Chapter 122: The Broken Scholar

Lin Fan returned to Qingshui Town on a bleak, gray afternoon, arriving not on a grand stallion or in a merchant's luxury carriage, but huddled in the back of a farmer's hay-cart.

Lin Yuan stood on the porch of the Azure Swallow School, leaning heavily against his wooden cane, as the cart rattled to a halt in the mud. The young man who stepped down was twenty years old, but he carried the posture of a defeated ghost. Lin Fan's face was gaunt, his eyes completely hollow, entirely stripped of the bright, passionate idealism that had illuminated his features five years ago.

He had gone to the capital to conquer the imperial exams, to carve his name into the heavens with a jade brush. He had returned completely crushed.