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 Hua Jue prepared the Heart Seizing Foxglove Mantra for Wu Ling she distilled many of the techniques used by her previous incarnation, the Calamity Star Zhai Xing, into a set of powerful techniques that Wu Ling could use as an assassin.

Many of those techniques were beyond his reach at the moment. As a Drifter, Wu Ling needed to find the elements of the word 'Deadly' that would shape his Soul Garden and empower the techniques that would follow.

Thankfully, power that flowed from his soul could be combined with power that flowed from his heart. While there were techniques that directly assaulted the soul of his targets, those would come later. For now, it was sufficient to develop a technique that could be combined with his abilities as an artist.

'Hidden Danger' was the first foundational technique in the Mantra. Cultivating it would require him to create spaces in his soul garden that were tucked away from view where a dangerous item could be placed.

A Deadly Approach