"It's good that you understand Little Ling," Hall Master Bian Xing said, leaning back comfortably on a pile of cushions. "I had been concerned that you'd lash out in some misplaced display of masculine pride. Tell me, are you really a man? You hardly look it after so many years of shaping yourself this way," she said. "Perhaps you've been trying to transform yourself completely all this time."
"I am a man," Wu Ling said instantly. While he acknowledged that there were two sides to himself, he was very clear on what his true face was and which 'self' was a guise that he donned when circumstances required it. "If Hall Master wishes, I can change and return in more gentlemanly attire."
"No, that won't be necessary," the Hall Master said firmly. "I prefer you this way. I permit you to present yourself to the world as a gentleman when outside the sect, but within the sect, as far as I'm concerned, this is your true face."
"I will present myself as Hall Master requires," Wu Ling said, carefully not acknowledging the Hall Master's comment about his 'true face.' His true face was handsome and brave and wore far less makeup than he was wearing at the moment. As forceful as she was, he didn't intend to let the Hall Master bully him into thinking of himself differently.
"Let's move on from this," the Hall Master said, gesturing for Wu Ling to pour more of the rich, fragrant tea. "Until you become an Understudy, I have very little need of your direct services and even then, it's likely that you will need to be a Trusted Artist before I can begin to collect on your debts," she said.
"For now, that means the most important thing for you to do is to consolidate your learnings as an Aesthete and become a proper Understudy," she explained. "I will permit you one year in which you must succeed in becoming an Understudy. That said, you only have six months to do it using your own methods. Six months from now, if you haven't managed to break through, I will take a personal hand in your development," she added with a dark smile. "While forceful methods are crude, they are effective. One way or another, in a year's time, you will be an Understudy."
In general, most cultivators needed between three and seven years to move from the first to the second stage if they had the potential to do so at all. People who remained stuck at the first stage for more than ten years often had no hope of advancing without the intervention of an alchemist and some extraordinary methods.
Talented youths with the resources of a well-established sect or a prominent cultivation family could break through to the second stage in as little as two years if the family or sect invested in their growth. The resources required to do so were rare even if they weren't powerful, and the contention between sects and wealthy families for the limited supply meant very few people managed such a rapid ascension. What the Hall Master was asking for, however, was something rarely seen outside of the chosen disciples of powerful cultivators or even more rare heavenly geniuses. To reach the second stage within a year of awakening would mark Wu Ling as an extraordinary talent, the sort seen only once every few hundred years!
"Hall Master, I don't doubt that I can reach the second stage within a year," Wu Ling said, recalling his mother's lesson about the difficulty of transcending a major stage rather than a minor one. So far things had come easily but he'd never faced a challenge in cultivation as hard as the one ahead of him and he didn't know if it would be as straightforward to progress as it had been. "But why the urgency?"
"Because a year is all I can give you," Bian Xing explained. "If you hadn't provoked things with the Sanguine Saber Sect then I could allow you to grow at a more natural pace. You, however, couldn't leave well enough alone," she scolded. In truth, there were other reasons as well, but knowing them would only diminish the lesson she was trying to hammer into Wu Ling, so she said nothing of them.
"As soon as you learned about your half-sister you rushed to send her a gift and in doing so exposed your awakening to more people at the Sanguine Saber Sect," Bian Xing said, her tone becoming even more stern.
"I've already made a move to distract Hong Du," she continued. "It should keep him occupied and away from Silver Sword City for at least six months. As long as he's away, even if your presence is revealed to the Sanguine Saber Sect, no one will move against you until he's returned. Once he returns to the city, it will be much harder to conceal your whereabouts in the Outer City. It would be best if you and your mother have moved to the Inner City by the time he returns."
"I see," Wu Ling said, surprised that the Hall Master was paying so much attention to him and that she'd even made a move against one of his greatest enemies on his behalf. "But now I understand even less," he continued, looking at the Hall Master with a confused expression. "You've made a move against Hong Du for me. You're investing in my training personally. It can't just be for the manual that you're expending so much effort can it?"
"You owe me a debt Little Ling," Bian Xing said sternly before her expression softened. "But there are many debts between your family and mine. Even with all my power and strength, there are people in this city that I could never kill, no matter how much I desired their death. Now, thanks to your mother, most of those people are dead, and those that remain pose little threat to me. You think I wouldn't repay my debts to her for all the blood she's spilled for me?" Hall Master Bian Xing asked rhetorically.
"When a person's debts to you have become a mountain you should crush them with it," she quoted. "When two people's debts to each other have become mountains you should climb them together."
"Who did my mother kill for you?" Wu Ling asked, genuinely curious about what kind of person his mother could reach that the powerful Hall Master couldn't, especially after witnessing her shapeshifting capabilities. As soon as he had the thought, Su Xiang came to mind. The Su family wasn't the only family in Silver Sword City with the ability to see through falsehood, but such gifts were rare.
Perhaps the Hall Master had enemies with gifts that specifically countered hers, but if that was the case, why would she want his help to go against them?