Chapter 18: Celestial Sutures and Prostrate Homage
The patriarch's agonised moans punctuated the clinic's stillness, his brow glistening like dew-laden spiderwebs. Xu Ling's numinous interventions cycled fourfold before he collapsed into the wicker throne, celestial reserves depleted to profound exhaustion.
"Sutures remain," he exhaled, oculars shuttering like sanctum portals.
"Completion?" The sisters harmonised in incredulity.
Xu Ling's affirmation mimicked marionette detachment. Ruoya claimed the needle and silk with sacerdotal solemnity. "Allow me," she interjected, "my ligature artistry earned academic commendations."
Ruoxue descended upon the rattan seat with performative grandeur. "This regal perch tolerates dual occupancy," she proclaimed, her iliac crest grazing his in the confined sanctity.
Xu Ling's mirth resonated like subterranean tremors. "Did not Miss Li formerly recoil from virile proximity?"
"Epicurean endeavours supersede..." Ruoxue vaulted upright, "Culinary conquests command my devotion!"
Their verbal duel ceased as Ruoya unveiled her embroidery—laceration adorned with lepidopteran ligatures. Xu Ling ascended like a resurrected deity, the portal's unveiling exposing a familial diorama: Da Jiao prostrate before avuncular magistrates, supplicant before implacable tribunals.
Village Chief Xu manifested, consternation furrowing his visage. "Second, Xu invoked constabulary forces. Conciliation proves... arduous."
"Your patriarch inhales stabilized vital ether," Xu Ling oracled. "Consciousness shall resurge within the horological unit."
Da Jiao's frenetic ingress culminated in a tearful revelation—his progenitor's thorax undulating in cosmic rhythm, death's ashen mask supplanted by life's rosaceous bloom. The lifelong dyad of father and son—Da Jiao's sole kinship tether since maternal desertion—materialized in kowtows resonating temple-bell profundity.
"Arise!" Xu Ling evaded the veneration. "Filial devotion genuflects not to contemporaries!"
The banknote-laden card pressed into his palm bore ancestral gravitas. Beneath fluorescence's sterile glare, sanguineous instruments gleamed like reliquary artefacts—modern Asclepius receiving digital oblations.
Terracotta Gambits and Amorous Challenges
Xu Da Jiao's departure in the ambulance left contrails of remorse across the dust-laden horizon. Xu Ling dismissed the receding vehicle with a monarch's insouciance. "Let radiographs confirm celestial intervention," he mused, observing the vanishing beacon.
The sisters ambushed Xu Ling's solitude, guiding him to a dilapidated homestead where Liu Shuxiang presided over clay detritus—the skeletal remains of a collapsed earthen abode.
"Erect the hypogeal oven, Asclepius!" Ruoxue decreed, indicating scattered adobe fragments. "Our funereal offerings demand earthen sepulchre."
Xu Ling appraised the terrain. Kiln construction required geometric exactitude—a discipline Ruoxue deemed beyond his rustic repertoire.
"This edifice shall crumble beneath your ineptitude," she goaded, arms forming an X across her bosom. "Summon Elder Xu's masonry expertise!"
Xu Ling's competitive ethos ignited. "Doubt my prowess?" He selected a cornerstone with hieratic solemnity. "Victory warrants tribute."
Ruoxue's mirth cascaded like porcelain wind chimes. "Stipulate your forfeit, vainglorious fool."
"Osculatory tribute," he proclaimed, positioning the second block in Pythagorean alignment.
Silence descended. Cicadas suspended their diurnal chorus.
Ruoya's silk fan fluttered like a caged sparrow. Shuxiang's cheeks bloomed peony-hued. Ruoxue rallied first, undaunted. "Failure demands tripartite proclamations of inadequacy at the village stela!"
Xu Ling's digits choreographed an earthen ballet, each terracotta fragment finding celestial alignment. The sisters observed, transfixed, as the kiln ascended like a miniature ziggurat—an architectural heresy challenging pastoral orthodoxy.
"Your obligation awaits." Xu Ling dusted lunar-white clay from his palms, the completed furnace casting elongated silhouettes across their duel's arena.
Terracotta Gambits and Academic Machinations
Xu Ling chuckled mischievously, resuming his crouched position to meticulously lay the kiln's foundation. The rhythmic clinking of clay bricks harmonized with cicada drones until Xu Long's exuberant voice shattered the pastoral cadence.
"Brother Ling! Urban escapades demand recounting!" The burly youth bounded into the clearing, military backpack clattering with exotic treasures. Rivulets of perspiration cascaded down his sun-burnished neck as he distributed foil-wrapped Belgian truffles. "My comrade's transcontinental spoils—savour cosmopolitan decadence!"
Li Ruoxue gasped at the gold-embossed packaging. "These confections cost a tiller's monthly harvest!"
Liu Shuxiang cradled her chocolate trove, opportunity glinting in her kohl-rimmed gaze. "Join my hearth tonight, earthen artisans—duck braised in Shaoxing nectar shall complement these ambrosial morsels." Her scrutiny lingered on Xu Ling's clavicular contours.
Xu Ling suppressed a shudder. The widow's predatory undertones now rivalled her legendary pork dumplings in potency.
Xu Long interposed with tactical camaraderie. "Our pedagogue faces suspension—whispers allege collegiate betrayal. Tonight's symposium reeks of conspiratorial theatrics."
Xu Ling's trowel hesitated mid-arc. Memories of their mathematics mentor's apoplectic fury during examination scandals resurged. "What vintage of vengeance ferments?"
"Scandal's heady bouquet!" Xu Long jangled Jeep keys like triumphal medals. "I've requisitioned chariot-steeds for metropolitan masquerade. Will you ride?"
The kiln's embryonic arch demanded fealty. "Patience. This terracotta womb requires celestial geometry before twilight's embrace."
As Xu Ling resumed his clay symphony, Ruoxue's scrutiny intensified. The physician's hands—adept at osseous reconstruction and earthen engineering—now moved with hieratic precision. Her earlier certitude in his failure withered like lotus petals beneath autumn's breath.
"Observe attentively, Miss Li," Xu Ling murmured sans ocular contact. "This kiln's perfection shall exact tribute beyond mere osculation."
Shuxiang's laughter tinkled with forced mirth as she apportioned marinated fowl. Xu Long's chocolate-stained digits sketched imaginary battle formations against disgraced academics. Beneath the gilded hour's benediction, clay architecture and human intrigues ascended in parallel—one destined for culinary apotheosis, the other for pedagogical reckoning. Ruoxue's fingers constricted around pristine truffles, intuition whispering of converging tempests.
Boutique Gambits and Scholarly Stratagems
"Shall the lady honour her wager?" Xu Ling arched an eyebrow as Li Ruoxue's cherry-stained lip quivered, her countenance transitioning through a spectrum of mortified hues.
Cryptic warmth brushed his cheek—a frictionless osmosis of citrus perfume and humiliation. Ruoxue retreated stepwise, lips polished ruby through furious scrubbing. "The Li lineage repays debts," she declared without relinquishing a micron of aristocratic poise. "This dividends-bearing debt now compounds hourly."
Xu Ling stood mid-clearing like a relict monument, thumb tracing the locus of vanished warmth as Xu Long's poorly muffled guffaws propagated. "Enough theatrics." Xu Ling grasped his cousin's collar. "We duel scholastic vipers tonight."
Vesper's gloaming bathed Xu Long's borrowed Toyota Land Cruiser in blood-orange radiance. Aunt Hui paused her horticultural crusade, nodding toward the meditation's sanctuary where sandalwood smoke coiled around Xu Ling's trancing form.
The Borui Mei Grand Hotel devoured their steps in jade-marbled jaws. Lin Yutong materialized, a lobby nymph sculpted from protocol. "Director Qu awaits notification—"
Xu Ling's palm ascended like papal benediction. "This rustic masquerade demands no celestial patronage."
The Azure Bamboo Pavilion's din of toadying revelries crystallized upon their ingress. Glasses mid-clink froze—champagne bubbles capturing a nanosecond of collective inhalation. The monitor's eyes darted between Xu Ling's nonchalance and the mousy academic appendage clinging to his arm.
"Ah, our prodigal sons grace us with their presence!" The Monitor's levity wore desperation's patina. "Three abstinence-negating libations await!"
Xu Ling's gaze mapped the banquet's hieroglyphs: twitching pedagogues, grudge-bearing classmates, and the primly styled girl whose thrice-corrected spectacles magnified venomous scrutiny.
As sorghum liquor pooled in awaiting vessels, Xu Ling perceived the clandestine algebra unfolding—where Ruoxue's impulsive wager and this venomous symposium intersected along youth's asymptote toward mortal gambles.
Veiled Machinations
Xu Long's gaze settled upon the demure young woman, prompting him to address the class prefect with brash candour. "Who's this vision of grace? Do us the honour of an introduction."
A flicker of disdain crossed the prefect's features at this uncouth demand, though his eyes glittered with smug superiority as they darted toward Xu Ling. "Allow me to present Zhou Ting," he declared, possessively clasping her hand, "my cherished companion. These gentlemen are former classmates—Xu Ling and Xu Long."
Zhou Ting inclined her head in polite acknowledgement, though her attention lingered with unspoken curiosity on the taciturn Xu Ling, whose quiet magnetism contrasted sharply with his companion's volatility.
An electric hush descended upon the gathering. Even the most obsequious attendees found themselves struck mute by the newcomers' arrival. Flushing with humiliation, the prefect signalled his hapless subordinate Yu Zhe with a sharp glance.
The sycophant quailed beneath Xu Long's smouldering glare yet managed a tremulous interjection. "M-Miss Zhou is the Education Bureau Director's daughter! A paragon of refinement, truly!"
The chamber erupted in syrupy accolades, none more effusive than the homeroom instructor's grotesque simpering.
"Another performance for his adoring audience," Xu Long growled through gritted teeth, knuckles whitening beneath the table.
Xu Ling's restraining hand descended upon his forearm. "The overture precedes the symphony," he murmured, his penetrating gaze never leaving the prefect's carefully composed mask.
"Xu Ling," the prefect interjected with saccharine concern, "rumour suggests you've particular influence at Boruimei. Their new signature dish—*Buddha's Leaping Wall*—is said to be exquisite. Might we implore your connections to procure this rarity for our humble gathering?"
The calculated humility of this entreaty drew blood where Xu Long's bluster could not. "Your epidermal fortitude could pierce castle walls," the hotheaded veteran sneered, the table creaking beneath his coiled fury.
Zhou Ting rose with imperial displeasure. "You're the recently discharged soldier?" Her glacial tone sliced through the thickening air.
"Last I checked," Xu Long retorted, brow furrowing in genuine perplexity.
"Military service grants no licence for tyranny!" Her accusatory finger trembled toward Yu Zhe's marred countenance. "Behold your handiwork!"
Xu Ling's laughter rang like frost cracking on a winter pond. "My brother metes justice where it's earned. However elevated your lineage, Miss Zhou, jurisdiction over personal vendettas lies beyond even a bureaucrat's purview."
The heiress paled, her tentative regard for Xu Ling crumbling like ancient parchment.
Seizing the moment, the prefect sighed with theatrical sorrow. "Dear Xu Ling, had you simply confessed your lack of standing with Boruimei's proprietor, we might have spared this discord. Must your companion's barbed tongue poison our fellowship?"
The insinuation hung pregnant in the air—a masterstroke framing Xu Ling as both pretender and provocateur.
Xu Long erupted from his seat, a tempest of righteous fury. "Release me, brother! This jasmine-scented snake deserves—"
Xu Ling's vice-like grip arrested the assault as his whisper carried arcane weight. The warrior's wrath transmuted instantaneously, his glare softening into something akin to sorrow as it settled upon the smirking prefect—a panther suddenly conscious of scorpion venom coursing through its prey.
The Unraveling Facade
Xu Ling studied Zhou Ting's wary scrutiny of Xu Long, a wry smile tugging at his lips. Her guileless countenance bore none of the avarice typical of petty schemers—she had clearly fallen prey to the prefect's meticulously cultivated veneer of gentility.
As Xu Long reluctantly resumed his seat with simmering restraint, Xu Ling settled back, his posture radiating deliberate nonchalance. "My interactions with Boruimei's proprietor scarcely transcend formal pleasantries," he remarked, a blade of irony honing his words. "To demand *Buddha's Leaping Wall* through mere acquaintance seems… quixotic. Reserve with currency, Prefect, if your appetite demands such extravagance."
The prefect's grin congealed into a waxen imitation. "A trivial wish to indulge Tingting's curiosity," he parried, entwining Zhou Ting's fingers with theatrical devotion.
"Your consideration never falters," Zhou Ting breathed, her cheeks blooming crimson as the assembly erupted in cloying applause.
Yet even as counterfeit camaraderie thawed the room, Zhou Ting's attention strayed inexorably toward Xu Ling—silent as a shadow, exchanging laconic murmurs with his volcanic brother. A spark of fascination rekindled within her, unnoticed by all but the keenest observer.
The prefect's temple pulsed. "Tingting", he interposed with razor-edged civility, "the matter concerning our homeroom mentor…"
The summons propelled the ashen-haired instructor forward, his servile shuffle clashing grotesquely with Zhou Ting's regal poise. "Miss Zhou", he entreated, voice quivering like autumn's last leaf, "that momentary moral eclipse—I've restored every tarnished coin! Behold—" He brandished a dossier. "Letters of absolution, endorsed by every aggrieved household!"
Zhou Ting perused the documents with magisterial detachment. "My father espouses that true penitence births reformation."
The instructor's relief proved fleeting—a calloused hand materialized, seizing the papers mid-air.
"By what right—?!" Zhou Ting whirled as Xu Long towered behind her, the damning parchments crackling in his merciless grasp.
The Masquerade Shattered
Zhou Ting recoiled as Xu Long loomed behind her like an avenging spectre, wrenching the fabricated contrition letter from the homeroom instructor's quivering grasp. "Allow me to verify my inclusion in this farce," he intoned with razor-edged calm, scrutinizing the parchment as a jeweller appraising counterfeit gems. "My student-era 'contributions' ought to be memorialized."
The atmosphere congealed when his fingertip struck the spurious "Xu Long" scrawl—a child's mimicry of script. "This forgery insults even mediocre criminals." The instructor's ashen complexion mirrored Zhou Ting's suspicion crystallizing into glacial clarity.
With a calligrapher's flourish, Xu Long commandeered a pen and etched his true signature across the document's verso—flourishes dancing like sword strokes, eviscerating the trembling fraud above. "Absolution?" His laughter held winter's bite. "Not in this lifetime."
"Elucidate." Zhou Ting's demand hung like a guillotine blade above the instructor, whose imploring eyes sought sanctuary in the monitor's treacherous gaze.
The monitor executed a crocodilian pivot. "Such venal artifice!" he lamented, clasping Zhou Ting's hands with sacramental solemnity. "Our faith in your penitence was sacrilegiously abused!"
Xu Long's derisive snort shattered the charade. "The crown of folly rests upon _your_ brow, Zhou Ting—nursing vipers at your breast." His accusatory finger became a dagger aimed at the monitor. "Have physicians scrutinize what his pestilence may have seeded in you."
The monitor's indignant roar withered beneath Xu Long's contemptuous ocular descent. "Certain epidermal testaments defy verbal subterfuge."
Three staccato knocks ruptured the tableau. Lin Yutong, Boruimei's proprietress, processed inward with hieratic grace, acolytes bearing aloft celadon vessels. "A tribute to esteemed patronage," she declaimed, depositing one casserole before Xu Ling with a sibylline blink. "Particularly for _our maison's most distinguished benefactor."
The second vessel alighted at the table's heart, its aromatic tendrils spiralling like visible accusations. Twenty pairs of pupils dilated in epiphanic recalibration of hierarchies. Lin's departure left silence more resonant than temple bells—a quietude wherein unvoiced verdicts thundered.
The Banquet of Shifting Allegiances
The ambrosial vapours of *Buddha's Leaping Wall* seeped into every crevice of the private chamber, igniting a symphony of suppressed desire among the assembled guests. Even Xu Long's formidable resolve crumbled, his gaze chained to the gilded vessel before Xu Ling as a parched wanderer might fixate on a desert mirage.
"Does your palate yearn for transcendence?" Xu Ling enquired, the question laced with omniscient amusement.
Xu Long's head bobbed with the fervour of a pilgrim before sacred relics. "Poets' verses wither before this nectar."
With a gesture befitting an emperor bestowing favours, Xu Ling propelled the treasure across polished mahogany. "Partake."
"Heaven's benediction flows through your veins!" Xu Long declared, dismantling the dish's seal with sacramental urgency.
The congregation observed his gastronomic devotions—each morsel consumed a coronation, each audible swallow a death knell for fading loyalties. Boruimei's legendary offering, its value exceeding provincial bureaucrats' quarterly stipends, now served as currency in the economy of influence.
Eyes volleyed between Xu Ling's throne-like composure and Yu Zhe's marred countenance—a living fresco of consequence. A former physics tutor, now professional flatterer, breached the silence. "Xu Ling! To think we mistook your humility for ignorance of Boruimei's matriarch!" He insinuated himself at the table's hallowed periphery.
"Twin tributes!" crowed an insurance hawker turned courtier, jostling for proximity. "Such largesse would make magistrates blush!"
The flock descended—former sceptics now wove tapestries of fabricated camaraderie. "Recall our midnight equations?" crooned a pedagogy priestess, her eyelashes dispensing chalk-dusted benedictions.
The prefect's dominion withered to barren tundra, his once-crowded dais abandoned save for the homeroom instructor's fungal presence.
Xu Ling lifted a finger, silencing the cacophony with papal authority. His gaze transfixed the prefect across the gulf. "Still your restless digits," he counselled with venomous grace. "Friction fans the flames of… indisposition."
Twenty craniums pivoted in dreadful unison. Female attendees adopted sudden fascination with ceiling beams as the prefect's frantic digits clawed at concealed torment, betraying maladies best left unspoken.
"Defamation most vile!" The prefect shrilled, his complexion mirroring overripe persimmons.
His protest drowned beneath a crescendo of derisive titters—the mob's judgement rendered not through reason but through gravitational allegiance to ascendant power. The cauldron's aromatic tendrils coiled through the chamber like serpents of revelation, each wisp whispering epitaphs for dethroned pretenders.
Venom and Virtue's Demise
The assembly thrummed with tacit comprehension, masculine smirks concealed behind porcelain veneers. Xu Ling inclined his head with scholastic dispassion. "Prefect Yao, your transient medical training must have taught you the perils of obstinate self-delusion."
Yao Haodong's facade fissured. "Desist your calumnies!" he screeched, bamboo chopsticks splintering in his convulsive grip. "Another syllable and I swear—"
"A healer's covenant demands unvarnished truth," Xu Ling overrode, his diction scalpel-sharp. "Manifest symptoms persist—episodic epidermal irritation? Lassitude-defying rest?"
The prefect's jugular pulsed like a trapped serpent. Whispered conjectures metastasized—"The Xu lineage mastered the Four Diagnostic Methods," a bureaucrat murmured behind shielding palms. "Observation, auscultation, interrogation, palpation..."
Zhou Ting's recoil manifested physically, her chair screeching backward as if distancing from contagion. "Abhorrent", she exhaled, gloved hands clasped protectively.
Xu Ling's attention drifted toward the homeroom pedagogue, a viper coiled beneath scholarly robes. The instructor's visage contorted—exultation and venom intertwined—as years of sycophantic subjugation fermented into lethal spite.
Yao clutched at dissolution's stratagem. "Dearest Tingting," he entreated, desperation lacquering each syllable, "this degenerate faced expulsion for depraved peeping! His psyche festers with—"
The detonation originated not from Xu Ling's camp but from his brother, an anointed sibling. Xu Long erupted skyward, mastication-interrupted abalone propelling his rebuttal: "Perjury!" Gilded consommé cascaded from his jawline like liquid condemnation.
In the petrified silence, twin revelations crystallized: the sacred stew's steam had stilled, and Yao Haodong's empire of pretence crumbled to ash.
Unmasking the Serpent's Venom
"Ling-ge faced expulsion, shielding his beloved from an oligarch's spawn!" Xu Long's declaration emerged garbled yet intelligible, his oesophagus constricting around the abalone morsel like a serpent throttling prey.
The disclosure cascaded through the chamber, tectonic plates of perception shifting. Xu Ling administered percussive solace between his brother's scapulae, spiritual currents imperceptibly liberating the obstruction.
Zhou Ting's gaze locked onto Xu Ling's silhouette as fractured recollections coalesced. "You… championed Lin Yuqing?" Her query trembled with epiphanic awe.
Xu Ling inclined his crown fractionally. "Agrarian origins prove feeble armour against metropolitan asps." His laconic reply resonated with the acrid aftertaste of years compressed into amber.
Whispers resurged—invoking Jiangnan Medical's ivory towers, entrance trials that culled the unworthy, aspirations atomized.
"By the ancestors—" Zhou Ting's ocular apertures dilated. "Your paramour… bore the name Lin Yuqing?"
Xu Ling petrified. "What sorcery reveals this?"
"Esteemed Senior Xu!" Zhou Ting's laughter tinkled like windchimes in a typhoon, her palm extended in feudal homage. "I matriculated beneath your spectral legacy! The Ballad of Xu Ling versus Academic Tyranny still echoes through lecture halls!"
Xu Ling grazed her fingertips, bemusement tempering formality. "A dilettante's tenure scarcely warrants veneration."
"Heresy!" Xu Long interposed, crustacean appendage dangling from his maw like a buccaneer's trophy. "My brother's valour predates weaning! The Platonic archetype of devotion!"
Zhou Ting's erstwhile disdain for the brash legionnaire dissolved into crystalline mirth. "We inked your saga upon dormitory walls—the Penelope of Jiangnan Medical!"
Opposite, Yao Haodong's metacarpals blanched around his goblet. Crystal fractured with a martyr's sigh.
Xu Long, ever the agent provocateur, catapulted his verbal javelin: "Miss Zhou—scion of Hippocratic arts—how neglectful you are of Prefect Yao's genital canker?"
Atmospheric pressure plummeted.
Zhou Ting's cranium inclined at clinical angles. "Our intimacy remains… unconsummated. Yet what do diagnostic markers suggest—?"
Yao erupted, desperation exuding fungal musk. "Tingting! Twenty-four lunar cycles of courtship—you'd prize peasant superstition over my probity?"
Silence congealed into a vitreous mass. Forty ocular organs tracked Zhou Ting's glacial revolution toward her betrothed.
"I prize empirical truth," she enunciated, syllables crystallizing in subzero air. "The erythema ascribed to laundry mishaps? The nocturnal excoriations?"
Ambrosial vapours stagnated—the *Buddha's Leaping Wall* now funerary offering, its gilded broth reflecting Yao Haodong's disintegrating masquerade. Xu Ling observed the unspooling drama, digits templed in mandala repose, as millennia of Middle Kingdom theatrical tradition reached its denouement amidst betrayal's heady attar.
The Serpent's Unraveling
The gathering collectively marvelled at the class monitor's duplicity—this smiling tiger's carnal indulgences now exposed before his betrayed beloved. The first sycophant who had gravitated to Xu Ling's orbit silently revelled in his prescient allegiance.
The homeroom teacher, sensing poetic justice within reach, rose with sepulchral gravitas. "Since dismissal claims my career, let my final act be one of reluctant virtue." His voice, honed by decades of authority, hushed the room.
"Miss Zhou", he intoned, eyes gleaming with vindication, "you've been ensnared in Yao Haodong's web of deceit. The man is a maestro of duplicity."
Xu Ling observed the scene through half-lidded eyes, fingertips templed—a scholar savouring the crescendo of long-awaited retribution.
Zhou Ting shook off Yao's desperate grasp, her gaze piercing the instructor. "Elaborate."
"Three days prior", the teacher continued, relishing each syllable, "as I instructed him in pedagogy, his device flickered with indecent propositions. Lewd imagery no pedagogue should endure." His glance at Zhou Ting's pallor was dagger-sharp. "When challenged, he claimed the sender was his lover. Yet now we learn your bond remains chaste…"
Yao's phone groaned under his whitened grip, digital evidence threatening annihilation.
"A lifetime of moral compromise", the instructor concluded, crocodilian tears glistening, "compels me to halt his descent into my abyss. Let this be my penance."
Yu Zhe, Yao's erstwhile lieutenant, slithered to neutral ground—his loyalty evaporating like morning mist.
"Your phone", Zhou Ting demanded, voice quivering yet steel-clad.
Yao's carotid throbbed like a trapped beast. "Tingting, I vow—"
A crystalline tear tracing Zhou Ting's cheek silenced him more effectively than any tribunal. Xu Ling extended an ivory handkerchief, his counsel oracular: "Sunlight blinds one to shadows, Miss Zhou. Let discernment cut deeper than charm's veneer."
"Yao Haodong", she declared, syllables final as a sealing tomb, "we are concluded."
As Zhou Ting reached for emancipation, the door swung inward to reveal Qu Xiao and a gaunt figure framed in the threshold—gold-rimmed spectacles glinting like judicial instruments.
"Uncle Yang!" Zhou Ting's fractured smile mirrored splintered jade. "You dine here?"
The bureaucrat's nasal pronouncement carried bureaucratic frost: "Your father awaits in the Jade Pavilion. You and Haodong will attend to him—posthaste."
In the glacial silence, twin truths crystallized: Yao's empire of pretence lay in ashes, and fresh tempests brewed on the horizon. The *Buddha's Leaping Wall* congealed forgotten, its broth now a mirror to dissolution's bitter aftertaste.
The Dance of Power and Pretense
Zhou Ting's habitual inclusion of Yao Haodong at her father's political soirées had long ceased to raise eyebrows among Director Zhou's retinue. The young man's honeyed diplomacy and talent for sycophancy rendered him a tolerated prop—a decorative accessory the bureaucrats humoured, bound by their superior's paternal devotion to his sole heiress.
Qu Xiao's gaze lingered on the girl bearing Director Zhou's distinctive browline before addressing Secretary Yang with glacial poise. "Old Yang, entertain our guests while I renew acquaintance with a friend."
"By all means, Madam Qu," Secretary Yang acquiesced, executing a courtier's flourish toward the neighbouring chamber.
Xu Ling rose with choreographed haste as Qu Xiao materialized in the doorway. "Xiao Ling", she admonished, her contralto laced with mock indignation, "must I chase you through my own establishment for common courtesy?"
"I intended to pay homage post-gathering," Xu Ling countered smoothly. "Who graces us with such august presence?"
The faintest crescent of approval curved Qu Xiao's lips. "Secretary Yang seeks youthful effervescence to animate our gerontocracy." Her uncharacteristic physical proximity to Xu Ling—a hand resting proprietarily on his forearm—drew Secretary Yang's reptilian scrutiny.
The bureaucrat extended a liver-spotted palm. "Young sir, might we tempt you and Miss Zhou's companion to enliven our ossified gathering?"
Xu Ling's glance toward Xu Long—slouched in postprandial bliss, fingers laced over his distended abdomen—preceded his nod. "Deference bows to opportunity." He gestured to his compatriot. "My blood-sworn brother Xu Long. Long, Secretary Yang commands the municipal party committee's disciplinary arm."
As ritual handshakes concluded, Zhou Ting intercepted Secretary Yang's expectant gaze. After a heartbeat's hesitation that saw Yao Haodong's complexion blanch, she murmured, "We'll attend together."
Yao trailed his betrothed like a chastened hound, hyperaware of Director Zhou's obsession with protocol. Qu Xiao's sudden linkage of arms with Xu Ling in a gesture of startling familiarity drew gasps—none louder than Secretary Yang's indrawn breath. The Iron Widow of Nanjiang's notorious aversion to male contact made this intimacy more shocking than nudity.
The VIP chamber's occupants froze as Qu Xiao's entourage entered. Director Zhou's paternal radar immediately locked onto his daughter's telltale swollen eyelids.
"Tingting!" He surged forward, jowls aquiver. "What distresses you?"
"Careless chopstick work with hot soup," she demurred, gliding to his side with practised grace.
Yao Haodong's obsequious "Uncle Zhou" earned him a dismissal more absolute than words—a fractional head tilt conveying imperial disregard.
Qu Xiao's laughter cascaded like shattering crystal. "Shall we breathe vitality into this mausoleum, gentlemen?"
In the taut silence that followed, power's tectonic plates shifted imperceptibly—all orbits recalibrating around Xu Ling, the enigma who'd breached Qu Xiao's legendary frost.
Veils of Destiny Lifted
Yao Haodong lingered behind Director Zhou like a disgraced courtier, his ingratiating smile fraying at the edges.
"Madam Qu," Director Zhou enquired with uncharacteristic deference, "might I enquire after your companions?"
"Xu Ling and Xu Long—cherished associates," Qu Xiao replied, her tone brooking no challenge. "Xu Ling, this is Director Zhou Ye, overseer of the Education Bureau."
Xu Ling recognized Qu Xiao's orchestrated patronage. "Director Zhou", he inclined his head with calibrated respect, "I practice medicine, though ancestral traditions guide my path."
Xu Long surged upward like an overeager sentinel. "Xu Long, discharged recently from military service."
Director Zhou's scrutiny intensified. "Which institution honed your skills, young Xu?"
"Jiangnan Medical University," Xu Ling answered, the name evoking Zhou Ting's sharp inhale. "A shared alma mater with your daughter."
"Father," Zhou Ting interposed, her fractured composure mended with visible effort, "this is the senior I told you of—the one who defied institutional corruption."
Director Zhou's curiosity kindled into flame. How did this provincial youth command Qu Xiao's favour—a woman who treated seasoned power brokers as passing distractions?
"Bygones merit no excavation," Xu Ling deflected smoothly. "Yet permit me to observe—those deepening furrows between your brows disrupt prosperity's flow. The 'Three Rivers'纹 portend turbulent currents if left unchannelled."
The chamber stilled as if spellbound.
"You practise the ancient physiognomic arts?" Director Zhou leaned forward, jowls quivering with intrigue.
"Merely ancestral whispers preserved through generations," Xu Ling demurred.
Three officials exchanged weighted glances. The silver-haired Xiong chuckled with performative scepticism: "Young oracle, dare you diagnose my present quandary?"
His companion, Pan, interjected with mock concern: "Old Xiong offers no context! This borders on entrapment."
Xu Ling's gaze sharpened to a blade's edge. "You wrestle with necropolitan geometry. The western burial plot—its dragon veins harmonise with your lineage's elemental matrix."
Xiong's teacup clattered against its saucer. "Clairvoyant! The very counsel Beijing's foremost feng shui master prescribed!"
Pan's weathered features hardened with suspicion until Xu Ling turned his piercing gaze upon him: "Venture nine li southwest. There lies resolution to your three-decade torment."
Pan's military-straight posture faltered. "What phantom do you conjure?"
"The Children's Palace bears jade-green striations," Xu Ling intoned, fingertips tracing celestial patterns, "converging with the Marriage Hall's rosy glow—a requiem for lost paternity. The child torn from your arms during the Year of the Metal Dog cries out from the southwest."
Pan staggered upright, decades of bureaucratic composure shattered. "If this proves true, the Pan lineage shall erect your effigy in our ancestral hall!" He stormed from the chamber, his thunderous departure leaving vacuum silence.
Qu Xiao's vermilion nails drummed an inaudible rhythm against lacquered wood—a spider savouring her web's perfect geometry. The chamber's power dynamics had irrevocably tilted, and in the aftershock, every gaze burned with recalculated estimations of the rural physician who'd rewritten destiny's script.
The Alchemy of Humiliation
The chamber froze in the wake of Xiong's explosive departure, silence congealing like blood on snow. Director Zhou's porcine eyes narrowed to slits as he reassessed the rural physician—this walking paradox who'd breached bureaucratic fortresses with nothing but a farmer's gaze.
Qu Xiao's vermilion-tipped fingers stilled against the rosewood, her mercantile mind dissecting Xu Ling's revelation about Pan's stolen child. The physician's uncanny precision mocked her lifelong dismissal of metaphysics, yet the proof lay in Pan's thunderous absence.
"Such... unconventional expertise," Director Zhou ventured, unctuousness dripping like honeyed poison. "Might one enquire after your progenitor's august lineage?"
"Xu Wenhai," came the unflinching reply. "A humble bonesetter mending Xujiacun's rheumatic elders."
The director's jowls quivered—no mere village quack sired this enigma. Some disgraced imperial physician's b*st*rd? A Daoist immortal's earthly vessel?
"Haodong!" The roar startled Yao from his stupor. "Serve Master Xu the '82 Moutai!"
Yao Haodong lurched forward, trembling hands transforming the crystal decanter into a carnival cup. Xu Ling's steadying grip carried veiled mockery. "Careful, Monitor Yao. This vintage survived Red Guard rampages—treat it with reverence."
The classroom title shattered Yao's denial. "You?! The peasant who—"
"Kowtow!" Director Zhou's fist shook ancestral porcelain.
Yao's mouth worked soundlessly between Xu Ling's serene mask and Zhou Ting's glacial glare. "But he's... he's just..."
"Enough." Zhou Ting's verdict rang colder than executioner's steel. "Father, Haodong requires medicinal rest."
The dismissal's surgical precision eviscerated Yao's pretence. He stood statue-still—a disintegrating monument to fallen ambition.
Xu Ling inhaled the Moutai's smoky bouquet, its layered complexity mirroring the recast hierarchy. Qu Xiao's lips curved as she observed the alchemist who'd transmuted peasantry into unassailable mystique—not infiltrating their world, but redefining its very currency.
Venomous Salvation
Zhou Ting's glacial detachment toward Yao Haodong crystallized the air, her metamorphosis from lovelorn ingenue to steel-eyed strategist complete. Director Zhou observed his daughter's rebirth, sudden comprehension of Xu Ling's physiognomic warning illuminating like lightning—those vanished brow furrows now portents of liberated fortune.
"Admirable counsel, Tingting." The director's jowls quivered with paternal pride. "Haodong, withdraw with our beneficent wishes!"
Yao's initial flush of relief curdled as he deciphered Director Zhou's gaze—not paternal concern but shackles breaking. His carotid throbbed as he confronted Xu Ling's serene countenance.
"Esteemed Director!" Yao's plea cracked like flawed porcelain. "This mountebank's lineage reeks of peasant soil! His sire mends cattle; his dam sweeps hovels! This—"
The table quaked beneath Director Zhou's wrath. "Silence! We endured rural vulgarity, not treasonous calumny!"
Xu Ling noted the bureaucrat's tremor—a predator's claws sheathed before superior force.
Madness bloomed in Yao's desperation. "Fetch the homeroom pedagogue!" he howled. "He'll strip this fraud's gilded lies!"
In the adjacent den of despair, the disgraced teacher drowned in sorghum fire's embrace. Yao clutched his liquor-stained lapels. "Aid my crusade, and I'll resurrect your career!"
The teacher's laugh sprayed ethanol bitterness. "You'd trade your ancestors' graves for advantage. Why should—"
"Xu Ling conspires with the mathematics siren!" Yao hissed. "Their ascendance spells your eternal disgrace!"
The homeroom teacher's cup froze mid-tremor. Decades-old rivalry with the math department's rising star flared anew.
"Assist me," Yao's whisper entwined nectar and nightshade, "and I'll forge evidence to break her. Your resurrection through her execution."
The empty vessel clattered as the teacher rose—a drunken marionette animated by venom's strings. Yao's rictus grin widened. Drowning men embrace serpents if they promise buoyancy.
The Illusion of Authority Shattered
The homeroom teacher's jaw clenched like rusted iron, his liquor-addled resolve now honed by decades of professional rivalry. Yao Haodong preened behind Director Zhou's chair, triumph oozing from his every fidget.
"Esteemed pedagogue," Yao simpered, "enlighten Director Zhou regarding Xu Ling's *distinguished* ancestry."
The teacher bowed with grovelling theatrics, extending a crumpled cigarette pack. "Honourable Director, I instructed these youths during their formative years. Have they transgressed?"
The rebuffed cigarettes dangled like condemned men. Director Zhou's glacial silence deepened as the teacher's sycophantic grin petrified into a death mask.
"Xu Ling's lineage roots in Xujiacun's clay," the teacher stammered under Yao's manic glare. "His sire extracts splinters from peasant palms; his dam stirs cabbage stews in soot-blackened pots."
Director Zhou's furrowed brow smoothed like silk unfurling. The teacher's bleary eyes finally registered Xu Ling's position—enthroned beside Boruimei's proprietress, his rustic origins transformed into regal nonchalance by Qu Xiao's proximity. Yao stood chairless behind Zhou Ting, a footman in his own tragicomedy.
"You perceive now, Uncle Zhou?" Yao's whisper dripped vitriolic honey. "This clodhopper's no sage—merely a turnip-digging pretender!"
Xu Ling's chuckle sliced through the farce. "I never masqueraded as urban aristocracy, Monitor Yao. Why stage this pedagogic pantomime?"
Zhou Ting ascended like Boudicca reclaiming her chariot. "Father, permit me to excise this canker." Her lacquered nails became talons dragging Yao toward oblivion.
Director Zhou half-rose, paternal concern warring with political pragmatism, until Xu Ling's murmur stilled him: "Let fledglings pluck their own poisoned feathers, Director. Forced moulting breeds festering wounds."
The homeroom teacher shrivelled in the shadows, realising with gut-punch clarity the rural physician he'd scorned now commanded the room's gravitational pull. His epiphany crystallized with the clink of ice against crystal—the sound of dynasties falling and new regimes ascending.
To be continuous…