The holding of a coming-of-age ceremony came wrapped in such a tangle of procedures that it was enough to make a man's head ache.
Sitting below the stage, Xiao Yan watched the youths up above being pushed and pulled about like wooden puppets, and could not help rubbing his brow. Turning to Xun'er at his side, he gave a wry smile: "This coming-of-age ceremony is nothing short of asking for trouble."
Seeing Xiao Yan's helpless look, Xun'er's sparkling eyes curved in a smile as she said playfully: "There's nothing to be done about it — that's the rule handed down for generations. Even Uncle Xiao and the others have no way to change it."
Xiao Yan sighed, and nodded in resignation. Just as he was about to slip into a bored doze, his brow suddenly twitched. Narrowing his eyes, he let his gaze drift slowly over to the left side of the stands.
Not far from the two of them, Xiao Ning was glaring at Xiao Yan with an expression of sheer envy as he chatted and laughed with Xun'er. Noticing that the latter had looked his way, he immediately raised his fist in a taunting shake.
"Idiot."
Spitting out the two words soft and low, Xiao Yan shifted his gaze slightly further to the left, fixing his eyes upon Xiao Yu, who stood beside Xiao Ning. His stare roamed with brazen freedom over the pair of long, shapely, alluring legs, and did not withdraw until the woman's cheeks had turned the color of iron. Only then did he draw back his gaze with a cold smile.
Seeing Xiao Yan behave so, Xun'er found it amusing, though a little helpless as well. Whenever he crossed paths with Xiao Yu, it seemed Xiao Yan would shed his customary calm, and his brazen manner would always infuriate the girl into stamping and seething.
Leaning back into the cool of the wooden chair, Xiao Yan breathed in the fresh, delicate scent of the maiden at his side and closed his eyes with a carefree ease, biding the time.
On the stage above, the coming-of-age ceremony had gone through more than half of its course, when at long last it came to be Xiao Yan's turn.
At the call that rang out from the stage, a set of gazes — some curious, some doubtful — descended at once from the seats of honor, fixed upon him. Much of the reason these guests had come to attend the Xiao Clan's ceremony today was to determine whether this youth, lately the talk of all Wutan City, truly was what the rumors claimed him to be.
Hearing the call, Xiao Yan slowly opened his eyes. The gazes around him, each laden with a different shade of expression, watched him as one might watch a circus ape, and he could only shake his head in silent resignation.
Releasing a quiet breath, Xiao Yan kept his youthful face as flat and unruffled as still water, then, under the gaze of the entire assembly, stepped up onto the elevated stage one measured foot at a time.
The host of the coming-of-age ceremony was Second Elder Xiao Ying. Though the elder had never once shown Xiao Yan a good face in the past, since that day's test he had clearly tempered his attitude considerably. At the very least, the undisguised contempt that had used to stain his aged visage no longer made an appearance.
Gazing at the youth before him with somewhat complicated eyes — one who had, as it were, turned against all odds with a spectacular reversal of fortune — Xiao Ying sighed inwardly. His face twitched slightly as he took up the several items the ceremony required from the table behind him, then walked toward Xiao Yan.
At the sight of the Second Elder approaching, and recalling how intricate the ceremony had been, Xiao Yan could not help but groan. With a bitter smile, he accepted his fate and closed his eyes.
...
Under the eyes of the entire assembly, Xiao Yan stood rooted to the spot for a full half an hour like some simpleton, until at last that wearying web of rites drew slowly to a close.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Xiao Yan opened his eyes. Seeing the various spices scattered all over his body, he rolled his eyes in exasperation.
With all that tedious business at last finished, the Second Elder too wiped the sweat from his brow. Turning around, he strode to the black testing stone tablet and cried out in a loud voice: "The re-test!"
The re-test — that is to say, the measuring of one's Dou Qi yet again. The test held a month earlier had been but a preliminary one, meant to pick out the superior seeds of the clan, for only those chosen among the seeds were deemed worthy of holding their coming-of-age ceremony upon this elevated stage. The members below the seventh grade could only make do with a simpler, rather shabbier affair.
The re-test was also far stricter and more meticulous than the preliminary. This time, the monitoring and inspection fell personally to the Second Elder, an expert at the level of a Two-Star Great Dou Master — which showed, plainly enough, just how highly they valued these proceedings.
At the Second Elder's bellow, the audience below, which had been drifting into boredom, quite suddenly sat up sharp and alert, and a forest of gazes went straight to the stage above.
From the seats of honor, the eyes of the representatives of the various powers likewise pressed tightly upon the black-robed youth on the stage. The very purpose of their visit today was to confirm whether this genius youth, who had once dazzled all of Wutan City, had truly recovered the talent of days gone by.
Ignoring the scalding gazes around him, Xiao Yan kept his face serene as he stepped forward and came to a halt before the black stone tablet.
Narrowing his old eyes upon the youth before him, the Second Elder ran a withered palm over the black stone tablet, feeding a thread of Dou Qi into it, and then straightened up and stood aside, his face set in an unreadable blank. Yet when his gaze swept across Xiao Yan, he could still not stop a flicker of doubt from crossing it: "Is this little one really at the seventh grade?"
It seemed the shock Xiao Yan had dealt that day had left its mark upon the Second Elder. Even though he knew full well that the testing tablet could hardly make an error, he stubbornly refused to believe it. And so he had volunteered himself, without anyone having to ask, to personally oversee Xiao Yan's examination!
Paying no heed to the doubt in his eyes, Xiao Yan slowly brought his palm up to set upon the stone tablet...
Gazing at Xiao Yan with his hand on the tablet up on the stage, Xiao Yu down below could not help a faint frown from knitting her brow. She turned her head and asked Xiao Ning in a low voice: "Has that one really reached the seventh grade?"
Since Xiao Yu had only just taken leave from the academy to return to the clan these past two days, she had not seen that preliminary test with her own eyes.
Questioned by his elder sister, Xiao Ning nodded grimly and answered in a muffled voice: "Mm. Who knows what he's been eating, but within a year, he really did leap up four grades of Dou Qi."
With the truth of the rumors confirmed yet again, Xiao Yu pressed her lips tightly together. She stamped one shapely, alluring leg in vexation, glared furiously at the young man in black in the arena, and raised her pretty chin with a flash of stubbornness: "Without having seen it for myself, I find it very hard to believe that good-for-nothing has turned his life around!"
Drawing a deep breath, Xiao Yu sneered at the arena: "Last time, that lot must have played some trick. This time, with the Second Elder watching over him in person, let's see how you —"
The sneering words had hardly left her lips when her pretty cheeks suddenly froze solid, and the rest of her sentence congealed in her throat.
On the tall wooden platform, the great black stone tablet flared with light. Golden characters, bold and sweeping as dragons in flight, appeared across its surface.
"Dou Qi: Eighth-Grade!"