As Annie, wearing Daiyu's appearance, prepared to take the second martial arts examination, Yuanyang was resting in a chair in the front room of the warm pavilion before the main room in Grandmother Jia's courtyard at the Rongguo Immortal Estate.
It was early morning. The dawn light filtered through the thin, cicada-wing gauze over the warm pavilion's lattice windows, casting a hazy glow over the room, whose floor was covered with a thick carpet.
The warm pavilion was elegantly furnished. Against the wall stood a carved sandalwood couch, spread with a thick fox-fur mattress and furnished with a bright red brocade bolster and an autumn-scent-colored brocade coverlet. The large kang by the window was laid with a scarlet foreign carpet and furnished with backrests and bolsters. The air was scented with a faint incense that calmed the mind.
"..."
In the inner room of the warm pavilion, Grandmother Jia was half-reclining against a bolster on another soft couch. A thin gauze blanket covered her, and she slowly rolled a string of warm, lustrous white-jade prayer beads between her fingers, resting with her eyes closed.
Though her cultivation was profound and she was impervious to heat and cold, she was old, after all. She liked to rest in the warm pavilion for a little while after rising, quieting her mind.
"Hmm?"
Yuanyang was just about to quietly tidy the outer room when she suddenly heard hurried footsteps in the corridor outside, deliberately lightened as they approached.
She immediately set aside her work and went to the warm pavilion's entrance. Lifting the hanging crystal-bead curtain, she saw a young woman approaching, dressed in a moon-white cross-collar undershirt and a pink, cloud-colored, round-collared jacket embroidered with curling lotus vines.
And who could it be but Third Miss Tanchun?
Yet Yuanyang could just make