Chapter 2

To take revenge on Yan Zixiu, I seduced the third son of the Earl of Chengyuan.

He had a lovely face and tender eyes. When we looked at each other, we did rather resemble a devoted husband and wife.

Naturally, Yan Zixiu took the bait.

But however he coaxed and badgered him, the third young master refused.

So Yan Zixiu turned to me.

“Wushuang, you and the third young master aren’t the same. He still has the imperial examinations ahead of him. He can’t possibly take you as a concubine. Once he’s tired of you, he’ll walk away, and you’ll be in my hands.”

I lowered my head obediently. “I’m already in your hands.”

“No wonder you’re the belle of the house, Wushuang. You know what’s good for you.”

I accepted the drug and smiled. “You know perfectly well, young master. It isn’t that I know what’s good for me. I simply have no choice.”

I replaced the sedative with poison and put it in Yan Zixiu’s cup.

I had bought that poison for myself five years earlier. The apothecary had long since closed.

The sedative, meanwhile, had been bought by Yan Zixiu and handed to me by him personally. None of it could be traced back to me.

I brought in the wine and exchanged a meaningful look with him.

Yan Zixiu smiled, congratulating himself on his imminent success.

I smiled too. To die by his own hand was better than he deserved.

But the one who died was the third young master.

Afraid we were conspiring to trick him, Yan Zixiu had switched the cups.

And the third young master’s life was worth more than my entire family’s put together.

The Earl of Chengyuan’s household brought Yan Zixiu to court.

When I appeared as a witness, he fixed his bloodshot eyes on me.

“It was you! You poisoned him!”

Had the officers not restrained him, I had no doubt he would have lunged at me and strangled me.

I backed away two steps in apparent fright, winning everyone’s sympathy.

The witnesses and the evidence were all there. The magistrate struck his sounding block, and Yan Zixiu was convicted.

As he stared in disbelief, I let the corner of my mouth curl into a smile where only he could see.

He immediately began struggling like a rabid dog. “I’ll kill you! You bitch! I’ll kill you!”

Kill me?

In your next life.

At last I could breathe. All I had to do was wait for his execution in autumn.

What came instead was a general amnesty.

I had been at Ruyi House for thirteen years and was already past my prime. Madam Du, however, was ruthless in squeezing everything she could from us. In her eyes, only two kinds of people ever left Ruyi House.

The lucky ones found a lover willing to pay a fortune to buy their freedom.

The others were dead.

Their pus-covered corpses were wrapped in tattered straw mats and thrown into a paupers’ burial ground.

Ruyi House had once had a celebrated courtesan named Mudan.

To get out, she deliberately slashed her own face.

She thought that if she were no longer useful, she could be free.

She wasn’t greedy. She didn’t ask to live to a hundred, much less for wealth or rank. She only wanted a few ordinary days.

Madam Du had her seized and summoned us all to the back courtyard.

Once everyone was there, Madam Du dug her fingernails into the scabbed wound on Mudan’s face. Dark red blood welled out. Mudan wept with pain.

I didn’t know who stood beside me, but we clasped hands tightly.

Madam Du was delighted to see our fear.

“Whores come in nine grades too. The top three are fine young ladies who serve the nobility. The middle three are courtesans who serve the rich. As for those who ruin their faces or catch filthy diseases, they belong to the bottom three.

“And the bottom three take peddlers, porters, servants, doorkeepers—even a dog, if it can pay. You take them all.

“I called you here today so you could think very carefully about the kind of life you want in Ruyi House.

“Would you rather be a darling young lady, showered with affection, or follow Mudan and make a cheap whore of yourself?”

Through Mudan’s fate, Madam Du taught us that no one left Ruyi House without paying a price.

But I had to leave.

Because Yan Zixiu would soon come for me.

At his country residence outside the capital, he had built a pit of venomous creatures. Poisonous snakes lay heaped upon one another, with centipedes filling the gaps between their entwined bodies.

They devoured one another. But once my body was thrown in, they would all devour me together.

In my previous life, Yan Zixiu had set a square dining table beside that pit, with Daughter’s Red on top.

Every time I screamed, he poured a cup of wine into the pit.

“Good children. Here’s your reward!”

The wine was strong. Startled by it, the snakes and insects writhed all the more fiercely.

I never wanted to endure that agony again.

Today was the perfect chance to escape.

The emperor had decreed that the people of the capital must kneel to welcome the crown prince home.

Everyone from Ruyi House was prostrate on the ground now, not daring to lift their heads.

I was already at the very back of the crowd. Behind me lay the entrance to Jixiang Alley. If I could reach it, I could escape Ruyi House.

I edged my knees toward the alley as inconspicuously as I could. With every inch I held my breath, terrified of attracting the brothel guards’ attention.

Only two feet more.

Only two feet, and I could escape with my life.

“Wushuang, what are you doing?”

It was Ruichu, whom I outshone in everything at Ruyi House.

The moment she spoke, every pair of eyes from Ruyi House turned toward me.