Chapter 1
Chapter 1
By custom, once the war ended, army prostitutes like us were sold to the lowest brothels.
Every sort of customer went there—old men, boys, sadists, perverts. It was no place for a human being.
That was why, three days earlier, the younger women had begun trying every trick they knew to entice soldiers.
These men had survived the war. They would return home with rewards proportionate to their service. Even if a soldier already had a wife, becoming his hidden mistress was still better than what awaited us.
Zheng Yuan first appeared when a brute tried to take me home as his concubine. After I refused, he flew into a rage and threw me onto my cot.
“Bitch! You’re a criminal official’s daughter and an army whore, yet you still think you’re some precious young lady? The young general kept the rest of us from getting a taste before. Now it’s my turn—”
Before he could finish, someone seized him by the collar and hurled him to the ground.
I scrambled upright in terror and saw Zheng Yuan.
He carried the brute outside as easily as if he were holding a chick.
The man cursed at first. Soon, there was silence.
When Zheng Yuan returned, he stood at the tent entrance like a mountain, blocking out all the light. His sun-browned body was solid and powerful. Sweat ran down his neck and pooled in the hollow of his collarbone. He watched me while catching his breath but said nothing.
After what felt like an eternity, he managed three words.
“I can do it.”
It sounded cryptic, but I understood.
That brute was not the only man who had approached me. Five or six soldiers had offered to take me home, and some had even promised to make me their lawful wife.
After all, I had once been the cherished daughter of the Minister of Revenue. I could play the qin, play chess, write, and paint, and my beauty alone had once been famous throughout the capital.
I had refused every one of them.
This time, I held Zheng Yuan’s gaze. He stiffly looked away.
His face was set as though someone owed him a fortune, yet the tips of his ears had turned scarlet.
“I need to think,” I said.
After he left, a feeble voice came from the corner.
“He may be the last one.”
The speaker was the only other woman still there, an old prostitute terminally ill and with little time left.
She smiled at me.
“Little Hongliu, if he is willing to take you away, go with him. Who are you waiting for? Young General Pei, who is about to marry a princess in a blaze of glory?”
She knew there was something between Pei Qingfeng and me. Otherwise, I could not have lived as an army prostitute without serving other men, leaving only every other night with my qin in my arms.
Only Pei Qingfeng, now covered in military glory, could have granted me such a privilege.
She believed he treated me as a plaything and that I should stop yearning for a man forever beyond my reach.
What she did not know was that I had never been the one who refused to let go.