I Turned a Ragtag Troupe into the Best Under Heaven

The day I joined the Fengyue Troupe, the troupe leader was about to sell the last huqin he owned to cover travel expenses and send everyone on their way.

I stopped him and pointed at the paper puppets and bamboo horses in the back courtyard, made for a funeral shop. “Give me three days. I’ll use these to earn you a mountain of gold.”

Everyone in the troupe looked at me as if I were crazy.

Even our principal huqin player, Xie Wuxian, a proud and aloof man from a family of scholars, sneered and walked away with a sweep of his sleeve. “Putting on a show with paper is an insult to the arts.”

He had no idea that three days later, he would play the most dazzling music of the Great Jing Dynasty for the sake of my “low-class” craft.

And I would use all the paper figures in this room to raise up the greatest performer under heaven.