Chapter 17: Confections and Retribution
"Divine Physician Xu," Liu Yan intoned with ceremonial deference, "pardon the evening's tumult encroaching upon your solitude."
Xu Ling inclined his goblet in reciprocal grace. "Moore Manor's panoramas offer sufficient diversion." Their ritualistic exchange dissolved into ambient murmurs as fresh supplicants commandeered Liu Yan's attention.
While Yu Mengna became ensnared in a coterie of social harpies, Xu Ling gravitated toward the patisserie tableau. He dissected a mille-feuille with the veneration of an oenophile appraising Dom Pérignon, transiently metamorphosing into an epicure whose cosmos orbited patisserie.
Li Guangfei's jackals materialized amidst Cohiba smoke spirals. "Famished vagrant!" sneered a Tom Ford-clad whelp. "When last did your benefactress permit sustenance?"
Xu Ling proffered a fraisier wedge. "The chiboust cream achieves sublime aeration. Care to verify?"
The pack exchanged vulpine glances. "Neurologically deficient," scoffed the alpha, flicking ash onto Xu Ling's John Lobbs.
"A clandestine cache of canelés," another taunted. "Pursue us, simpleton."
Xu Ling trailed them through topiary labyrinths, nibbling matcha financier with infantile absorption. The secluded quadrangle—a CCTV blind spot—received them with wisteria-draped complicity.
"Condolences, mongrel," the alpha hissed, metacarpals cracking. "Direct grievances to Li Guangfei's—"
*Crack! Thud! Gargle!
Moments later, the tormentors sprawled supine, oral cavities engorged with Sachertorte. Xu Ling knelt beside their leader, Italian Oxford imprinting his Brioni waistcoat. "Pâte sucrée or pâte sablée?"
"S-s-sablée!" the youth gurgled through crème pâtissière.
Xu Ling's sole increased hydraulic pressure. "Li Guangfei's commercial machinations?"
"P-pharmaceutical distribution! Provincial network!" The admission erupted between mascarpone-choked whimpers. Above, silk lanterns undulated like opium-dazed lucioles, oblivious to the topiary's sanguine metamorphosis.
The Minuet of Mercantile Machinations
Xu Ling withdrew his foot, fingertips brushing nonexistent particulates from the youth's crumpled lapel. "Voluntary compliance prevents regrettable outcomes."
The lackey spewed confessions through mascarpone-caked dentition: "Li Guangfei's patriarch evaluates succession—both scions exiled to provincial subsidiaries. Guangfei now helms Pengyuan Provisions... this soirée serves as his provincial debutante ball."
Xu Ling's smile acquired surgical precision. "This evening's... mishap?"
"Self-inflicted arboreal collisions!" The chorus bleated, countenances smeared with patisserie and disgrace.
Reemerging beneath paper lantern constellations, Xu Ling claimed a goblet of Amarone. Katydids conducted nocturnes as his diagnostic gaze dissected the assembly. Li Yuqing's alabaster organza fluttered amidst suitors—a vision inexplicably curdling his oenophilic pleasure.
Yu Mengna manifested, her commercial acumen slicing through tuberose-laden atmospheres. "Celestial Orchard's bounty necessitates preservation—conserves via contracted cannery. Zero infrastructure commitments."
Approaching a corpulent preservation tycoon, Xu Ling's pupils constricted. Feng Laoban's meagre brows and oleaginous aura screamed fiscal necrosis.
"Chairman Feng", Yu Mengna proffered her hand with boardroom finesse.
The magnate's porcine digits trembled. "The Aphrodite of Pomology!"
Xu Ling intercepted the manual overture, his grasp combining Toledo steel with Suzhou silk. "Xu Ling. Strategic consultant."
Feng's dewlaps oscillated. "Since when do horticulturists infiltrate black-tie negotiations?"
Unperceived by mortals, the Divine Orchard's quintessence vibrated within Xu Ling's capillaries—a silent augury that tonight's mercantile ballet might yet escalate into agrarian warfare.
The Orchard of Poisoned Vows
Yu Mengna's brow arched in silent interrogation at Xu Ling's abrupt intervention. His imperceptible head tilt conveyed encrypted warnings—she retrieved her engraved business card with regal detachment. "Regrettably, Director Feng, prior covenants summon us elsewhere."
The magnate's wattles trembled like aspic. "To scorn the Feng Consortium bears repercussions, Madam Yu!"
Xu Ling advanced, his diagnosis slicing through the Cohiba haze. Scour your logistics division. Financial gangrene consumes your ledgers."
As Yu Mengna steered him through topiary corridors, Xu Ling decrypted his prognosis: "His matrimonial hexagram lies in ruins, prosperity trigrams inverted. Defalcation's carcinoma spreads through his commercial viscera."
Yu Mengna's ocular scepticism duelled with hard-won trust. "The preservation initiative..."
"Demands collaborators not fated for insolvency's gallows," Xu Ling pronounced.
Their colloquy fractured as social carrion birds reclaimed Yu Mengna. Xu Ling's peripheral vision snared a chiaroscuro tableau near wisteria arches—Li Guangfei's silhouette pinning Li Yuqing against moss-kissed stone, their shadows etched like predator and prey.
"...decline my preserved refuse?" Li Guangfei's snarl permeated jasmine-scented breezes. "Recall our Shinjuku soirées? Imagine those celluloid treasures circulating through every rural hovel—particularly to that mud-caked herbalist you simper after."
Xu Ling savoured a Nebbiolo's tannic embrace, amusement playing upon his lips like a virtuoso violinist. The vintage's terroir harmonised exquisitely with unfolding theatrics.
Across manicured lawns, a trembling sommelier pressed adulterated Châteauneuf-du-Pape into Yu Mengna's grasp. "The host's tribute", he prevaricated, perspiration beading beneath his collar.
Li Yuqing's rebuttal cleaved the twilight: "Publish them. Let provincials witness Li Group's crown jewel blackmailing paramours." Her stiletto's staccato found its cadence—Guangfei's pained exhalation synchronised with chrysanthemum fireworks.
As Xu Ling's silent ovation echoed through topiary mazes, Yu Mengna's coupe tilted toward carmine-stained lips—a synapse away from imbibing damnation.
The Crucible of Venom and Refuge
Li Guangfei's diction oozed lupine gratification, feasting upon Li Yuqing's tear-burnished obstinacy. The tremor in Xu Ling's tailored slacks fractured his vinous contemplation.
The SMS detonated cortisol—Xu Ling abandoned his Pauillac, strides devouring the distance to the orient annexe. Behind its barricaded portal, Yu Mengna baptised fevered flesh in arctic streams, respiration staccato.
"Na-jie, 'tis I." Xu Ling's phalanges percussed teakwood.
The deadbolt retracted. Yu Mengna cascaded against him, Georgette surrendering to talon-like desperation. "Conflagration..." she keened, labia infernum branding his clavicle.
Her febrile undulations kindled atavistic responses. Distant contrabass threnodies pulsed sympathetically with Xu Ling's tachycardia. The absent argent filaments—relegated to sartorial chambers—mandated improvisational genius.
Calcanei assaulted timber. "Yu-xiaojie? Let us negotiate supply chain synergies..." Li Guangfei's musteline timbre permeated the partition.
Xu Ling's masseter cords hardened. "Liu Yan—oriental lavatory. Na-jie's been envenomed. Quarantine the jackals."
Tactical footwear clattered within chronometric precision. "Five-metre exclusion zone enacted," Liu Yan's staccato verification resonated via cellular waves.
The pharmaceutical scion's remonstrations dissipated—"This constitutes trespass!"—submerged beneath security's monotonal vetoes.
Xu Ling cradled Yu Mengna's pyretic form against Breccia Pernice, her carotid tempest syncopating with his. The aphrodisiac's molecular signature seared through diagnostic meridians—a toxin demanding either antidotal alchemy or Dionysian resolution.
"Pardon the proximity," he breathed, digits charting cervical loci. Yu Mengna's vertebrae curved in ecstatic torsion as curative qi inundated jingluo channels, neutralising the toxin's pythonic embrace.
Beyond the Siena marble bastions, Li Guangfei's growls atrophied into sterile fury. Liu Yan's Praetorian guard wove an adamantine perimeter—mute custodians against the gathering simoom.
Amidst Bollinger-suffused pandemonium, dual cardiographic rhythms converged—one galloping toward redemption, the other metronomic as a surgical laser. The gala's gilded façade fissured, exposing adders coiled beneath shantung cocoons.
The Triptych of Longing and Atonement
Li Guangfei's expletives dissolved into monocled hypocrisy's ether. Xu Ling's exhalation resonated—a seismic ripple traversing dew-kissed epidermis.
"Na-jie, reassert dominion."
Yu Mengna's pyretic explorations destabilized his jingluo matrix, rendering qigong meditation hazardous. Nacreous droplets adorned Xu Ling's carotid arc—ephemeral cartography of passion's bite.
"Lingzi..." Her susurration carried tectonic yearning. "This geothermal crucible devours reason."
The empress of orchards' manicured talons rent his haberdashery. Xu Ling intercepted roving digits, their pas de deux oscillating between sacrament and perdition.
"Your consort's coordinates—permit summoned reinforcements."
"Phantom paramours," she heaved, iliac crests bowing in atavistic oblation. "You embody my pharmaceutical panacea."
Her palmar descent mimicked guillotine's kiss. Xu Ling's diaphragmatic cadence ruptured—yang currents erupting like Three Gorges spillways.
"The androgynous vestments in your sanctorum..."
"Paternal mausoleum's relics!" Her lachrymal ultimatum shattered final ramparts.
The cubiculum transmuted into an alchemical athanor.
Post-coital revelations found Yu Mengna supine amidst fractured tulle and scattered propriety. Xu Ling deciphered the cuneiform of passion's dentition across his sternum—a living palimpsest of merger elemental.
"Na-jie..." Cinnabar effloresced along his helical contours.
Their vestimentary rituals unfolded in sacrosanct muteness. As Yu Mengna egressed through onyx portals, Xu Ling enshrined an ebony lace cypher within his Chino enclave—unwitting reliquary of catharsis.
"Scavenger!" Li Guangfei coalesced like avenging djinn, nares flaring at pheromonal hieroglyphs. "Desecrating feminine sanctums?"
Xu Ling rectified his Savile Row disarray, the parasite's predatorial glare catalyzing postliminary lucidity. Beyond topiary mazes, venom and absolution maintained their cosmic pavane—yet tonight's karmic equilibrium proved immutable.
The finale's champagne detonation synchronized with Xu Ling's epiphany: certain antidotes leave nectarous resonances lingering upon the palatal memory.
The Sovereign and the Serpent
Li Guangfei's psyche seethed with the acrid tang of impotent wrath. Yu Mengna's vanishing act—a phantom dissolving into nocturne—extinguished his toxic ambitions. A siren of such strategic allure, slipping through his talons? Unforgivable.
Xu Ling savoured the bitter wine of his rival's discomfiture. *Merely the overture*, he mused, observing Li Guangfei's carotid pulse throbbing like a trapped scorpion. For Yu Mengna's violated dignity, for his own provoked ire, retribution would unfold in movements, each more exquisite than the last.
"Dare pilfer my quarry?" Li Guangfei hissed, closing the gap between them. "I'll entomb you beneath provincial soil."
Xu Ling's smile bloomed like nightshade. The Celestial Healer's legacy thrummed in his marrow—annihilating this gnat would require less effort than crushing grape beneath heel. But annihilation was pedestrian. No—he desired Li Guangfei's unravelling: a silk robe slowly devoured by moths.
"Prudence, little princeling," Xu Ling crooned, trailing a patronizing fingertip along Li Guangfei's Botox-smoothed jawline. "When prostration becomes your sole recourse, I may decline clemency."
The gala's din flatlined. All ocular apertures swivelled toward the estate gates, where Qu Xiao materialized—an obsidian comet in a Valentino Haute Couture gown, its tulle nebula cascading over alabaster steps. Her regnal aura petrified the assembly: Medusa reincarnate as luxury incarnate.
Liu Yan genuflected, his obsequiousness clashing with Zhou Yao's porcelain composure. "Your radiance transfigures our humble gathering, Madam Qu."
The leeching chorus of flattery dissolved against her glacial mien. Li Guangfei, ever the carrion crow, swooped into her orbit.
"Aunt Qu! Li Guangfei of Pengyuan Consolidated—"
Her ocular blades dissected him, exposing necrotic ambition. Revulsion flickered—a nanosecond's lapse—before her gaze continued its imperial sweep, anchoring upon Xu Ling.
"Lingzi. Approach."
The imperative stilled champagne bubbles mid-ascent. Xu Ling's hesitation proved futile—Qu Xiao advanced, her entourage of Armani-clad acolytes parting like Red Sea waves.
"Presuming to grace banquets without your queen?" Her contralto carried Damascus-steel undertones.
"You... slumbered with such... beatific tranquillity," he demurred, the lie hanging like jasmine-scented mist.
The assembly's collective inhalation could've reversed atmospheric pressure. Male gazes recalculated Xu Ling's worth—an unpolished stone suddenly glowing with imperial benediction. Li Guangfei's complexion ripened to aubergine, cuticles drawing sanguine hieroglyphs upon his palms.
Qu Xiao's lips curved—a sphinx acknowledging its equal. "Somnolence evaporates," she declared, her projection cleaving the gardenia-scented air. "Dynasties alone endure."
Her kid-gloved palm grazed Xu Ling's forearm—a heraldic stamp of possession. Across topiary labyrinths, Li Guangfei's phone vibrated with calamity: *Customs interdiction—Batch #CX-09 impounded.* The inaugural chess piece toppled.
The Serpent's Gambit
To command the esteem of Qu Xiao—a paragon whispered to abhor mankind—enshrined Xu Ling as no mere courtier. The assembly, though unenlightened to her true eminence, mirrored Liu Yan's servility, their obsequious attentions pivoting to this ascendant favourite.
Li Guangfei, undaunted by exile, persisted like a botfly at the periphery. "Aunt Qu! My maternal progenitor is Qu Ping—surely ancestral ties resonate?"
"Must this vermin's drone profane our symposium?" Qu Xiao's cryogenic inflection propelled Liu Yan to expel the pest beyond the wrought-iron gates.
Delivered from this irritant, Xu Ling weathered thirty excruciating minutes of sycophantic accolades before fleeing into nocturne's embrace. Lunar radiance elongated his silhouette into grotesque marionette proportions along the desolate thoroughfare—solitude ruptured by the banshee wail of disc brakes.
Li Guangfei's Lamborghini idled like a panther toying with prey. "Enter. Discourse awaits."
Xu Ling assumed the supplicant's seat without demur. The vehicle surged forward, tachometer quivering at 120 km/h—a steel cheetah sprinting through ink.
"So you're the castoff cur from Li Yuqing's menagerie," Li Guangfei sneered, chagrined when Xu Ling remained impervious to velocity's thrill. "Facilitate my entrée to Qu Xiao's court, and I'll reunite you with your bucolic Persephone."
Xu Ling's laughter carried permafrost's bite. "What alms could your beggar's purse offer me?"
"Temper delusions, agrarian." Li Guangfei exhaled a carcinogenic cumulus. "Yuqing's discernment eclipses your pastoral affectations. Even *I*—scion of the Li dynasty—failed to thaw that glacial sovereign."
Headlights sculpted luminous tunnels through stygian darkness as Xu Ling's riposte struck marrow: "Curious. My recollection insists she abandoned *me* for your gilded falsehoods."
The steering column shuddered. Li Guangfei's cigarette tremored—a votive candle to crumbling hubris. Beyond bitumen expanses, cicadas chanted requiems for façades eroded.
The Labyrinth of Allegiances
Li Guangfei's cognition ignited belatedly—a smouldering realisation of unresolved tempests between Xu Ling and Li Yuqing. Could that provincial enchantress be orchestrating a renaissance of forsaken affections? His cigarette flared like a miniature supernova, its embers mirroring his rekindled humiliation.
"Comrade", he growled, knuckles whitening against the Nappa leather wheel, "this conduit to Qu Xiao—will you facilitate it?"
Xu Ling observed him with the clinical detachment of a virologist studying a petri dish. "After your mercantile machinations near eviscerated my bloodline? Your cerebral paucity astonishes."
The Lamborghini's ceramic brakes wailed. "You dare mock me?" Li Guangfei's facade fissured, exposing the mewling neophyte beneath.
"Darwinism's discarded progeny," Xu Ling remarked, alighting onto asphalt. "Without ancestral lucre, you'd scavenge gutter banquets."
As Li Guangfei's profanities ricocheted through the gloaming, cerulean photons cleaved the darkness. Qu Xiao's Pagani Huayra materialized, its dihedral portals ascending like obsidian raptor wings. "Lingzi. We abscond."
Xu Ling ensconced himself within the carbon monocoque sanctuary, abandoning Li Guangfei to rearview mirror oblivion.
"Consorting with that tapeworm?" Qu Xiao's kid-gloved grip constricted the Alcantara helm.
"He postures consanguineous bonds."
Her derisive laughter crystallized the atmosphere. "The Li pedigree? Amusing fabulists of genealogy." The hypercar dissolved into night's embrace with a V12 aria.
Before Yu Mengna's Edwardian townhouse, Xu Ling faltered—the clandestine lace relic in his chinos now an anvil of guilt. Qu Xiao's valedictory glance had telegraphed unarticulated suspicions.
The doorbell's carillon fractured the silence. Yu Mengna materialized in Mongolian cashmere dishabille, her flush discordant against the vestibule's clinical luminance. "Lingzi? This nocturnal hour...?"
"Monitoring your patriarch's convalescence." The prevarication left a ferric aftertaste.
Her barefoot traversal across radiant geothermal marble betrayed electric disquiet. "His vitals stabilize... by your grace."
As Xu Ling catalogued the parlour—chesterfield sofa retaining their earlier silhouette, half-consumed Bordeaux goblets refracting lunar spectra—Yu Mengna's fingertips grazed his sleeve. "Remain. The chamber of guests…"
Beyond leadlight bay windows, Li Guangfei's Lamborghini prowled like a maimed panther. The gambit had transcended mere chess; queens now stalked the board. Xu Ling's digits clenched the lace cypher, its whisper a siren song of crossed rubicons and Gordian loyalties.
The Alchemy of Resurrection
The evening's tempestuous currents had left their moorings adrift.
"Permit me to guide you."
Yu Mengna advanced, her carotid pulse mimicking timpani beneath vicuña wool. The patriarch's sanctum exuded sterile solemnity—a pallid figure lay entombed in linens, obsidian crescents staining orbital hollows, mortality's breath frosting his brow.
"Recent diagnostic interventions?"
Xu Ling's clinical persona crystallized, dispelling lingering intimacies like dawn dispersing fog.
Yu Mengna's coiffure shimmered in negation. "Equilibrium maintained since autumnal equinox—sesquimonthly evaluations suffice."
Xu Ling's digits grazed the patient's papyrus-thin palpebra. "Pupillary dilation denotes chronic heliophobia and incipient atrophy."
The corporate sovereign's armour fissured. "Allopathic institutions proffer naught but elegiac prognosis..."
"Resurrection lies within reach." Xu Ling's timbre resonated with orogenic conviction. "Syntheses of filiform steel and decoctions—three lunar cycles to lucidity."
Yu Mengna's phalanges constricted his radial artery like kudzu claiming oak. "Veritas? Pater could..."
"Solar irradiation and sensorial bombardment shall catalyze renascence."
Crystalline grief anointed Xu Ling's clavicle as Yu Mengna pressed her countenance to his sternum—the boardroom titan reduced to hopeful neophyte.
"Tonight's caloric deprivation demands redress." Xu Ling's rolled sleeves revealed alabaster forearms navigating her saffron-hued culinary theatre. "Allow reparation."
Soon, the apartment swam with umami whispers—scallions transmuted to amber lace, egg batters spun into aureate veils. Yu Mengna, martyr to couture's altar, inhaled the bouquet with primal voracity.
"Lingzi, your... noodle craft transcends mortal ken."
The inadvertent semantic duality hovered like a Damoclean thread. Porcelain chimed as realization struck Yu Mengna—memories of abandoned cobweb lingerie resurfacing.
Xu Ling's auricles incarnadined. Across the Carrara breakfast bar, twin epiphanies emerged: the absent silk cypher's clandestine location and the Rubicon now irrevocably forded.
The Tapestry of Hearth and Havoc
The morning's first light exposed the silk secret nestled in Xu Ling's trouser pocket. He petrified beneath Li Ruoya's limpid ocular scrutiny in the courtyard, his starched collar suddenly conspiring against respiration.
"Brother Ling! We conjured lotus leaf-wrapped fowl with Uncle Xu yesterday—care to judge our culinary alchemy?" The younger sibling's zeal shimmered like dewdrops on rice paddies.
Xu Ling's phalanges spasmodically guarded the incriminating pocket. "Indubitably! Allow me sartorial adjustments ere we commence poultry procurement!"
As Ruoya pirouetted toward the henhouse, her elder counterpart, Li Ruoxue, scoffed. "Plumed popinjay—no doubt sowing wild oats nocturnally."
Xu Ling careened into his bedchamber, barricading the oaken portal. The fragrant lace scorched his palm like a saintly stigma. He interred the damning evidence within a sandalwood armoire, entombing it beneath a feline-emblazoned sleepshift—maternal sanitation sorties mandating imminent cryptographic safeguards.
"Ling! Preening like an imperial consort?" Ruoxue's metacarpals percussed the panelled barrier.
Emerging in indigo-dyed workman's denim, he discovered Ruoxue entwined with Liu Shuxiang—the village's lotus root diviner—at the irrigation pond's verge.
"Partake, Physician Xu!" Shuxiang's grin etched creases into sun-cured epidermis. "Nymphaeum-fresh parcels yield ambrosial gallinaceous delights."
Ruoxue's smirk glinted, knee-deep in alluvial silt. "Metropolitan dandy fears humic baptism, manifestly."
As Xu Ling breached the brackish shallows, maternal admonitions cascaded from the latticed veranda: "Preserve my prospective lineage's patriarch from aqueous demise!"
Giggles propagated across the Nelumbo-speckled hydrosphere. Shuxiang's gnarled digits exhumed alabaster rhizomes while Ruoxue—patrician palms now leathern—deciphered agrarian mysteries.
By vespertine gloaming, the compound undulated with galangal-perfumed exhalations. Xu Ling's secreted silk cypher faded into oblivion as aureate poultry essences dripped onto smouldering binchōtan—alternative appetites gnawing at consciousness' periphery. Ruoxue's fortuitous dermal contact ignited synaptic wildfires: the contest had transmuted arenas anew.
Lotus Whispers and Entwined Destinies
Even cast adrift in the county's thoroughfares now, Li Ruoxue's countrified mien would scarcely betray her as the scion of the venerable Li lineage—a serendipitous guise of anonymity.
Li Ruoya glided mutely in Xu Ling's shadow, her gaze oscillating betwixt him and Liu Shuxiang like a vigilant songbird. The village widow's proximity to Xu Ling kindled strange fireflies of disquiet beneath her breastbone.
"Brother Lingzi," Ruoya anchored herself to his arm, "your absence has stretched longer than lotus roots in silt." Her pout possessed the puissance to wither nascent blossoms.
Xu Ling's nape warmed beneath phantom fingers. "The nascent clinic's exigencies..."
Shuxiang observed their proximity with acerbic yearning, her earth-cured digits whitening around verdant stalks. A widow's dignity erected palisades against such brazenness.
"Will moonlight find you here tonight?" Ruoya's query sparked mnemonic urgency.
Xu Ling's bearing transmuted to flint. "Li Yunfei's tendrils encroach upon our precincts. Let no footfall of yours grace urban cobblestones—this is comprehended?"
An alabaster pallor blanched the sisters' visages. Ruoya's affirmation cascaded like temple bells, while Ruoxue's derisive exhale betrayed tacit compliance.
At the verge of the lotus-dappled pond, Xu Ling materialized as a human bulwark. "Your recuperative interlude forbids alluvial adventuring."
"Clucking broody hen!" She swivelled, nostrils flaring like a provoked stallion.
Ruoya interposed with the diplomacy of a seasoned envoy. "His counsel blooms from benevolent soil, elder sister."
"You'd desiccate like drought-stricken lotus without your precious Brother Lingzi, would you not?" Ruoxue's pinch coaxed peony hues across her sibling's cheeks.
Shuxiang observed these nymphean siblings, melancholy rising like monsoon floods. Could her sunburnished simplicity ever rival such porcelain grandeur?
"Will dual rhizome segments suffice?" Xu Ling's baritone vibrated through the aqueous atmosphere.
He stood like a river deity, proffering alabaster tubers glazed with pond nectar. Shuxiang's pulse fluttered like trapped carp. "Beyond sufficiency, Lingzi."
As Xu Ling ascended the bank, Ruoxue's sotto voce carried across waterlilies: "Behold our philanthropic Eros incarnate."
"Brother Lingzi's compassion knows seasonal bounds!" Ruoya's uncharacteristic defiance stilled even the cicadas' chorus.
The protestation rang hollow as Shuxiang brushed lotus pollen from Xu Ling's epaulette—a gesture that stained Ruoya's lower lip crimson through anxious dentition. Beneath placid surfaces, rhizomatic rivalries deepened their grip.
Feathered Farce and Muddy Mischief
By Xu Ling's summons, Liu Shuxiang became an initiate in the lotus-leaf poultry sacrament.
"Ruoya! Let us quarry the ochre earth!" Li Ruoxue proclaimed, hauling her sister toward the alluvial deposits with the zeal of a prospector.
In Shuxiang's courtyard, feathers clung to their fingers like frost-kissed cobwebs as they scoured the fowl. The widow's gaze lingered on Xu Ling's meticulous de-pluming, her joy unfurling like peonies under monsoon rains.
"Lingzi... Will the nightingale serenade beneath my eaves tonight?"
Xu Ling's vertebrae prickled with clairvoyant dread. The widow's effervescence ignited tremors in his quadriceps.
"Alas, the orchards demand nocturnal vigil—growth elixirs must be dispensed."
Shuxiang's radiance dimmed. "Permit my assistance! We might then seek repose—"
"Nocturnal labours blight feminine resplendence!" Xu Ling parried desperately. "Complexion marred, crow's feet etched—"
The widow's fingers flew to imagined crevices. Xu Ling's covert exhalation misted the air as their discourse resumed its featherlight cadence.
Ruoxue and Ruoya staggered beneath terracotta-laden pails, their once-pristine gowns now Pollock-esque masterpieces.
"Physician Xu! Where lies the sacrificial altar?" Ruoxue's earthen-splattered visage glowed with impish fervour.
Xu Ling momentarily drowned in her mud-caked vitality—a vivacity contrasting his own ossified spirit, the Divine Physician's mantle having petrified his youthful essence.
"Lingzi?" Shuxiang's vinegar-tinged interjection shattered his trance.
"Musing on vanished vernal vigour," he dissembled. "Though Ruoxue's coeval, I feel akin to antediluvian relics."
Shuxiang's gaze softened. This prodigy who'd borne Atlas' burden since adolescence—when had his innocence sublimated?
Her matronly instincts surged, mentally inscribing kinship charters. Xu Ling squirmed beneath her suddenly beatific scrutiny.
"Lingzi! Receive nature's imprimatur!"
Ruoxue's clarion call heralded impact—a terracotta palm print emblazoned across Xu Ling's denim-clad gluteus. Ruoya's belated "Forbear!" harmonized with cascading clay vessels, the pastoral symphony reaching its cacophonous crescendo.
Earthen Tempests and Reclaimed Mirth
"Hahahaha! Poetic justice for vexing this noble miss!"
Xu Ling appraised his trousers' ochre-stained posterior, then Li Ruoxue's buffoonish glee, ocular orbs executing perfect sardonic revolutions.
"Nitwit!"
The epithet petrified Ruoxue's mirth. "You dare name me a nitwit? I'll inter you in sedimentary oblivion!" A terracotta missile launched with balletic precision.
To mortal perception, the projectile's trajectory promised nasal impact. Yet betwixt retinal blinks, the clay adhered to Ruoxue's sternum instead, transmuting her alabaster blouse into diaphanous revelation.
"Degenerate!" She ululated, arms forming cruciform modesty.
Liu Shuxiang and Li Ruoya gaped in silent awe. "Lingzi... do you commune with arcane forces?" Shuxiang breathed.
Xu Ling feigned rustic simplicity. "Arcana? Observe my podiatric canvas." He indicated loam-encrusted sneakers. "Newton's third edict—reciprocal momentum."
Their exchanged glances crackled with scepticism. No ocular witness could attest to such kinetics.
"Enough theatrics!" Xu Ling hefted the clay amphora. "Let us commence the hypogeal culinary rite."
Ruoxue's counteroffensive erupted—a fusillade of earthen projectiles. Xu Ling waltzed through the barrage like capedor evading horns, taunting through evasive pirouettes: "Composure, gentle mistress! Your discipline falters!"
Vexation incarnadined Ruoxue's cheeks. Munitions depleted, she brandished the entire pail in a berserker charge.
Xu Ling's cachinnations reverberated through terraced paddies as he ensnared Ruoxue's braid, spinning her like a dervish top. "Maladroit clod! Can't ensnare a rural Hippocrates!"
Their pursuit wove through hamlet lanes—Xu Ling modulating velocity like a virtuoso conductor, Ruoxue's imprecations scattering poultry flocks.
Elderly kibitzers clucked through tobacco haze. "Ling's seraglio rivals imperial concubinage," mused Second Elder, exhaling nicotine cumuli.
"That metropolitan blossom rivals Widow Liu's allure!"
"Had we nurtured that sapling when Xu Wenhai fell..." Regret congealed in smoky exhalations.
As Ruoxue collapsed in asthmatic defeat, Xu Ling mirrored her posture—palms anchoring thighs, counterfeit exhaustion perfected. The gilded hour burnished their perspiration-glazed folly, weaving youth's transient tapestry across the pastoral proscenium.
Earthen Appeals and Absolved Transgressions
Beholding Xu Ling's counterfeit exhaustion, Li Ruoxue's disposition brightened considerably. She arched her neck, aristocratic disdain crystallizing in her gaze. "Now you comprehend this lady's formidable prowess!"
Xu Ling, his bronzed skin sheened with perspiration from their unpowered sprint, chuckled through measured breaths. "Indubitably, Lady Li's supremacy remains unchallenged."
Satiated, Ruoxue thrust the depleted clay vessel toward him. "Our earthen stocks dwindle. Attend to me for replenishment."
In tandem, they approached the pond's verge where ochre sediments lay abundant. Within moments, their container overflowed with fecund mud.
"Repose your noble self—I shall bear this freight." Xu Ling elevated the brimming pail single-handedly, his effortless gait drawing incredulous scrutiny from Ruoxue during their return.
Approaching the courtyard, their burdened procession coincided with an unforeseen assembly—Li Ruoya and Liu Shuxiang flanking a gaunt, weathered silhouette.
"Lingzi!" The figure lunged forward, desperation fracturing his timbre. "I implore you—salvation for my sire!"
Xu Da Jiao's calloused digits vice-gripped Xu Ling's forearm, their prior acrimony over pilfered saplings eclipsed by primal urgency. Post-feud investigations had laid bare truths that eroded Da Jiao's conscience: this rural healer now moved among county magnates, his medical virtuosity transcending agricultural alchemy.
"Articulate plainly," Xu Ling commanded, grounding the clay amphora.
Da Jiao ingested pride like bitter decoction. "Imminent betrothal... The bride's kin demanded a suidae tribute. Father marshaled kinsmen to hunt the mountain brutes, yet—"
Village Elder Xu materialized, his staff percussing compacted loam. "Befuddled imbeciles! Those woodlands harbour phantoms even veteran hunters dread!"
Xu Ling kneaded his temples—the unforeseen repercussions of his prior porcine conquest manifesting. "Fortune smiled upon me that day. Your father's whereabouts?"
Da Jiao blinked through stupefied lacrimation. Armoured with thirty-thousand-yuan nuptial funds and steeled for extortion, he now confronted unanticipated magnanimity.
"Advance!" Xu Ling's urgency tolerated no delay. Elder Xu's repute as an honest agrarian eclipsed his progeny's venality—a soul deserving deliverance.
As Da Jiao scurried forward, the Elder's lament trailed Xu Ling's departure: "Motherless from infancy, nurtured on hardship's gruel. Deficient in diligence yet untainted by malice."
Xu Ling inclined his head, deciphering the tacit plea for leniency. Through gilded paddy fields they hastened, redemption's path inscribed in trampled shoots and ingested hubris, where even earth-stained palms might clutch at absolution.
Crimson Crucibles and Clans' Feuds
Xu Ling comprehended that village solidarity necessitated equitable benevolence.
The sombre procession traversed fifteen autumnal minutes to the boar's sanguinary theatre. Ferrous wafts permeated the stillness, though no beasts haunted the scene.
"Father! The physician arrives—cling to life's thread!" Xu Da Jiao prostrated before his sire's exsanguinating form.
"Infantile gambit," rasped Second Uncle, cradling a grotesquely angled limb. "Metropolitan sanatoriums would pronounce doom. What sorcery can this stripling wield?"
Third Uncle keened over stertorous breaths. "Retreat ere the herd's wrath descends!"
Fourth Uncle, femur protruding through flesh, snarled through clenched teeth: "Your bride's porcine extortion seals our fate!"
Fifth Uncle, least marred, contemptuously spat: "A coquette's caprice summons death's chariot!"
Da Jiao's desperation eclipsed their carping. "Healer—exert your arts!"
Xu Ling surveyed the carnage—fractured ribs threatening cardiac perforation, viscera pulp. "No celestial assurances, yet alchemical efforts I'll pledge."
Da Jiao brandished plastic salvation. "Three myriad coins—I'll prostrate ninefold!"
Xu Ling sidestepped the subjugation. "Sanctum sought—now. Osseous daggers court cardiac martyrdom."
Cradling the patriarch with necromantic delicacy, Xu Ling ascended the slope as Chief Xu matched his pace, septuagenarian brows ploughed with ancestral woes.
"Storm clouds gather," Xu Ling divined.
The Chief exhumed intergenerational rancour: "Li's Envious Vale covets our ascendant fortune. Their shadowed cabal schemes—their asphalt dominion's preservation at stake."
Recollection ignited—Li Vale's suspiciously broad asphalt arteries, the purloined saplings taking root beyond boundary stones.
"Discern why we alone trudge through primaeval sludge?" The Chief's susurrus carried feudal venom. "Their elders devoured the county's gold, consigning our oxcarts to eternal baptism in Pliocene mire."
Xu Ling's grasp tightened on the moribund elder. Beyond lacerated flesh, sepsis of antiquity festered—hamlet versus fiefdom, progress poisoned by avarice. The boar's ivory scythes had but cleaved scabs over wounds time failed to cicatrise.
Osseous Alchemy and Lineage's Whisper
Xu Ling arrayed sterilized argent needles upon the clinic's mahogany tray. The patriarch's respirations—ragged and intermittent—synchronized with the kinsmen's suspended breaths, their assembly resembling carrion fowl awaiting thanatos.
"Quell your trepidations," Xu Ling intoned, palms levitating above the patient's sternum. Celestial qi coursed through his channels, cartographing fractures and haematomas with preternatural cartography.
Shears sundered sanguineous garments, unveiling a thorax reminiscent of fractured celadon. Xu Ling's digits traversed ecchymoses—prodigal transmuted to orthopaedist, his ministrations equal parts Asclepian art and necromantic rite.
"Delirium!" Fourth Uncle brandished his splintered tibia as an accusatory sceptre. "Metropolitan iatroi would—"
"—permit exsanguination en route," Xu Ling interposed, thumbs discerning the third costa's displaced shard. The comatose elder's leaden lips quivered as numinous energies sutured ossein.
The clinic's oaken portals burst asunder. Li Ruoxue's inhalation resonated. "By clan tablets—titanic suidae wrought this?"
Her sibling plucked at gossamer sleeves. "Xu Ling xiong restored your costae thusly last vernal equinox."
Ruoxue's complexion blossomed vermilion. "He... conducted such liberties upon my corpus?"
Ruoya's exhalation carried pensive longing. "Had osseous trauma been my fortune that diem..."
Xu Ling's phalanges arrested mid-manipulation. "Li-guniang, your ocular assault disrupts the Eight Extraordinary Vessels' confluence."
Ruoxue's scrutiny honed to surgical acuity. These methodologies mirrored her grandsire's proscribed codices—the Li lineage's vanished draconic osteopathy. How had this bucolic theurge obtained such arcana?
"Fourth intercostal interspace!" Her sudden cry fractured the stillness. "The spiculated fragment imperils pericardial integrity!"
Xu Ling's brow ascended. "Verily. Now elect: assist or desist regurgitating antediluvian marginalia."
As Ruoxue extended gloved extremities with hierophantic solemnity, the clinic's penumbrae deepened. Between meridianal conduits and genealogical arcana, more than osseous matrices underwent realignment—the very scaffolding of power quivered beneath each calibrated adjustment.
Agrarian Theaters and Osteopathic Rites
Li Ruoxue's ocular focus strayed inexorably toward Xu Ling's visage. Though enamoured with traditional medicine, her ephemeral ardour rarely sustained prolonged devotion. Yet these esoteric ministrations kindled her inquisitive blaze.
Oblivious to the sisters' palpable fascination, Xu Ling's digits conducted methodical reconnaissance until alighting upon the fractured costae. His lids shuttered, celestial qi coursing through meridians to unveil the visceral cartography—osseous shards glinting like maleficent constellations within sanguine nebulae.
"Tenfold the intricacy of your prior trauma," he murmured, juxtaposing this wreckage against Ruoxue's past restoration. Numinous forces coalesced into metaphysical plating, suturing fractures with alchemical exactitude.
As saline pearls adorned his brow, Ruoya materialized like osmanthus-laden zephyr, her cambric handkerchief blotting perspiration with sacramental grace.
"My gratitude," Xu Ling acknowledged.
Ruoya's lashes performed courtly obeisance. "Your acolyte merely discharges sworn duties."
Xu Ling recollected their covenant forged during dysmenorrhea's vanquishment—a pact now manifest in this haematoid amphitheatre. Ruoxue averted her gaze from her sister's infatuated vigil, the clinical atmosphere congealing like chilled plasma.
"Osseous alignment achieved," Xu Ling decreed, retracting his qi. "Now commences the shard excision. Are you versed in elemental surgery?"
The sisters exchanged stupefied glances. "In this locus? At this juncture?" their harmonic disbelief resonated.
Xu Ling's gesture encompassed the rustic sanatorium. "Did Hua Tuo require laminar flow sanctums?"
Fifth Uncle brandished his nescience like a flail. "Even tillers comprehend surgery demands aseptic tabernacles! This hovel—"
"—sufficed when shenyi walked corporeal realms," Xu Ling parried, arraying bone curettes with hieratic precision. "Your fraternal pallor recedes—does this not attest to numinous intercession?"
Second Uncle detonated like Vesuvian wrath. "Da Jiao! Would you immolate your progenitor upon this mountebank's altar?"
Amidst the cacophony, Xu Ling's scalpel hovered—adamantine fulcrum betwixt ancestral erudition and modern incredulity, its edge keen enough to sunder aeons of iatric dogma.
Sanguine Convictions and Ocular Miracles
Xu Da Jiao recoiled from his uncle's fulminations. "Second Elder, my faith in Lingzi is unshakeable!"
The patriarch's gnarled digits convulsed over his antiquated communicator. "Patricidal guilt shall eternally brand your palms!"
As familial discord permeated the clinic's paper-thin walls, Chief Xu consecrated their destiny with a portal's resonant closure. The sisters stood mesmerized as Xu Ling's scalpel descended—its gleam faintly iridescent with numinous puissance.
"Ethanol compresses," Xu Ling ordained, ocular organs shuttered in meditative trance. Ruoxue's digits trembled during antisepsis, juvenile recollections of syncope during amphibian vivisection resurgent.
"Attend," Xu Ling intoned, sealed lids fluttering as celestial qi charted subdermal topography. The forceps in his grasp navigated with preternatural exactitude, extracting osseous fragments like a visionless Praxiteles sculpting perfection.
Ruoya anchored her quaking sibling. "He... ocular faculties remain occluded!"
A carmine shard chimed against surgical steel. Xu Ling's brow furrowed—trenches deeper than the five-centimetre lacrima weeping vermilion tears. His unoccupied palm levitated above the lesion, vital fluids defying Newtonian law in qi-driven maelstroms.
"Additional haemostatic gauze," he decreed, the sisters scrambling like neophytes in a hierurgical amphitheatre. Beyond the partition, Second Elder's nicotine embers pulsed synchronously with the patient's renascent rhythms.
When the terminal osseous fragment emerged, Xu Ling's oculars snapped apert. The incision coalesced beneath his palmar benediction—a symbiosis of ancestral alchemy and sutureless modernity that shredded Ruoxue's scepticism.
"Proclaim to the sceptics," he whispered, lassitude embroidering his diction, "the patriarch shall process beneath the harvest moon." The sisters exchanged silent revelations, comprehending they'd witnessed either iatric apostasy or renaissance—perhaps their inextricable union.
To be continuous…