Chapter 14: Palimpsest of Youth
Xu Ling wandered the county's winding lanes instead of returning to the village, drawn by an invisible thread of nostalgia to Yunshan Second High's wrought-iron gates. Amber light spilled from classroom windows, carrying fragments of recitations—Li Bai's verses tangled with Euclidean axioms.
The gatekeeper exhaled a smoke ring that haloed the security lamp. "Aren't you that whiz kid from the '18 class? The geometry prodigy—can't forget faces that solve theorems in their sleep." His nicotine-stained finger tapped the visitor log. "Sign here, lad. Headmaster's new protocol."
Renovated buildings wore fresh concrete like ill-fitting suits. Xu Ling traced the phoenix tree corridor—branches now interlaced where teenage sweethearts once carved initials—to Class 9-4.
"Xu Ling?" Ms. Liu nearly fumbled her compass set. "You've grown into your bones at last." Her gaze softened at his hollowed cheeks. "Care to audit tonight's lesson on parabolic trajectories?"
He folded into the rearmost desk, knees protesting the child-sized space. The desktop's varnish preserved his adolescent scrawl: Lin Yuqing etched it during final exams with a protractor's needle. The desk remained, its lacquered surface preserving her name like a fossil in shale—Lin Yuqing—while its namesake had dissolved into the mist of estrangement.
Ms. Liu's chalk danced across three blackboards. "Must I engrave the quadratic formula into your cerebellums?" Her reprimands ricocheted off trigonometry posters yellowed by seasons.
When dismissal bells shattered the algebra trance, Xu Ling lingered amidst empty desks. Moonlight through wire-grid windows checkered the relic of his longing.
"The twins nap in the staff room," Ms. Liu offered, jangling bicycle keys. "Our sofa converts to a scholar's cot."
They navigated sodium-vapour-lit streets, the younger twin's head lolling against Xu Ling's shoulder. Her brother squinted up at this stranger carrying his sister.
"Lingzi-gege once derived prime number patterns from canteen bun counts," Ms. Liu whispered.
"Like Gauss?"
"Gauss required quill pens." Xu Ling adjusted his sleeping burden. "I used cafeteria napkins."
Her electric moped coughed past the boarded-up internet café where Xu Ling once debugged classmates' code for steamed bun bribes, beyond the canal where Lin Yuqing first mocked his calloused farmer's hands.
In her apartment, Xu Ling traced the twins' arithmetic homework, every "√" accompanied by Ms. Liu's sunflower doodles, mirroring those that once bloomed in his exam margins.
Dawn found him recarving Lin Yuqing into the kitchen windowsill with a fruit knife's surgical edge. Let future tenants puzzle over this palimpsest of memory—the adolescent's jagged yearning overwritten by an adult's clinical strokes.
The Alchemy of Domestic Tensions
Ten minutes later, the electric moped sputtered to a stop beneath Ms Liu's apartment block. The twin brother performed his bedtime ablutions with cadet precision before vanishing into bunk-bed shadows, leaving Xu Ling marooned in a living room steeped in bergamot air freshener and pedagogical solitude.
"Bathe first," Ms Liu urged, thrusting forth pyjamas dangling their retail tags like surrender flags. Her earlobes flushed rhubarb-pink—two lunar cycles since her divorce decree, two months since testosterone had breached these feminine sanctums.
The bathroom's humidity clung to revelations: a wicker hamper overflowed with chalk-dusted cardigans until a lace-edged chemise surfaced like Aphrodite's shroud, its pink SpongeBob SquarePants appliqué winking subversion.
*Rap-rap-rap.
Xu Ling emerged, spiritual energy compressing his blush into sedimentary layers. Ms Liu bulldozed past, bundling her intimate insurrection into terrycloth obscurity.
"The sleepwear becomes you," she managed, retreating toward wok-song symphonies. The fib hung sweet as caramelized shallots—her ex-husband's spectre never animated fabric thus.
Xu Ling leaned against the doorjamb, observing how wok-tossing alchemy transmuted his austere calculus mentor into something pliant. The doomed twin's death-halo pulsed in his peripheral vision—three dawns, perhaps fewer, before calamity's sickle swung.
"Nourish yourself." She thrust gilded fried rice toward him, chopsticks aquiver. "You played martyr at the banquet."
As Ms Liu coiled her inkfall hair into a scholar's knot, Xu Ling noted how domesticity sculpted her—steam tendrils caressing her collarbone's calculus, apron strings delineating the geometry beneath her sweater.
Upstairs, the death-marked child murmured dream logarithms. Xu Ling's chopsticks etched warding sigils in soy sauce residue. Let night's porcelain tranquillity hold until dawn's clinical dissection.
The Alchemy of Vulnerabilities
The golden-fried rice dissolved on Xu Ling's tongue like liquid nostalgia, each grain crackling with caramelized echoes of adolescence—burnt wok essence interwoven with Ms Liu's maternal algorithms. In the bathroom's steam-choked sanctuary, Ms Liu glared at the aqueous rebellion in her laundry basin. The lace chemise floated like a translucent jellyfish fossil, its SpongeBob appliqué warped into Dali-esque surrealism by aqueous metamorphosis. Thirty minutes of scrubbing incantations couldn't erase the cosmic jest: her former protégé-turned-saviour sat beyond the fogged glass while her undergarments orchestrated liquid mutiny.
"Instructor—which alcove claims me?"
His inquiry fractured her hydrotherapy trance. Through the warped glass prism, his silhouette condensed into childhood's armchair—grown man reduced to monochrome icon, observing *Tom and Jerry*'s eternal chase across cathode-ray altars.
"My... attire." The admission escaped like a steam-whistle hiss. "Bedside diorama."
Xu Ling navigated the boudoir's cotton-candy terrain with forensic reverence. Neon sheets framed the exhibit: onyx lingerie coiled beside alabaster lace, a chiaroscuro manifesto of midlife renaissance. His pulse charted three sacred meridians—cardiac staccato *accelerando*, hepatic tension *crescendo, and renal *jing* pooling in forbidden cisterns.
The door creaked ajar. Ms Liu's forearm emerged—celadon calligraphy glazed in liquid diamonds, droplets clinging like cryptographic glyphs. Television static crescendoed as she materialized: milk-silk negligee dissolving into shadow pantomime, damp tresses cascading over collarbones etched by integral curves. Atmosphere curdled with bergamot and adrenal musk.
"Your scrutiny lingers, Xu Ling."
"Luminance becomes your pedagogy, Mentor." The blasphemy abraded his larynx.
Her laughter unravelled like abacus beads—three years' divorce particulates shaken from silk sleeves. Moonlight through bamboo-printed drapery tessellated her décolletage, chalkboard pallor transmuting to peach-blossom incandescence.
Xu Ling's diagnostic gaze crystallized. Beneath hydrotherapy-induced radiance throbbed the pathogenic triad:
- **Spleen Meridian Turbidity** - Stress-forged *dampness* flowering as zygomatic edema
- **Liver Fire Insurgency – Conjunctival capillary cartography mapping silent fury
- **Heart Shen Disarray** - Carotid arrhythmia betraying emotional ossification
"Your last haematological audit?"
"Gaokao's millstone pulverizes all." She fluttered chalk-encrusted fingers. "Self-preservation sacrificed to pedagogical sainthood."
His fingertips hovered above her jade bi disc wrist. The classroom chronograph's metronomic click synchronised with:
1. Death – an aura pulsating through the slumbering child overhead.
2. Linens whispering Diophantine premonitions
3. Want's nonlinear equation resolving in a shared atmosphere
At dermal contact, the chemical equation detonated—42 days of monastic restraint versus 23 years of sublimated hunger. Beyond phoenix tree corridors, a nightingale's cry bifurcated darkness into axiom and paradox.
The Alchemy of Pulse Revelations
Ms. Liu's wrist glowed like moonlit jade beneath the lamplight, veins tracing delicate rivers beneath translucent skin as Xu Ling's fingertips descended with calligraphic precision. His touch charted the Three Celestial Meridians—the lung channel trembling with stifled sighs, the heart vessel throbbing like war drums, the pericardium crackling with forbidden voltage.
"Breathe deeply, Mentor." His murmur sliced through bergamot-laced air, a command addressing both her tension and his own roaring pulse.
Three minutes dilated into tectonic epochs. Beneath clinical detachment, diagnostic parameters dissolved into sensory vertigo:
- **Hepatic Pyre Ascendant** (galloping *cunkou* pulse)
- **Cardiac Shen Fracture** (chaotic *guan* rhythm)
- **Splenic Miasma** (slippery *chi* waves mirroring emotional silt)
His verdict fell like a silk-scabbarded blade: "Coronary calcification shall crystallize within ninety dawns."
The prognosis hung suspended in lamplight. Ms. Liu's alabaster complexion paled further, resurrecting specters of her mother's oxygen tanks and midnight angina—a hereditary curse now slithering through her arteries.
"I'll recalibrate your elemental architecture," Xu Ling vowed, fingers lingering on her jade-bracelet wrist. "Through *qihai* acupressure and *yin*-*yang* realignment…"
Their synchronized breaths transmuted the living room into an alchemical theater. Bamboo-patterned moonlight tessellated her décolletage, chalkboard pallor blooming into peach-blossom luminescence. The muted *Tom and Jerry* chase mirrored their suppressed pantomime—predator/prey roles dissolving into perilous ambiguity.
***
Their procession toward chambers became a danse macabre. Ms. Liu's ivory negligee whispered against cotton-candy walls, each step triggering childhood banana-peel landmines. When gravity exacted its comic vengeance, their collision unfolded in quantum slow-motion:
1. Lumbar curvature imprinting on adolescent muscle memory
2. Silk straps capitulating to Newtonian inevitability
3. Nasal cartilage engraving clavicular cartography
Xu Ling's diagnostic gaze now navigated forbidden anatomy—nacreous shoulders, carotid staccato, cortisol-infused bergamot musk. His ascetic vows disintegrated as renal *jing* surged southward, fabric strain betraying biological apostasy.
***
The door's explosive report petrified chronology. Smartphone flashes fossilized their entanglement into digital amber—the ex-husband's lens warping rescue into indecency.
"Divorced me for *this*?" The man's snarl dripped asp venom. "Pedagogical jezebel and her protégé paramour!"
Ms. Liu's fingers clawed Xu Ling's shirt as twin realizations detonated:
1. Mortality's hourglass now hemorrhaging sand
2. Midlife renaissance collapsing beneath societal voyeurism
Xu Ling's meridians ignited warrior protocols—guardian *qi* erupting as he interposed himself between predator and prey. The calculus of craving now demanded ballistic recalibration.
The Alchemy of Fractured Masks
Xu Ling seized the smartphone with falcon-like precision, yanking the intruder into the apartment before neighbors could solidify gossip into immutable relics. "Elder Liang," he retorted, "your narrative alchemy distorts truth—Madam Liu and I observe clinical propriety."
The man's nicotine-yellowed fingers twitched in recognition. "You—the village urchin who skulked at our threshold for mathematical crumbs."
"Silence!" Ms. Liu's rebuke cleaved the tension, moonlight glinting off her pedagogical poise. "Our children slumber amid quadratic reveries."
Liang Shan collapsed onto the sofa, exhaling baijiu fumes and wounded masculinity. "The bridal gold I never reclaimed..." His voice dissolved into theatrical pathos. "Debt collectors hound me through mahjong dens. Would you orphan your children?"
Ms. Liu's resolve fissured—a hairline crack in marble composure. Liang Shan's pupils flared like struck matches. "Nine-eight-zero-zero by moonfall, or they'll sever my pinkie at dawn!" His performance crescendoed with histrionic kowtows.
Slow, sardonic applause reverberated off calculus posters. "A virtuoso of emotional blackmail," Xu Ling drawled. "County theater troupes should study your alchemical transmutation of falsehood into currency."
The revelation petrified Ms. Liu's features into flint resolve. "Begone," she commanded, flinging the door open to the cicada-laden night. "Your transactional flames cannot melt a mother's resolve."
Liang Shan's facade crumbled into vitriolic malice. "Those salacious photographs will plaster every faculty lounge unless—" The threat disintegrated as Xu Ling's grip became an ironclad vice, dragging him through corridors into the courtyard's obsidian embrace.
***
The moonlit park metamorphosed into a forensic amphitheater. Xu Ling's fists orchestrated Newtonian retribution—first strike fracturing nasal architecture into chalk-dust geometry, second impact resonating through mandibular acoustics. Ms. Liu's intercession materialized as soft thermodynamics—bosom against deltoid, jasmine essence cutting through metallic tang.
"Cease this kinetic equation!" Her plea hummed with geometric urgency.
Liang Shan rose physically unharmed yet spiritually eviscerated, his bravado reduced to cinders. Xu Ling's farewell vibrated with infrasonic menace: "Return, and I shall demonstrate how *sanjiao* meridians conduct agony beyond Geneva Conventions."
***
The Alchemy of Vanished Innocence
Xu Ling cloaked Liu Jing's quaking shoulders with his shirt, the silk chemise clinging to her damp skin like a second skin of translucent parchment. The guest chamber's lamplight carved his bare torso into chiaroscuro cartography—abdominal meridians thrumming with post-cultivation radiance as he levitated cross-legged, ectoplasmic mist coiling around him like integral equations. Gravity surrendered at dawn's first algorithm—his bare soles met the flooring as congealed congee fossilized on the dining table.
***
The smartphone's algorithmic shriek shattered domestic stasis. "Ling—does Duoduo's essence linger within these walls?" Liu Jing's voice fractured through digital ether, each phoneme a Mandelbrot spiral of primal dread.
Xu Ling's diagnostic aura swept the residence—no crayon hieroglyphs, no giggle harmonics. "The nest retains only thermal ghosts. What dark alchemy spirited away your fledgling?"
At the kindergarten's wrought-iron gates, Liu Jing's mascara ran like deltas after monsoon rains. "She dissolved into a stranger's penumbra—a spectre wearing *his* mandibular signature." Her fingers etched betrayal's geometry into humid air.
***
Liang Shan arrived exuding baijiu miasma and wounded patriarchy. "Can't even safeguard your genetic dividend?" His snarl carried Cartesian cruelty, piercing Liu Jing's maternal calculus. Xu Ling interposed—a living asymptote intercepting toxicity vectors.
The principal's surveillance monitors unveiled chronological heresy:
- **14:37** - Duoduo's pigtails oscillated toward a silhouette wearing Liang Shan's purloined smirk.
- **14:39** - Diminutive palm swallowed by jade-ringed talons (family crest glinting: genealogical forgery)
- **14:41** - Egress vectors aligning with loan-shark labyrinths
"Karmic hyena," Xu Ling growled, hepatic fire meridians combusting. Liang Shan's sibilant threat—"Breach her sanctum again, and I'll demonstrate paternal *wuwei*"—dissolved into acoustic flotsam as ectoplasmic filaments paralyzed his glottis.
***
The Alchemy of Vanished Proofs
The kindergarten's surveillance system expired at dawn—a synchronized erasure too immaculate for coincidence. Liu Jing's composure fractured like Song dynasty celadon, maternal calculations submerged in logarithmic despair. "What cosmic jest transforms my child into a pawn in vengeance's equation?" Her whisper etched Euclidean anguish into tear-glazed cheeks.
Liang Shan's tar-stained fingers shredded cigarette after cigarette, each crushed filter a Fibonacci helix of paternal impotence. "Condemn my debts, but never my blood-bound oath!" His roar trembled calculus trophies on the walls into chaotic pendulums.
Xu Ling's meridians hummed with digital necromancy. "The data autopsy reveals surgical excision—no blunt force, but scalpel-precise institutional betrayal." His fingertips conjured timelines from tablet screens:
- **05:47** - Backup servers severed from civic networks
- **06:02** - Emergency power siphoned through quantum capillaries
- **06:19** - Memory archives incinerated in cryptographic infernos
The smartphone's vibration splits tension like monomolecular wire. A voice modulated into sonic Rorschach blots seeped through speakers: "Thirty moon cycles as my consort, and the fledgling returns... gilded with alchemical wealth."
Liu Jing's retort channeled Medea's venom: "Mark her peach-soft cheek, and I'll brew maternal toxins Sun Simiao never dared codify!" Her nails carved lunar sigils into rosewood, the grain absorbing hematite resolve.
Liang Shan's call to the void-number yielded only digital limbo—the automated "subscriber unavailable" mantra. His fist cratered the wall, fracturing plaster into Mandelbrot landscapes of futility.
The revelation of Liu Jing's cyber-tryst blossomed like nightshade:
- **2019** - Digital liaisons with shadow entity "Eclipse"
- **2020** - Love letters encoded with intelligence ciphers
- **2021** - Sudden severance preceding nuptials with Liang Shan
"Your union was alchemical fraud from the first reagent," Xu Ling murmured, divining timelines through forensic tea leaves. "This Eclipse demands retribution in vengeance's currency."
***
The Burden of Safeguarding
The man's relentless torment had spanned years, eroding every vestige of past kinship between them.
Liu Jing now harboured only bottomless revulsion toward his existence.
"Shall we acquiesce if he summons again?" Xu Ling posited, his voice laced with strategic calm.
The thought had crystallized in her mind concurrently. Having forsaken matrimonial aspirations lifetimes ago, she would immolate her dignity upon the pyre of maternal devotion.
Though divergent in rationale, their purposes converged with chilling symmetry.
Precisely at the bicentennial hour, electronic shrilling pierced the silence once more.
"Designate your lair," Liu Jing intoned, glacial detachment frosting each syllable.
"Obedient kitten," crooned the voice, dripping synthetic sweetness. "Coordinates shall manifest. But heed this – alert not the constabulary, lest Duoduo's fragile heartbeat... cease its rhythm."
The line died mid-threat. Liu Jing's whitened knuckles threatened to fracture the phone's chassis.
Chime.
The illuminated screen revealed a gilded hotel edifice adjacent to Yunshan's Second Lyceum.
"Guardian Xu – keep vigil over Duoduo. My gratitude shall be proportionate upon my return."
She severed her daughter's wailing pleas with a door slam, metamorphosing from distraught mother to avenging wraith in three sartorial changes.
Duoduo collided with Xu Ling's torso, crystalline tears etching trails across alabaster cheeks.
"Warrior Xu! Redeem Mother! Our lunar new year tributes – take them all!"
She materialized moments later, arms straining around a ceramic swine swollen with paper tribute.
"Sixteen hundred celestial coins – mine and Meimei's dual-year harvest. Commission your blade for Mother's shield! One night's ward!"
Having witnessed Xu Ling's balletic decimation of alleyway brutes, the child invested him with mythic prowess.
Xu Ling's thumb smeared a tear track, his baritone softening. "Keep vigil here. The oaken portal parts for none save your matriarch or this unworthy sentinel. Swear it."
The girl's nod held sacramental gravity, pressing the porcine treasury against his chest like a feudal vow.
"Safeguard this till dawn's reprieve."
His leather jacket whispered promises of violence as he dissolved into the stairwell shadows.
Through the fisheye lens, Duoduo tracked his phantasmal descent before exhaling a tremulous benediction.
When Liu Jing's taxi coalesced before the 7 Celestial Palms Inn, Xu Ling's silhouette flowed through midnight streets, ancient energies pulsing in sinewed calves.
He breached the penthouse tier via service ascension, materializing as elevator gears sighed their final note.
"Pedagogue Liu," his voice manifested before form, "your shadow walks with you."
Phantom or flesh – the suite's occupant mattered not. He would interpose his being between peril and her essence.
"The child's hoard binds me to this covenant." He forestalled protest with a raised palm.
Though apprehension flickered behind her eyes, Liu Jing recalled whispered tales – his midnight colloquies with Bairuimei's magnate, the deference shown by underworld princes. Perhaps this scholarly, warrior-clad youth straddled realms unseen.
She inhaled fortification, palms meeting carved teak. The portal yawned, exhaling bergamot and danger.
Velvet Perdition
The penthouse suite exuded counterfeit domesticity, every luxury meticulously arranged to parody homely warmth.
Liu Jing's eyes lingered on the entryway's footwear display – fluffy pink slippers, the very shade she'd confessed adoration for during their fledgling courtship, now perched like taxidermied affection.
She left the portal ambiguously ajar, rejecting the slippers' silent invitation as she invaded the perfumed labyrinth.
Behind the frosted glass partition, aqueous rhythms cascaded. Her breath hitched until peripheral vision captured Xu Ling's silhouette – a shadow knight stationed beyond the threshold.
Sinking into satin upholstery, she inventoried vacant chambers. No childish giggles echoed through the gilt-edged void.
The bathroom portal exhaled steam first, dragon's breath heralding the predator's emergence. Towel slung at cavalier angles, the man materialized with bodybuilder theatrics, each muscle group proclaiming decades of narcissistic cultivation.
"Beloved Jing," his baritone oiled the air, "how radiant time renders you."
He bridged the sofa's moat, calloused palm outstretched like a creditor demanding tribute.
"My womb has borne fruit since last we parleyed," she retorted, recoiling as from venomous flora.
His jawline calcified. "Years immolated at ambition's altar for this reunion! You'd discard destiny's design for some squalling byblow?"
Bile surged in Liu Jing's throat. Beyond the Carrara marble archway, she silently invoked Xu Ling's blade-sharp intervention.
"That termagant I wed—" his pectorals quivered in histrionic anguish, "—dissolution papers await but our signatures! Imagine the procession – snow-white doves, crystal-laden carriages –
The suite's mahogany maw sighed open, arresting his soliloquy.
"Enchanting recital," Xu Ling purred, flowing inward like smoke through a keyhole. He commandeered the Chesterfield throne, amber liquor swirling in cut crystal as he toasted the tableau.
"Vermin!" The demigod surged upward, terry cloth flag at half-mast. "By what madness do you trespass? These halls answer to my command!"
"Vice-Principal Chen Fu-you," Xu Ling's smile glinted like honed steel. "When one's paramour receives… parental summons," he sipped Dionysian ambrosia, "even the constabulary condones protective zeal."
At his beckoning finger, Liu Jing crossed the Persian tundra to become his armrest ornament. Xu Ling's embrace became a heraldic crest stamped upon her shoulders.
The administrator's carotid throbbed like overstrung cello wire. Xu Ling savored the frothing rage—how exquisite, this inversion of roles. The very pedagogue who'd once crucified him with "voyeur" epithets was now choking on karmic retribution.
"Academic leech!" Spittle accompanied the indictment. "Unmoor your filth from her!"
Xu Ling's laughter crystallized the air. "Leech? Dearest," he nuzzled Liu Jing's temporal vein, "enlighten this obsolete Silenus. In our nocturnal trysts… have I ever left you wanting?"
The Gilded Flesh
Liu Jing blinked in bewilderment, her luminous eyes oscillating between the two men like a startled fawn.
Chen Fuyou's features contorted with fury as he observed the intimate tableau. After meticulously orchestrating the dissolution of Liu Jing's feeble-minded spouse, this interloper now dared to claim what he considered his rightful prize.
"**Unhand her this instant, you insolent cur!**" he bellowed, spittle flying. The sight of Xu Ling's proprietorial grip on Liu Jing's shoulder ignited primal possessiveness within him, his entire frame vibrating with barely restrained violence.
Xu Ling's lips curved in predatory satisfaction as Chen lunged. Restraint before Liu Jing's delicate sensibilities had chafed – this provocation offered perfect justification.
With panther-like grace, Xu Ling disentangled himself and seized Chen's descending arm. A merciless stomp to the femoral nerve dropped the older man to his knees. Chen's howl of agony died abruptly as a terrycloth gag filled his mouth.
"**Audacious worm!**" Xu Ling thundered, the crack of his palm against Chen's cheekbone echoing through the chamber. Liu Jing stood transfixed, witnessing her tormentor's humiliation with breathless fascination. Dark satisfaction bloomed in her chest as decades of subjugation found unexpected retribution.
Chen's pleading eyes sought Liu Jing's mercy, but before he could dislodge the obstruction, another backhand blow snapped his head sideways.
"**Dare harbor designs on what's mine?**" Xu Ling's boot connected with brutal precision to Chen's inner thigh, millimetres from permanent emasculation. The subsequent barrage of blows reduced the once-arrogant administrator to a snivelling supplicant, mucus and tears mingling on his ruined face.
When Xu Ling finally relented, Chen croaked through split lips, "Jingjing... merely sought to protect you..." His trembling fingers brushed air where her hem once swished.
This pathetic display ignited fresh disgust in Liu Jing. The urbane protector she'd idealized now resembled a gutted serpent, still hissing lies even in defeat.
Xu Ling bent to murmur in dulcet malice, "Shall I recount his predation at Jiangnan Medical? The freshman dorms he prowled? The expulsion threats silencing his victims?" Each syllable landed like poisoned velvet.
"**Slander!**" Chen shrieked, dignity abandoned. "Three years I've cherished her! She knows my true heart!"
Liu Jing's laughter held an Arctic chill. "I knew a phantom–gentleman's guise cloaking venal appetites."
Fingers knotted in Chen's bloodied collar, Xu Ling hauled him upward until their breaths mingled. "Taste the gall of false accusation, *Vice Chancellor*. This prologue merely whets the palate for your reckoning."
Stolen Breath, Unbroken Shadows
Xu Ling administered a final cascade of meticulously calculated strikes before withdrawing, his fists glistening with the patina of grim satisfaction.
Sprawled across the sumptuous Persian rug, Vice-Principal Chen Fuyou lay like a discarded marionette—nasal bridge distorted, oral cavity leaking crimson tributaries, his laboured respiration echoing through the lavish chamber.
"Daughter-debt comes due within 180 seconds," Xu Ling intoned, crouching until their pupils aligned. "Name your forfeit: coordinates for Duoduo or arterial frescoes adorning these walls."
Chen's supplement-enhanced musculature convulsed as coppery betrayal flooded his trachea. Xu Ling's derisive gaze swept the exposed rolls beneath the man's slipped bath wrap. "Gelatinous vanity—all creatine charades and mirrored gymnasium preening."
The fallen administrator's imploring glance shattered against Liu Jing's glacial countenance. "Should Duoduo suffer," she articulated through rubellite-rimmed eyes, "your nomenclature shall be engraved upon my ossuary of loathing."
"Blessed curse," Chen gurgled through porcelain-perfect dentition, "for hatred's longevity outweighs love's fleeting caress."
Xu Ling's meteorite fist terminated the soliloquy, a cartilaginous crunch punctuating the stanza. Chen expelled a sanguineous offering onto the rug's gold-threaded peonies. "Utterance", Xu Ling growled, "or I'll compose an asthmatic nocturne even forensic virtuosi would praise."
The ultimatum crystallized Chen's theatrics. Dilating pupils betrayed primal terror—how could this street urchin know about the emergency inhaler sequestered in his mahogany desk?
"Neighbouring... suite," he capitulated, syllables crumbling like ancient parchment. "Cypher... six-nine-thirteen."
Liu Jing's Louboutins outpaced reason itself, staccato strikes etching desperation into marble. The presidential suite yawned vacantly—pristine percale mocking their search, recessed lighting illuminating nothingness.
"The confined spaces—her childhood terror!" Liu Jing's composure disintegrated into crystalline shards. "Duoduo needs her twin's presence; I should've—"
Xu Ling's upraised palm stilled the aria. His qi unfurled like spider-silk filaments, probing the void. Behind the brocade curtains' cascade, a faint, thready pulse called 'remnant ember in ash.
The child lay curled beneath the window's silk valance, complexion waxen, lips drained of youth's blush. Liu Jing's maternal digits hovered above tiny nostrils as glacial horror seized her viscera.
The absence of exhalation fractured eternity.
Xu Ling's gaze catalogued the strewn benzodiazepine tablets—alabaster petals of chemical oblivion. Such a pharmacopoeia required connections exceeding mere academia, confirming Chen's perfidy.
"Professor Liu." His baritone carried ancestral certainty. "Life's filament yet trembles. Entrust her to celestial stewardship."
Through aqueous prisms of despair, Liu Jing surrendered her flesh-and-blood relic, allowing the first silken thread of hope to pierce her shroud of anguish.
Silver Resonance and the Oracle's Breath
"Her essence retreats but remains tethered," Xu Ling murmured, fingertips grazing Duoduo's cyanotic cheek. "This celestial lattice shall recall it home."
Liu Jing surrendered her child with the agony of cleaved soulmates, each severed fingertip's release an act of sacrilege. Xu Ling orchestrated the girl's limbs into sacred geometry upon the brocade altar. "Let Themis' servants bear witness," he commanded, back turned as argent needles gleamed like frozen starlight.
The professor's smartphone chimed a digital requiem for justice. Xu Ling's ritual pouch unfurled, revealing metallic stilettos forged in ancestral wisdom's crucible.
"Do these... antiquated sorceries hold sway here?" Liu Jing's whisper trembled between epochs, modern scepticism warring with primal hope.
"Blood remembers what textbooks forget." His hands hovered above the child's thorax, a conductor awaiting cosmic cadence. "Unsheath mortality's vessel—let modesty's gossamer remain."
As maternal hands bared pearlized flesh, the door exploded inward. Chen Fuyou's entrance coincided with Xu Ling's first needle piercing the Danzhong acupoint. "Blasphemy!" the academic roared, clutching fractured ribs. "You inscribe necrotic sigils upon living parchment!"
"**Be silenced!**" Xu Ling's imperious decree vibrated with primordial qi, pinning Chen against fleur-de-lis wallpaper.
"Jingjing, by Asclepius' staff I—" Chen's oath shattered against her Gorgon stare, petrifying him mid-syllable.
The needles hummed as Xu Ling's digits blurred—argent rain tracing the Ren Meridian's celestial pathway. Chen crawled forward, spewing venom: "You violate the golden mean of acupuncture! This is butchery disguised as—"
Liu Jing's choral lips bled chrysanthemum petals of indecision. Between the heretic's altar and institutional dogma, her resolve faltered. The EMS operator's sterile tones announced modernity's approach.
As sirens ascended through the hotel's concrete arteries, Xu Ling withdrew his silver quill from life's parchment. "Three dawns and dusk's curtain rises," he vowed, mopping ambrosial perspiration.
Collapsing onto the chaise longue, he assumed the Primal Lotus stance amidst swirling ectoplasmic tides—a Prometheus drained by stolen fire's gift. The resurrection had bartered two-thirds of his spiritual coffers to ransom Persephone from Hades' claws.
Paramedics breached the sanctum as Duoduo's lashes quivered like moth wings against moonlight. "Māma..." The sylphlike murmur dissolved Liu Jing's final restraint. "The void... it whispered cold..."
"Henceforth", she breathed into her daughter's crown, "my embrace shall be your adamantine citadel."
Xu Ling observed their exodus through meditative haze, his corporeal shell already shrouded in nacreous cultivation mists. Within the interstitial realm where flesh dialogues with cosmos, an archaic resonance vibrated:
"**Scion of my eternal watch,**" boomed the Celestial Physician's echo, **"The Dragon Gate approaches. Temper your jade essence—lest my celestial mandate rust in mediocrity's dew."
Emerging as the grandfather clock's hands completed their triple celestial waltz, Xu Ling rose through dissipating mists of transcendence. A shiver traversed his meridians—not from autumn's chill, but the weight of immortal scrutiny. The prophesied crucible, deemed worthy of divine forewarning, would demand alchemy beyond mortal ken.
Obsession's Loom, Fortunes in Bloom
Xu Ling hastened to the hospital's neoclassical portico, discovering Liu Jing emerging with Duoduo's hand clasped in hers—the child's complexion now radiating dawn's blush. Chen Fuyou skulked behind like a disgraced courtier, his obsequious gestures clashing grotesquely with facial contusions.
This middle-aged academic's paradox perplexed Xu Ling—a man ensnared by conjugal chains and professional prestige, yet feverishly enthralled by a muse half his age. His physician's gaze dissected Chen's countenance, discerning a faint amethyst scar bridging the Palace of Offspring to the Chamber of Union. Epiphany crystallized—a daughter mirroring Liu Jing's essence had briefly illuminated Chen's world before tragedy's eclipse. The academic's paternal guardianship had fermented into forbidden vintage, paternal devotion curdling into covetous thirst.
"Xu Ling", Liu Jing's timbre blended magnolia fragility and tungsten resolve. "Duoduo's second breath is your alchemical gift. For my momentary faithlessness..."
He stilled her apology with a gesture worthy of celestial arbiters. "The phoenix tests its fledgling's wings. Modern medicine's verdict comforts all."
Her glacial dismissal turned toward Chen: "Financial obligations shall be settled. Let oblivion claim your shadow henceforth."
Witnessing her polarized civilities—arctic detachment versus solar warmth for Xu Ling—Chen's features spasmed. Swallowing vitriol, he turned to retreat.
"Vale, Vice-Chancellor." Xu Ling's valedictory shoulder clasp implanted dormant qi—a metaphysical timepiece ticking toward reckoning.
"Fledgling!" Chen rasped through dental reconstruction, "Your kneecaps shall polish the stones of my ascendancy!"
Xu Ling's riposte soared: "Duelling canes at dawn, then! Bring liniment for your geriatric joints!"
The barb nearly felled the fleeing academic, his bandaged cheek throbbing symphonically. Liu Jing's laughter cascaded like wind chimes at midsummer.
"My erstwhile solemn scholar now plays a trickster deity?"
Xu Ling elevated giggling Duoduo onto his shoulders. "Mortarboards stifle true essence. The wise retain autumn's fire within spring's flesh."
Homeward beneath indigo skies, he analysed Duoduo's transmuted aura—death's fingerprints erased, her lifeline now gleaming with jade impermeability. Post-calamity providence would gild her earthly voyage.
Xu Village's embrace after three nights away felt like returning to amniotic warmth. The patisserie's ambrosial burden in his grip—whipped cream ziggurat dusted with cocoa prophecies—drew village urchins like Sufis to divine nectar. Soon, he stood encircled by walnut-skinned elders exuding harvest ecstasy.
"Master Xu! Our goldenberries distend like celestial orbs!"
"Persimmons drip nectar sweeter than nuptial vows!"
His thoracic cavity swelled with ancestral approval. The luxury emporium stood ready to transmute this backwater hamlet into a regional legend. Soon, Xu bloodlines would stride with nephrite-postured pride, their prosperity silencing generations of condescending cousins.
As sticky-fingered cherubs plundered sugary oblation, Xu Ling inhaled loam and potential—the perfume of fates fermenting toward vinous perfection.
Nectarous Ironies and Regal Pretenses
Xu Ling's spirit brimmed with silent victory—scarcely a moon's turn prior, this rustic healer had bartered herbs for gruel. Homecoming enveloped him in Wang Huifen's maternal orbit, her hands fluttering like worried sparrows. Li Ruoya watched with owlish devotion while her sister's porcelain countenance soured like curdled rice wine.
"Deign to revisit your humble subjects?" Li Ruoxue's barbed tongue struck first. "Auntie fancied you'd been beguiled by some river nymph's enchantments!"
The younger sister's incessant "Brother Xu Ling" reveries had nearly driven Ruoxue to self-exile during his absence.
With the prestidigitator's drama, Xu Ling revealed an ivory-cloaked confection. Wang Huifen gaped at the frosted monolith. "What royal birth merited this ambrosial obelisk?"
"None but our twin constellations," he declared, watching Ruoya's eyes ignite like lantern festival flames. Ruoxue's teacup clattered against the saucer.
"Surplus patisserie?" she sneered. "Even our Persian princeling disdains such plebeian grease!"
Xu Ling's shoulders danced a jester's jig. "Let royalty scorn—sweeter shares await the enlightened."
"You scoundrelous imp!" Wang Huifen's mock censure sparkled. "Tonight's banquet shall eclipse the Qing imperial kitchens!"
As the matron orchestrated culinary symphonies, Ruoxue's gaze dissected Xu Ling through rice-paper screens. Ruoya's urgent whisper pierced: "He chronicled our natal stars!"
"Fortuitous chance!" Ruoxue snapped, yet her peripheral vision tracked the cake's buttercream arabesques.
Through steam-veiled portals, Xu Ling witnessed Ruoxue's metamorphosis—ephemeral vulnerability armouring into jade-carved suspicion. By the eighth delicacy's presentation, her surveillance intensity rivalled the Forbidden City's sentinels.
The cake's revelation proved calamitous. Wang Huifen's fumble loosed two gilded diadems—"Imperial Consort" and "Celestial Sovereign"—that skittered across worn floorboards. Ruoxue's alabaster neck flushed peony-pink.
"Country bumpkin machinations!" she fumed internally, even as childhood's ghost—barefoot summers chasing fireflies—ambushed her citadel of sophistication.
Ruoya's coronation ritual ("Sovereign Sister, behold your diamond-dusted crown!") breached Ruoxue's defences. The inaugural taste of "grease" resurrected buried sweetness—honey-drizzled childhood stolen by metropolitan frosts, now reborn in saccharine alchemy.
Aureate Fantasies and Silent Supplications
"Behold—twin diadems!" Li Ruoya knelt in reverence, rescuing the fallen regalia. The foil-embossed crowns, though fashioned of common cardstock, transformed into coronation jewels upon Ruoya's onyx tresses.
"Resplendent beyond mortal measure," Xu Ling declared with bardic solemnity.
Li Ruoxue endured her sister's ministrations with practiced hauteur, though fractured glimpses of vulnerability shimmered through her ice-queen facade. Thus enthroned, the twins embodied yin and yang—Ruoya's saccharine benevolence radiating like midsun, Ruoxue's wintry poise refracting moonlight's chill.
"A seer's discernment," Xu Ling observed, admiring his curatorial prowess. "The artisan's vision proves infallible."
Ruoxue's composure fissured. "You presume to court twin blossoms?" Her grip on the cake knife promised surgical precision in retribution.
"Seven market lanes I traversed for these regal circlets," Xu Ling provoked, savouring her umbrage. "Ruoya's luminance warranted such pilgrimage."
The verbal arrow found its mark. Ruoxue's alabaster neck flushed poppy-red—had she misconstrued his gallantry? Beneath the oaken table, her slippers etched imaginary labyrinthine gardens into earthen floors.
"Auntie recalls candlelit incantations!" Wang Huifen's flour-dusted palms struck celestial percussion. "Let cosmic petitions take wing!"
Xu Ling performed reluctant pyrotechnics, embedding nineteen wax obelisks into the cream ziggurat. The sisters clasped hands—Ruoya's silent plea for betrothal vows, Ruoxue's inner oath to guard virtue through ascetic denial. Their synchronized breath extinguished both flame and hope in shared exhalation.
The cake's demise unfolded as a buttery apocalypse. Wang Huifen and Xu Wenhai sat enthroned on courtyard stools, kneading dough-like midsections. Ruoxue's formerly concave abdomen now rivalled harvest moons in rotundity.
"My son," Wang Huifen sighed, her words glazed with vanilla nostalgia, "Never before tasted heaven's nectar. Such ambrosia demands a king's ransom?"
Xu Ling's larynx constricted. Childhood memorials surfaced—steamed buns bearing crimson bean sigils masquerading as celebration. "Henceforth", he vowed in silence, "your palate shall banquet with Olympian gods."
Beneath the banyan's cathedral vaults, five souls basked in firefly-lit harmony—until Xu Ling's device shattered the pastoral symphony. Liu Shuxiang's missive pulsed like aspidistra venom:
*Dearest Ling, My spinal column orchestrates agony's concerto. Village murmurs sing of your return. Might you... Attend to my aching nocturnes?
The appended kitten emoji ignited Xu Ling's sympathetic nervous system. Recent encounters flashed—jasmine-clouded encounters and "wayward" shawl descents—raising reptilian scales along his qi pathways.
To be continuous…