JustJae

Following his father's murder, Wu Ling's mother returned to the life of a courtesan, disguising her young son as a girl to take refuge in the Bamboo Silk House, a women's only sect dedicated to the arts. Now, as his powers awaken, he'll find himself torn between protecting his family and the goals of powerful cultivators who see him as a means to an end. 

"Wu Ling, I've accepted a marriage proposal on your behalf," the bewitching Hall Master of the Bamboo Silk House declared. "When you enter the Inner Sect, you'll enter under the name 'Hua Qianhu', fiancee of a young lord of the Liang family." 

"Hall Master, that's impossible!" Wu Ling protested. "Even if you ignore my relationship with Meifeng, I might have dressed well enough to hide as a mortal woman but I could never..."

"So you truly didn't realize what you were doing," the Hall Master said, a dark smile on her lips. "Little Ling, you're a natural-born Shapeshifter. I'll teach you what you need to know," she said, her features shifting until she looked like a mirror image of the stunned Wu Ling. "As long as you follow my arrangements and learn my techniques, it isn't impossible for you to reunite with Meifeng..." 

"But you should consider Young Lord Liang carefully," the Hall Master added. "His affection for you is genuine. Perhaps, one day, you'll even feel the same for him..."

Unparalleled Artist: Unlikely Hero

When Wu Ling reached into his cosmos sack, he withdrew a long, slender sword in a tooled, white leather sheath. After a moment of looking at the exquisit craftsmanship, reassuring himself that it met his every ask of the craftsman who made it, he presented the weapon to Su Xiang.

"Mother agreed that if you inherit Father's manual, you can also choose to inherit his sword," Wu Ling explained. "But Father was a late-stage Warrior and his sword isn't something that you can wield right now. You'll need to be at least an early-stage Warrior before you can draw his blade, so we had this made for you instead."

Gently, Su Xiang set the precious manual aside and took the long, slender blade from Wu Ling's hands. The sword's hilt was twice the length of the hilt on her current sword and the blade was half again as long as the one she was accustomed to using.

A New Sword