Wen RuoHan's Heir

5. Year 4: the Cloud Recesses

Xie An knelt with two other juniors before Jiang ZongZhu in his office. "The GusuLan have reopened their lectures and kindly allowed me to send three disciples. I have recommended you three; you will leave for the Cloud Recesses in two days." He handed each of them a scroll. "This contains the Rules; read it. Learn them. The Lan do not accept ignorance of the Rules as an excuse for breaking them." He grimaced. "Grandmaster Lan seems to have learned his lesson at least...."

"ZongZhu?" The boy to her right's face was screwed up in curiosity.

Jiang WanYin shook his head. "The year I attended the Lan lectures... there was a fellow student who broke their Rules as he entered the grounds. Both Grandmaster Lan and HanGuang-Jun wanted to punish him even though he truly didn't know that everything he did was wrong.... I understand that ZeWu-Jun interceding on his behalf was the only reason he was able to sit for the opening ceremony the next day."

Xie An wondered if it was Wei ChianBei or Nie HuaiSang who was that troublemaker. She'd never met the Nie heir, but she'd heard of plenty of his escapades. And, of course, Wei WuXian's history of rule-breaking, passed down by the few disciples who survived the massacre and war, was legendary.

"Xie An," the sect leader interrupted her introspections. "The Lan are sticklers for propriety; you need to leave your braces and knives here."

That was disappointing. Xie An struggled to keep her feelings off her face. "Yes, Jiang ZongZhu."

Later, while packing her student robes, she looked at her wrist and knee braces longingly. She'd practiced, diligently, to be able to fight seamlessly with both her sword and her knives to the point where she could use spiritual energy to wield her sword and her hands and legs wielding her knives against a yao. To be unable to use them would significantly alter her fighting style. She'd heard that the MeishanYu Sect were training all of their disciples to fight with the hidden knives, and were working with their swordsmiths to create spiritual knives....

Resolute and stubborn, Xie An stuffed her wrist braces into a qiankun pouch. She'd take them out only in the privacy of her room, and study how they worked. Surely the prohibition against unconventional weapons was for the sparring field and on supervised nighthunts? And not necessarily for simply having them in her room? Jiang ZongZhu was right, in a way.... They were not typical cultivator weapons, and the black leather was jarring against the Jiang sect robes. Especially the white student robes she would have to wear in the Cloud Recesses. But perhaps.... Perhaps there was a way to rework the design so that it was less obvious that she was wearing additional weapons. Someday, hopefully before she took her place as the next Wen sect leader, she'd buy spiritual knives, too. If not, then after would be fine, too.

Xie An felt young and stupid and crass once in class. Grandmaster Lan was reading the Rules, and explaining how they should be treated. It was so very difficult to not yawn. She hadn't perfected the act of sleeping while appearing to be wide awake; a trick she very much now wished she'd learned. She straightened her back, pinched her calf repeatedly in an effort to stay alert. So boring. Her one consolation was that a LanlingJin disciple was sleeping! Lan QiRen was frowning every time he looked in that direction. Frowned harder than he did while looking at the YunmengJiang disciples, too, and she had no idea what they'd done to deserve to be frowned at. And then a different boy, his sect emblem was in a hideous orange color was one she didn't recognize, snored! Xie An could not contain her giggles. But, neither could any of the other guest disciples, so....

Lan QiRen looked like he was going to have a qi deviation right there and then. It appeared as if he inhaled all the available air in the room, preparing for a blistering lecture, when Lan ZongZhu walked over to the snoring boy and gently shook him awake. "It's time for lunch," he then announced to the room. "Please take the time to refresh yourselves for the afternoon session." His warm gaze swept the room. "Perhaps one of the LanlingJin disciples can wake their friend?" But then Xie An felt his gaze stop on her. "Jiang Guniang, please wait outside for me."