinic. The orchard war commences.
As the server retreated through servants' passages, her peripheral vision registered Xu Ling's imperceptible chin tilt—a shogun authorizing siege engines. Behind stainless-steel doors, sous-chefs in hazmat suits cryogenically preserve jujube pits, each seed capsule containing futures yet to germinate.
The Physiognomy of Destiny
The homeroom instructor's jowls flushed crimson beneath the classroom's collective scrutiny—a deposed sovereign before his erstwhile vassals. His knuckles blanched against lacquered mahogany, the spectral aroma of Tian Tian Xian's unattainable winter jujubes taunting his senses like a court jester's mockery.
Class President Li interposed with vulpine diplomacy, his timbre dripping saccharine artifice: "Our profoundest gratitude to Boreal Opulence's proprietress! Such _discriminating_ munificence!" The honorific dangled like a jewelled lure, ensnaring gasps of veneration from female peers. To cultivate acquaintance with the county's sole magnate—a matriarch whose boardroom stratagems eclipsed her Hermès silks—constituted social necromancy beyond mortal aspiration.
Amid covetous whispers, Ms Liu's progeny dissected Peking duck with forensic exactitude. Xu Ling's geomantic scrutiny anatomized their visages: the boy's mandible sculpted by celestial cartography, a future mandarin's bone structure; the girl's auricles translucent as rice parchment, her philtrum bisected by a thanatotic fissure. A cadaverous miasma constricted her trachea like a serpentine omen.
"Intriguing," Xu Ling exhaled, tea leaves spiralling into esoteric trigrams. Ms Liu's judicial lifeline now diverged toward carceral shadows—a verdict unbound by these bourgeois theatrics. His fingertip traced the girl's mortuary pallor mirrored in sterling cutlery, seeking cosmic interference coordinates.
The oaken portal exhaled its revelation.
Qu Xiao manifested within a nimbus of jasmine attar, her onyx tresses cascading in defiance of boardroom austerity. Twenty-three pairs of irises dilated—the prefecture's arbitrage Aphrodite inhaling their exhalations. Yet Xu Ling's focus remained fettered to the girl's quivering chopsticks, now inscribing duck-blood prophecies upon damask.
"Lingzi".
The magnate's contralto resonance vibrated against Xu Ling's tympanum, her décolletage eclipsing his ocular periphery. He recoiled from a branding iron, the oolong cascading across Ms Liu's nascent incarceration chart in Rorschach portents.
Behind Qu Xiao's carmine smirk, the server concealed a jade talisman—its surface etched with Xu Ling's natal hexagrams. The symposium's true battleground unveiled itself: not alumnus rivalry, but a Xuanmen duel waged through pomological symbology and infantile oracles.
The Chiaroscuro of Influence
Qu Xiao's countenance defied temporal ravages—a visage where collagen filaments pirouetted in eternal renewal. "Ingrate," she chastised, her pout a curated weapon eclipsing peers' gauche charms. "Have courtesies corroded in your rustic veins?"
Xu Ling riposted with disarming nonchalance. "A humble class reunion, Xiao-jie. Permit me to procure Tian Tian Xian's ambrosial dates in penance—twin hampers, should it appease."
Her gaze frosted—lunar luminescence dimmed by glacial disillusion. So this agrarian alchemist was Yu Mengna's fêted prodigy? "Paltry oblation," she derided, though the assembly's synchronized gasp at their rapport resonated like sanctus bells.
Class Monitor Li's silverware shrieked against china—a sonata of venom. Adjacent, Homeroom Teacher Liu's trachea convulsed with repressed concupiscence—the prefecture's mercantile Circe, whose glossed periodical spreads had fuelled his twilight reveries, now condescending to orbit this pastoral mountebank.
"Apotheosis incarnate," Xu Long breathed, Qu Xiao's jasmine wake commandeering his olfactory neurones. "Protagonist-grade retort."
The magnate's exit morphed into a choreographed spectacle—her silhouette gilded into Hagia Sophia mosaics. Teacher Liu lunged, sebum cascading down his jowled topography. "Doyenne Qu! I sculpted this plebeian—"
"Impediment". Her stiletto's recession crystallized arctic sculptures from ether.
Xu Ling deciphered the dossier concealed beneath his celadon teacup—pedological analyses glossed in Qu Xiao's vermilion marginalia. Twin foul limbs manifested on the twins' plates as his preceptor rasped, "Decipher this affiliation!"
"Cryptic cuneiform". Xu Ling's chopsticks pronounced a verdict. Lin Yuqing's peripheral scrutiny mapped social algorithms—an academic exile now trading volleys with commerce's sovereign.
Within the kitchen's cryogenic sanctum, culinary scribes chronicled each microexpression. Qu Xiao's contralto slithered through subcutaneous transceivers: "Unleash the selenium harvest. Let us assay our bucolic oracle's perspicacity."
The Algebra of Authority
Xu Ling sat enshrined in tectonic composure, his silence a cipher that muted the banquet's clamour. Classmates' stares calcified around him—this sphinx who consorted with magnates yet wore power like a threadbare cloak. While mediocrity preened, he dissected braised beef with hierophantic focus, each gesture a calibrated equation.
Zhang Mengjuan's cheeks burned peony-red. "Lingzi, this libation honours your ascent!" Her husband's vegetable empire teetered on ruin; three nestlings' hunger justified this humiliation. Xu Ling's nod held imperial brevity as he drained his chalice—a sovereign accepting tribute.
The supplicants descended—insurance hawkers, bankrupt dreamers, ink-stained bureaucrats—their glasses clinking in ethanol homage. The Class Monitor's knuckles blanched around his Moutai flask. "To shared histories," he intoned, larynx bobbing like a hooked fish.
Xu Ling set down his ivory chopsticks. The beef's lacquered glaze demanded exegetic contemplation.
"Insolent whelp!" The pedagogue brandished a soy-stained napkin sceptre. "You dare—"
Xu Long's palm detonated against teak. "Gourd-skulled spectre," he purred, resurrecting the teacher's most rancid moniker. "Since when do we genuflect to drinking rites?" The barb struck true—a bald pate gleaming like a monk's alms bowl, virility tonics fermenting beneath his sink.
"S-slander!" The denial clattered like cracked temple bells. "My vigor rivals—"
"—A blight-riddled persimmon?" Xu Long's blade honed keener. Whispers metastasized—wives neglected, midnight trysts in faculty quarters.
Amid the theatre, Xu Ling unfurled his dossier—selenium-rich soil chromatograms, necropsies of grafted jujube saplings, a sepia snapshot of Teacher Liu's twins grinning where arsenic-laced apricots once bloomed. The banquet table transformed into an altar of reckoning, braised beef grease congealing into evidence tags.
The Ledger of Sins
Xu Long gaped at the dossier materializing from Xu Ling's lap. "What sorcery is this?"
"Distribute these," Xu Ling instructed, "sparing the twins and our beloved pedagogue."
Gasps detonated like firecrackers as pages circulated.
"Sweet mother of—"
"That courtyard...our old school quadrangle!"
"That hunchbacked figure—isn't that..."
Twenty-three pairs of eyes swiveled toward the homeroom teacher, their collective glare hotter than Sichuan peppercorns. Liu Tanwu snatched Yu Zhe's copy, his jowls quivering as photographic evidence cascaded—embezzled class funds, coerced "parental donations," a timestamped image of him pocketing a migrant worker's red envelope behind the gymnasium.
The twins gnawed on lamb ribs obliviously as their mother's forensic gaze dissected the ledger. "Forty-three thousand yuan extorted from Zhao Min's widow," Liu Jing hissed, her fingers crushing the page. "That girl sold blood plasma for her textbooks!"
"Madam Liu—" The teacher's wheedling whisper carried decades of threats.
"Rot in litigation," she spat, maternal fury crystallizing into prosecutorial steel.
Xu Ling observed the tableau—the groveling pedagogue, the righteous mathematician, the oblivious children greasing their fingers with duck fat—as dusk painted the banquet hall in judgmental crimson.
"You've gifted us more than justice," Liu Jing murmured at departure, twins drowsing against her shoulders. "You've restored pedagogical honor."
Outside, Qu Xiao's surveillance van hummed. Her lacquered nail tapped thermal imaging displays—the teacher fleeing toward the county disciplinary bureau, the dossier's digital shadow already blooming across provincial education servers.
The Calculus of Retribution
Liu Jing chuckled despite herself. "I'll survive this balding jackass." Her fingers brushed the dossier's edge. "Visit campus sometime—the cafeteria's braised pork rivals five-star fare."
The homeroom teacher sidled up as she departed, his smile oilier than duck-fat glaze. "A new leaf, I swear!" he groveled. "Model educator, reformed character—"
Xu Ling's venomous glare severed the plea. "Breathe near Liu Jing again, and I'll bury you beneath the school's septic tank."
Alone in the corridor, the Class Monitor materialized like a resentful specter. "Why target me?" His theatrical sigh fogged the emergency exit sign.
"Your pantomime grows tedious," Xu Ling drawled. "That 'stolen scholarship' farce in senior year—did you truly believe I'd forgotten?"
Color drained from the Monitor's face. "I loved Yūqíng first!" His performative anguish crumpled as the door creaked—Lín Yǔqíng stood framed in amber light, tremulous fingers pressed to quivering lips.
"Destiny's ledger marks her as husband-repelling," Xu Ling murmured, watching comprehension dawn in the Monitor's eyes. "Ancient wisdom even your Harvard Extension courses can't decode."
Back in the banquet hall, Lín Yǔqíng's gaze traced Xu Ling's profile—the faint smile as he texted Qu Xiao, the unconscious tilt of his head toward the kitchen's jasmine-scented drafts. Her resolve hardened; truth's confession could no longer wait.
As she rose, the server reentered bearing winter jujubes glazed in liquid nitrogen fog—Qu Xiao's culinary gambit and surveillance prelude rolled into one. The twins' laughter echoed from the lobby, their mother's footsteps already ascending the courthouse steps.
The Pomological Gambit
"Mr Xu, our proprietor, requests your presence." The server's deferential bow sliced through the tension.
Lin Yǔqíng froze mid-stride as Xu Ling strode past, his indifference colder than liquid nitrogen.
"He's ascended beyond our orbit," the Class Monitor simpered, fingertips grazing her sleeve. "Why chase phantoms?"
She shook him off with a viper's glare. "Your Education Bureau Director's daughter clings to you like kudzu—yet you dare preach detachment?"
Xu Long's melon seeds were scattered, forgotten. *Lingzi had a romantic past with the ice queen?* The revelation rewrote his mental archives.
In the corridor, the monitor's protestations collided with a freight handler's cart. Tian Tian Xian Winter Jujubes cascaded—plump, dewy, each orb a smuggled treasure.
"Impossible..." The Monitor crushed one against his molars, the burst of sweetness confirming authenticity. Two full crates—enough to ransom a county magistrate's favour—sat casually discarded.
Lin Yǔqíng's lacquered nail traced a jujube's waxy skin. "What alchemy binds you to Yu Mengna's empire?" She whispered, the fruit's coldness seeping into her palm.
Upstairs, Qu Xiao's office exhaled sandalwood and power. She reclined like a Qing dynasty concubine modernized for corporate warfare, her silk blouse unbuttoned to strategic precision.
"Your payment, Mr Xu." Her vermilion smile indicated neither the crates nor the surveillance footage blinking on her desk. "Shall we discuss the *unlisted* selenium levels in your village's soil?"
Outside, the twins' laughter spiralled upward with their mother's lawsuit filing. The monitor vomited jujube pulp into an ornamental vase, his engagement prospects dissolving like sugar in tea.
The Diagnosis of Frozen Desires
Qu Xiao circled Xu Ling with the predatory grace of a snow leopard evaluating prey, her stiletto heels striking the marble floor in metronomic precision. The cloying jasmine perfume from her earlier negotiations now clashed with the clinic's sterile aroma of isopropyl alcohol.
"Yu Xuan claims you possess miraculous talents," she drawled, extending a wrist where a Cartier bracelet barely concealed three parallel scars. "Prove your worth."
Xu Ling's fingertips descended upon her radial artery—three contact points mapping the heart-liver-kidney meridians. Beneath her pulse's caged lightning, he detected the glacial stillness of chemically preserved femininity.
"You've never surrendered to passion's current," he declared, observing the telltale flutter beneath her pearl-strung throat.
Her laughter crystallized midair. "Virginity at forty-two? Absurd theatrics!" Yet her pupils contracted like camera apertures caught in sudden glare.
The truth unfolded through diagnostic strata:
1. **Neurochemical Winter** - Half a decade of benzodiazepine sedation had rewired her dopamine pathways, rendering caresses as stimulating as stock indices.
2. **Scar Cartography** - Childhood welts beneath her Gucci blouse formed a constellation of abandonment.
3. **Boardroom Exoskeleton** - Corporate armor had ossified into physiological barricades, her adrenal glands perennially primed for hostile takeovers.
"Your vaunted equanimity is endocrine sabotage," Xu Ling countered, noting the deepening philtrum groove—a stigmata of chronic cortisol depletion. "The pills didn't heal. They entombed you at absolute zero."
When assistant Lin Yutong materialized with oolong tea, Qu Xiao's pulse stabilized into the arrhythmia of quarterly earnings calls. Only the tremor in her ringless left finger betrayed vulnerability.
"Prescribe your panacea," she commanded, her _Harvard Business Review_ cadence fracturing into primal rasp. "But should this leak to Caixin..."
Xu Ling's remedies blazed brighter than pharmaceuticals:
- **Lunar Needles** - SP6 acupressure synchronized with waning moons to thaw permafrosted _jing_
- **Silk Rebirth** - Tactile reconditioning via mulberry cocoon massage
- **Digital Exodus** - 72-hour sensory deprivation in bamboo resonance chambers
As midnight's ink bled across the skyline, Qu Xiao confronted her obsidian reflection—stripped of Patek Philippe and power suits, a woman glimpsing the cryogenic vault her ice palace had become.
The Alchemy of Trust
"Unhappy? What of it?" Qu Xiao retorted, her lacquered nails drumming the mahogany desk. "My life flows unburdened by sentiment."
No one had ever pierced her armor; no one ever would. She, Qu Xiao, required no mortal's comprehension.
Xu Ling observed her defensive posture. "Should Madam Qu permit, I shall attend daily to recalibrate your meridians."
Her scoff echoed through the office. "Name your price, physician. Cure me, and I'll grant any boon."
*How little she knows,* Xu Ling mused, *that this "boon" will one day hollow her coffers.*
"Treatment necessitates disrobing for acupuncture," he stated, bracing for outrage.
"Out!" Her command rang sharp as a scalpel. Secretary Yu Tong materialized, poised to eject him.
Xu Ling scribbled a prescription on discarded letterhead. "Decoct these herbs thrice daily. Palliative, not curative—contact me when ready to proceed properly."
Qu Xiao stared at the retreating figure. "Charlatan or genius?" she murmured, photographing the script for her aged physician.
The call came within minutes. "Madam! This formula—sheer genius! The *Taxillus chinensis* counteracts liver fire, while *Hedyotis diffusa*..." The Medical Sage of Yunshan County trembled with scholarly arousal. "Who crafted this alchemy?"
"A disgraced dropout," Qu Xiao replied, tracing Xu Ling's calligraphy—each stroke a battlefield of controlled force.
"Merely a stopgap," the sage warned after contemplation. "The architect mentioned deeper treatments?"
Qu Xiao's gaze drifted to her reflection in the bulletproof glass. "He demands...intimacy."
"Ah." The sage's chuckle crackled. "The finest physicians straddle the sacred and profane. Consult him, Madam. This hand guides destiny's pulse."
Night draped the city as Qu Xiao decocted her first dose. The bitter tang of *Radix Bupleuri* coated her tongue, its warmth spreading like liquid truth. She texted Xu Ling—a single emoji: 🧘♀️.
In his village clinic, Xu Ling smiled. The chessboard shifted; pawns became queens.
To be continuous…