The time when the elementary school let out was about the same as when the martial arts school finished training; both held classes in the morning.
They provided one meal at noon, then waited for the adults at home to come pick them up in the afternoon.
This schedule happened to suit Fang Yuan well.
When the carriage from Chen Wei's household, its blue cloth curtains padded with cotton, creaked to a stop before the academy gates, the place was already crowded with figures.
The snow had yet to stop. Fine flakes draped the academy's ancient gate lintel and the crowd waiting in the open space outside with a thin veil of white.
Most of those waiting were women, elderly people, or housekeepers and nursemaids accompanied by servants. They gathered in twos and threes,
speaking softly as their gazes occasionally turned toward the academy's two tightly shut vermilion gates.
The white mist of their breath spread through the frigid air, mingling with the murmur of conversation.
With his tall, upright figure and handsome features, Fang Yuan stood out conspicuously among them.
Though he wore only the ordinary dark-blue fitted clothes of the Martial Arts School, the composed bearing tempered through life-and-death battles and an unfathomable Cultivation Method
set him entirely apart from the women, children, and elderly people around him, with their air of everyday life.
A few elderly women beside him, carrying vegetable baskets and clearly here to pick up their grandchildren along the way, kept looking him over as they whispered:
"Oh my, whose young man is this? He's truly handsome!"
"Exactly. With those looks and that bearing, he must be some young master from the city. Ah, what a pity—he looks married with children already. Otherwise..."
Their voices were not loud, yet they drifted clearly into his