In Silver Sword City, despite Wu Ningli offering to wait until Wu Ling returned home to hear their decisions, neither Yao Meifeng nor Su Yao needed more than an evening to consider the arrangements Wu Ningli had proposed.
Yao Meifeng had already firmly set her heart on Wu Ling and in the time since he left on his expedition, Wu Ningli had become a more comforting maternal presence in her life than her own birth mother had ever been. Formally joining the family was something she could accept even if things never worked out between her and Wu Ling.
Things weren't much different for Su Yao. Her life had taken a dramatic turn when Wu Ling brought her to the Bamboo Silk House but in her mind, it was only a turn for the better. She'd gained a form of freedom and a growing sense of control of her own destiny in the shadows of the back of the sect.
Moreover, when Su Yao thought of becoming Wu Ningli's direct disciple, her heart warmed at the thought that it would draw her even closer to the elder cousin she admired so much. Su Xiang had felt like she was going through the motions in life for years since Wu Ling left the Shining Blade Hall.
Su Xiang had always been talented and highly valued in the Shining Blade Hall but her gifts had also left her lonely and isolated. Without friends and peers among her sect brothers and sisters, she'd become increasingly withdrawn in her interactions with Su Yao and members of the Su family outside of the sect. Once Su Xiang and Wu Ling reunited, however, Su Yao had seen a brightness in her cousin who had been absent since they were young girls.
Su Yao didn't know if this was some kind of strange fate, her skills at predicting such were far too meager at this stage, but she embraced it nonetheless.
"Welcome little ones," Elder Hyacinth said when the two young women arrived at the Wu family home the following evening. Unlike her previous visits to the Wu Family, Hyacinth had donned elaborate green and black silk robes, trimmed in bamboo patterned brocade. At her waist, she wore a broad black sash embroidered with the twin flames of an Alchemy Master.
If she wanted to, Hyacinth could have added twin teardrops to her alchemy sash to display her mastery of poisons to the world. Equally, she could have added the needles of an acupuncturist or the wings of a healer. In her eyes, and the eyes of most second-rank sects, however, all of that additional adornment was unnecessary.
Members of the Alchemy Consortium might cling to the extra decorations but people in Silver Sword City with the skills to practice Alchemy in powerful sects had no need to flaunt such minor achievements.
"In the sect, you must call me Elder Hyacinth," she said sweetly. "But it would make me very happy if you'd call me 'Aunt Hyacinth' in private the way little Ling does."
"Greetings Aunt Hyacinth," Yao Meifeng said smoothly, offering a simple bow to the powerful Poison Master. "A'Ling always says kind things about you and that he learned almost everything he knows about tea from you."
"Flatterer," Hyacinth said with a warm smile on her emerald green lips. "Did you learn that from him?"
"More like she's covering for him," Su Yao said honestly, not hesitating to sell out her Senior Brother to the powerful elder. "Cousin Ling always says that we have to be careful not to draw your ire because you're one of the most dangerous people in the outer sect and that we must become fearless if we want to receive lessons from you.."
"Now that sounds more honest," the powerful elder said with a light laugh. There had been a time when she gave Wu Ling lessons in detecting poisons that could easily be added to tea and the ways in which a skilled master of tea could brew a safe cup for themselves and a deadly one for their guest. It seems like the lesson left a deep impression on the young man.
"Come, sister Ningli is waiting for us. Today is going to be a little bit different than a simple adoption and discipleship ceremony," she warned them as she showed them into Wu Ningli's small room.
Once they entered, they realized just how different things would be. In addition to Wu Ningli's generally sparse furnishings and decorations, a large work table had been prepared with an ornate silver cauldron covered in serpents. Each of the metallic serpents affixed to the cauldron had their mouths stretched wide, not to strike with fangs but rather as though they were ready to spit venom or breathe fire.
Elsewhere in the room, crystal lanterns had been hung, each bringing a different hue of light to the dim room. None of them were bright enough to provide much illumination but they instead made the room feel like it wasn't really a part of the normal world. Rather, the ethereal lighting gave off an impression that they'd slipped beneath the waves under the light of a strange moon.
"Come here you two," Wu Ningli called the young women, gesturing for them to take a seat with her on the bed. "My sister still has a few preparations to make. While she works, let me explain to you what is about to happen."
"In order for our deceptions to work," she began. "We'll need to go beyond a surface-level lie. Thankfully, the happenings of the Outer City are often ignored by those who live in the Inner City. As long as the evidence we present when we enter the Inner City appears to be true on examination by the Inner Sect, they will ignore any inconsistencies produced in the Outer City unless they are given cause to examine them in detail."
"It's the hubris of the Inner Sect," Hyacinth chimed in. "If they see something with their own eyes, they will believe what they see no matter how much contradictory information is reported by others in the Outer City. They look down on the Outer City as though people who spend their whole lives here are simpletons who cannot be trusted to do their jobs, as well as people in the Inner City, would."
"Still, we'll have to make some arrangements in the Outer City to prevent things from unraveling," Elder Hyacinth added. "From what I understand, Hall Master Bian is preparing to erase some of young Meifeng's traces in the Outer City so that the story we are going to tell is more believable. She's truly sparing no effort for this."
"Meifeng," Wu Ningli said, reaching out to set a hand on the young woman's knee. "Today, my sister is going to concoct a Bloodline Obscuring Pill for you. This pill won't transform your bloodline but it will make it appear to others that you and I are blood-related when they use tools to examine your bloodline. For this pill to work, I will provide a drop of my own Mercurial Mist Fox blood essence."
Yao Meifeng's eyes widened and Su Yao drew a sharp breath at the mention of Wu Ningli providing a drop of her blood essence. Blood essence wasn't just a drop of blood, it was a condensed form of blood that contained the power of their bloodline and a trace of their life's vitality as well.
Blood essence could be recovered if it was used sparingly and there were many pills, like the one Wu Ningli had mentioned, that required a measure of blood essence. Normally, it would be easy for a fourth-stage cultivator like Wu Ningli to offer up a drop, but it was a different matter for someone as deeply crippled as she was to make the same offer.
Extracting the blood essence needed for the pill would likely not only be painful, it would take her at least a week if not several weeks to recover from the expenditure.
"Doing that, however, will only provide an explanation for your maternal bloodline," Wu Ningli continued, ignoring the shocked looks on the young women's faces. "It will provide proof that you are my daughter. We still have to provide a source for your paternal bloodline."
"If you'd like, my sister can extract a drop of blood essence from you that will contain the properties of your paternal or maternal lines, whichever lineage you'd like to continue to acknowledge if you'd like to continue acknowledging either of them."
"Before we go any further," Wu Ningli said, her tone becoming grave. "I need to know. Do you still wish to maintain any form of connection to the family that gave birth to you? After today, only the most detailed examinations of your bloodline will reveal the truth. To most of the world, the only relationship you could prove to your birth family is that of a foster daughter."
"If you wish," the older woman added. "We can preserve your ability to claim blood relationship to one of your parents. If we do that, you could still claim to be an illegitimate child of some sort if the day ever came that you needed to leave our family. It would be a thin relationship, but more than you could claim if we don't preserve the appearance of one of your bloodlines."
"The choice is yours," she concluded. "We can obscure everything, or leave you with a connection to one of your parents so that you could still acknowledge them as family. What would you like to do?"