The students around them, who had only just managed to scramble back indoors in a bedraggled state, were all stunned when they saw how calm she was.
"That Innate Dao Embryo..."
"Why isn't she afraid of the rain?"
"That umbrella in her hand is anything but ordinary..."
"..."
"Where did she get it? Was it some extra resource the institute rewarded her with?"
Amid the various murmurs, Chi Yao seemed not to hear them at all. She walked straight to the entrance of the teaching building and stopped before Tan Lin.
Beneath the oil-paper umbrella, she tilted her delicate head slightly and looked at Tan Lin.
"Student Tan Lin, it's raining..."
Her voice was soft, yet it clearly pierced through the curtain of rain and reached Tan Lin's ears, as though it possessed some strange penetrating force that overwhelmed the surrounding rain and clamor.
"Shall we walk together today?"
As she spoke, she tilted the oil-paper umbrella in her hand slightly toward Tan Lin, making an inviting gesture.
Yet at that moment, Tan Lin was already frozen as he looked at her.
Not because of her words, but because of the scene before him.
A thunderstorm, a young girl, an oil-paper umbrella...
This image overlapped with some sealed fragment of memory in his mind that had yet to awaken.
It had also been a rainy night.
On a cliffside, a girl dressed in palace robes had arrived holding an oil-paper umbrella.
At that moment, a voice seemed to reappear in his Sea of Consciousness.
"Elder brother, I know your..."
"Student Tan Lin?"
A crisp voice from the outside world pulled him from his memories.
Tan Lin suddenly came back to himself and found Chi Yao standing before him, her head tilted as she looked at him with a trace