Unparalleled Artist: Unlikely Hero
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..."
Success
Once everyone pressured him into taking a nap, Yu Jinqi collapsed into his blankets and slept the night away, not waking until the sky had begun to lighten with the earliest traces of dawn. As much as he'd protested the night before, when Wu Ling set a bowl of steaming rice porridge in front of the young scholar, along with a cup of strongly brewed One Fir Oolong, he had to admit that his mind was clearer and he had regained the energy he needed to prepare the concoction.
In fact, Wu Ling had pulled out one of his Aunt Hyacinth's recipes for the tea blend he served to Yu Jinqi. As an alchemist herself, his aunt had several recipes she favored for when she was concocting and this one claimed to help dispel fatigue and enhance the focus required for making difficult medicines and elixirs. Wu Ling didn't know how difficult to concoct Yu Jinqi's elixir would be, but he felt it was worth using a few of his rarer herbs to give the young alchemist every advantage possible.