「searching.」
@xxmingyan
He passed the Regulations exam as expected. Good, because it would have been shameful otherwise. A single bowl of red bean soup should have been lacklustre as the reward, but after days of plain congee, even Jiuli, who ordinarily couldn’t stand sweets, found the pinch of sugar tolerable.
After dessert time, he went in search for Jiang Lian. He had received word from his father regarding a strange occurrence back home and wanted to discuss it with the future sect leader of Jiang. He looked for fifteen fruitless minutes and instead of Jiang Lian, found the man’s adopted sister.
“Jiang Mingyan,” he greeted, acknowledging her presence with a dip of his head.
Jiuli did not have the best opinion of the young woman standing before her, even though they’ve never actually spoken. The reason was simple, straight forward and considerably petty. You see, Jiang Mingyan was often seen wearing clothing outside of her sect colour. One would have thought after being kindly adopted by the Jiangs, the woman would show gratefulness by wearing the purple. Jiuli did not know why she chose against dressing the same as her brothers but came up with several hypotheses. The first, and the also the most incriminating, would be that she was vain and did not care for the Jiang purple. The second, somewhat related to the first, would be because she wanted to stand out among the other Jiang disciples.
For what purpose, though? Use her beauty (he shall not deny that) against people? Seduce Jiang Lian? No, he was thinking too deeply about this. If one wished to seduce Jiang Lian, an armful of red bean buns would be more likely to do the trick than a brighter outfit. Perhaps the woman was still in mourning or something and opted for softer tones for that reason?
"I see that you have also passed the Regulations exam.” She was still holding her reward. “Anyway, I am looking for your brother.” It should be obvious which one he was referring to, since the second born son was never as important as the first.
