Love Beyond Limits

Chapter 4: Opening Ceremony

The Opening Ceremony is a special event to commemorate the start of the Lan Lecture. It is the day where the teachers and students have a chance to get to know each other, and offer gifts as their sign of gratitude to Lan Qiren, the head teacher, who will supervise them for the next six months.

Together with Lan Qiren, three other teachers will be part of the lectures namely Rayu-Laoshi, Kin-Laoshi and Haya-Laoshi. All are previous students of Lan Qiren and now became his sub-teacher apprentice who will assist him in giving lectures to the fifteen junior cultivators who are inside the hall that time.

They were also joined by Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian and Lan Xichen to witness such a special event.

Lan Qiren gave the students a special message to finally start the day. In his speech, he welcomed the students to Cloud Recesses and addressed to them what they can expect for their six month stay. He also emphasized about the obedience to the rules listed on the Wall of Discipline other than those rules that were temporarily lifted because of their arrival. He was so against it but Lan Xichen explained the necessity to not make the students feel constrained.

Rayu-laoshi continued the message and this time he explained important matters about the changes in the curriculum of the Lan Lecture. There are three major highlights in his speech.

First, because of the changes in the cultivation system throughout the years and the Emperor's recent rulings that all organizations and associations created by laws must be registered and must work with the government at will, a certification system for cultivators was introduced.

Second, the certification system will be part of the Lan lectures curriculum and so with the approval of the Cultivator's Alliance headed by the Chief Cultivator and the ten commanders, students who will pass the Lan Lectures will receive the certification without taking the national examination.

Lastly, the Lan Lectures will be composed of theoretical lectures and practical applications of their learnings. Other than the assessment of their performance during the lectures, the students need to undergo two major examinations and they need to pass both in order to complete the entire Lan Lecture session.

The students have different opinions regarding the announcements. Some are happy because they don't need to take the National Examination anymore once they complete the six month lesson but others now think that they should take the lesson seriously which lessens the fun of attending it. Some of them thought that being in Cloud Recesses is like a way to escape their residence for a short period of time and have fun without anyone looking after them. They are the first batch who will undergo this transition which means they are the test subject if this new system will work out.

There are fifteen students from six different Cultivator Sects, the Gusu Lan Sect, the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, the Lanling Jin Sect, the Qinghe Nie Sect, Baling Ouyang Sect and the Yingchuan Haoyu Sect. As the first batch who will undergo the transition of certification, most of the students are someone who has a high profile in their own clan or someone who is skilled and talented, despite their age and gender. One reason why the list of students was very diverse.

The Lan Clan had four representatives from the main branch: Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi and for the subsidiary was Lan Jeisu and San Chunglei. All four were chosen by Lan Xichen.

The gifting to the Head teacher by the students outside of Lan Clan started by the Lanling Jin representatives Jin Ling, Jin Wumei and Chao Xing.

"Jin Ling, Jin Wumei and Chao Xing of the Lanling Jin Sect are here to give respect." Jin Ling vowed. Chao Xing handed the gift to Jin Ling to give to Lan Qiren. "Please accept our token of appreciation," he added. "Lanling Jin wanted to give you this book of poems that was written by Haika, a famous poet who uses her own blood as a medium of writing and topics about her own sentiment and grave. We hope this can be part of your collection in your Book's Pavilion."