Savage Wolf, Lotus Heart [Never Let You Go, Again: Book 4]

8: Chosen For This

"SUSU!"

"Little Lien?" Wei Wuxian, who had been teaching archery to a bunch of Lans because Wen Ning, their usual archery teacher, was busy today, turned around. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, sorry, Susu, you're teaching... I'll get going," Meilien spun around and began dragging her feet away. The Lan children smiled and looked up at their teacher. Wei Ying winked just once. And they all ran to her.

"Lianhua Meiren, join us!"

All the young Lans were around her age, ranging from ten to twelve. "Ah? Is that alright? You guys are having a lesson, right?"

"Lianhua Meiren's a Lan now, too!" One little Lan girl cried and took her hand. "Come on!" She dragged her back to where they had been training and made her stand in front of their teacher.

Wei Wuxian cleared his throat. "Ahem, Jiang Meilien, welcome to the archery class. Your normal teacher is Wen Qionglin, but he's busy with Doctor Yuanhua today. So I'm in charge. Well? Shall we resume?" He looked around at the Lans. The Lan children looked between one another. No special treatment to his niece? Wei Wuxian really was a noble senior!

"Yes, Laoshi!" The Lan children nodded.

"Then... since you're all pretty confident with the bow and arrow now... how about we hold a little contest? Two teams. A and B. You six will be Team A, to my left. You seven, Team B, to my right. Jiang Meilien can join Team A. Seven versus seven, hm?"

"Yes, Laoshi," both the Lans and the Jiang girl nodded.

Wei Wuxian turned to Jiang Meilien while the Lan children split themselves up. "Jiang Meilien, how's your archery level?"

Jiang Meilien knew her uncle was in teacher mode so she played along. Plus, Wei Wuxian hadn't seen her archery skills yet. She was beyond glad to get the chance to impress him. "Fairly high. I could compete with them easily."

"Hm? Self-confident, I see, nice. But I can't put you with them without knowing how capable you are. Right, how has Jiang Baozhai ranked your archery?"

"Baozhai-shijie claimed mine to be exceptional."

"Then you really must be exceptional. Fine, I'll trust her word for now. Join Team A," Wei Ying waved his hand.

Jiang Meilien bowed and joined the team. The boredom and loneliness of having both her fathers gone off on a trip was wiped away by the fun her uncle was giving her.

And of course, all the gifts Lan Shushu was buying for her.

So she delightedly skipped over to the Team A children and waved to them. The children nodded back with their much more serene Lan demeanour, albeit happy that their new friend — who all the Lan sect was coming to love since the beginning of her stay — was here with them. They had heard a lot about Lianhua Meiren, about the amazing skills of the White Lotus, be it Zidian or Xinqing. They didn't know she was actually doing demonic cultivation, nobody did. But Meilien had, with the help of her Lan father, come to learn to control Xinqing such that she could use it as calmly and spiritually as Xichen used Liebing. So all was good for now.

"Ready?" Wei Wuxian shouted. He pointed to the targets a short distance away. "Those are your targets. There's five already set up. One member from each team will step forth and shoot one of those targets. Not the same, two separate. When the first round is done, we'll move the targets a foot back and try again. Over and over, until you can't reach the targets anymore. The last player who succeeded will win for their team. Oh, and also, only one try. Shoot, come back. If you miss," Wei Wuxian shrugged. "Can't help. Zero points. Understood?"