Chapter 5
Chapter 6-7
On a night of warm curtains and fleeting passion, I complained piteously to the man beside me. “My Lord, I only wanted to go to your study today to find a book, but Steward Chen was so mean to me. I’m your woman; he’s just a servant, how dare he treat me like that?”
A satisfied man is most easily softened. He fished a command token out of the clothes scattered on the floor and pinched my cheek. “You, you’re just relying on my favor. You certainly know how to play the sweet innocent. Take this token; he won’t stop you again. However, don’t touch the things in the study recklessly. They’re all matters of life and death. If I lose my life, your wealth and glory will vanish too.”
I giggled and nestled into his embrace, while in my heart, I calculated that this mission was finally complete.
Half a month later, a case involving the embezzlement of public funds by the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue shocked the imperial court. Eight hundred thousand taels-hardly less than what was in the Emperor’s private treasury.
The Emperor was furious. He issued a decree to execute all male members of the Vice Minister’s household and sell the female members into slavery. Meanwhile, I-Concubine Liu, once the Vice Minister’s most beloved-was quietly bailed out of prison by my nominal childhood friend and hidden away in the countryside under an assumed name.
This was the “more interesting thing” Su Fengting had mentioned five years ago.
He chose me back then because he felt my words perfectly exposed the filthy thoughts of all the fake scholars in the world. With a little training, I would surely be able to firmly capture the hearts of such men. And as it happened, the imperial court was full of them.
I didn’t let him down. Since I completed my training at sixteen, I haven’t failed a single mission.
Sometimes I was the favored maid of the Minister of Personnel, sometimes the mistress of a Director in the Ministry of Works, or, as in this case, the concubine of a lust-blinded Vice Minister of Revenue.
Those who embezzled a little lost a single head; those who embezzled a lot lost the heads of their entire clan. It was perfectly fair.
Don’t mistake Su Fengting for some great hero acting for the country and its people. Just as I had judged at the beginning, the power behind the Bamboo Rhyme Pavilion was significant, and I was lucky-that power was the rival of Zhuo Song.
So, all these people were the esteemed protégés of Chief Grand Secretary Zhuo. In the two years since I started, I had already cut off half of his arms. It was an indescribably satisfying feeling.
Chapter 7
With one mission over, I returned to the house in the suburbs with Daya. We have depended on each other all these years; if not for her, I probably would have gone to see my mother several times over.
When we arrived home, Wu Ruizhu was still mopping the floor. I disliked the clumsy hands of the cleaning aunties, so I always made her personally squat on the floor to scrub it.
Su Fengting had eventually given her to me as a maid. Originally, I wanted to use her identity to boost my own status to become the top courtesan, while Su Fengting wanted me to learn the cold, noble air she possessed.
After all, a shell of a pure plum blossom with the heart of a passionate begonia is the type men love most.
Unfortunately, she has completely changed now.
The scar on her face was still very prominent. Yaoniang, the girl with the best makeup skills in the Bamboo Rhyme Pavilion, had once offered to design a floral forehead ornament to cover it, but Wu Ruizhu had spat back at her, calling it filthy.
After five years as a maid, her gentle young lady appearance was long gone. What little pride remained from her noble birth was now entirely contained in her sharp, shrewish tongue.
Seeing me return, she even forgot she was chewing on a steamed bun and barked, “Oh, look who’s back from crawling out of another ugly monster’s bed. Try not to vomit when you’re sleeping tonight.”
I looked at the bun that had fallen into the dirty water, crouched down, peeled off the outer skin, and ate it bite by bite.
“Eldest Miss Wu is truly extravagant, willing to waste such a good white flour bun. Sisi, why don’t you tell her what the world outside looks like right now?”
Sisi was the maid Su Fengting gave me. She traveled between my house and the Bamboo Rhyme Pavilion-an intelligence expert who knew which poems the girls wrote and how much money the pimps had lost gambling.
She said to Wu Ruizhu with a beaming smile, “Oh, I just happened to hear Young Master Zhang tell a joke today. He said the storytellers in the teahouses have been making up more nonsense lately, claiming that among the refugees five miles outside the city, a living child can’t even be traded for a coarse grain bun. Those parents are so hungry they can only swap children to eat each other.”
“That story made Young Master Zhang laugh for a long time, saying how could a child possibly be worth less than a bun.”
After finishing the bun, I licked the crumbs off my fingers and smiled at her. “Five miles outside the city isn’t very far. Does Eldest Miss Wu want to go try for herself? See if this bun can really trade for a person to come back and do your work for you?”
Her face flushed, but she still argued, “If you hadn’t suddenly come back, would the bun have fallen into the water? Besides, did I say I wouldn’t eat it just because it fell? You’re just being meddlesome.”
Truly beyond help.
I stood up and ordered, “Since her mouth is so tough, her stomach must be just as tough. There’s no need for her to eat for the next two days.”
The people in the house were long used to these frequent arguments and all walked past with their heads down.
Hearing that there would be no food, Wu Ruizhu slammed the rag onto the floor and shouted, “Since you hate me so much, why did you ask for me to be your maid in the first place? Does it make you happy to humiliate people like this?”
I ignored her and went back to my room. If I hadn’t used you as a stepping stone back then, how could I have won back Zheng Mama’s heart? You’re as naive as ever.