The sky was just beginning to brighten.
The door of the Gu Family Courtyard was knocked on.
The knocking was neither hurried nor slow, yet it carried an air of determination.
Gu Lan yawned as she went to open the door.
"Who is it, so early..."
The latch was just pulled open.
The remaining half of Gu Lan's yawn got stuck in her throat.
Outside the door.
A crowd of people stood there, dark and dense.
They weren't hooligans looking for trouble.
Nor were they the neighbor borrowing onions.
Uniformly dressed in Zhongshan suits, uniformly gray-haired, uniformly thick-rimmed glasses.
Each had a small school badge pinned on their chest.
From Peking University.
And next door, Qing University.
And the Science Academy...
Gu Lan's knees went weak, she almost knelt down.
These faces, she had seen in the school's bulletin boards!
The one on the far left was Elder Liu from the Physics Department!
