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..."
"Senior Mao," he said, keeping the same kind of respectful address that had been drilled into him by his sect before they expelled him for the way he 'entertained' young women. "Why do you let Little Boss Gao order you around like that? From what I've seen this past month, Senior Mao is much stronger than Little Boss Gao. How come he's in charge here?"
"Little Brother Dai has a lot to learn," the veteran member of the Mountain's Bones gang said, shaking his head at the new recruits naivete. "Say that around Little Boss Gao and watch how fast he crushes your bones to dust," he added. "He only looks fat. I don't pretend to understand his physique or cultivation, but you and I, we store extra food as fat on our bodies if we don't train our bodies well. Little Boss Gao stores extra energy as fat."