Three days later both Wu Ling and Su Xiang had dressed up in their new finery and climbed into a carriage with Su Yao and her parents for the long ride around the Outer Wards to reach their destination. Su Yao's father, Su Jixin, carried the refined dignity one would expect of a Novice Scholar with a neatly trimmed mustache and a short beard that complimented his sharp, angular features.
Her mother, Zou Suyin, sitting on the opposite side of Su Yao from her husband, resembled her daughter enough to pass for her older sister rather than her mother. She wore her long dark hair in elaborate braids and carried herself with the refined poise that the Pure Virtue Musician's Hall instilled in the older Aesthete many years before either Wu Ling or her daughter had enrolled there. Only her eyes, midnight black rather than the signature Su family sapphire distinguished set her apart from being an older looking mirror image of her daughter.
