chapter 1

I was twelve when I was sold to the House of Crimson Delight. That very day, a patron offered thirty taels of silver for my virginity.

Madam Chen, the brothel keeper, was just about to accept with a delighted smile when a woman with a full bosom, lush hips, and a tiny waist shoved her way through the crowd and looked me up and down.

“This little thing probably hasn’t even lost all her baby teeth. Does a scrawny cucumber vine like her know the first thing about pleasing a man?”

With that, she swept a fragrant, brightly colored silk stole across Master Liu’s face. One slim finger hooked around his belt as she lowered her lashes and cooed.

“How cruel you are, Master Liu. Yuhuan has waited six whole months for you. Don’t you want to come upstairs and renew our acquaintance?”

One flick, one tug, one smile, one pout—and every bone in Master Liu’s body seemed to melt.

“Oh, my darling. Of course I’m spending today with you.”

Before everyone’s eyes, the potbellied man swept the voluptuous beauty into his arms and thundered straight up the stairs, too impatient to wait another moment.

“Pah! That money-grubbing Sai Yuhuan will take anything foul, rotten, or diseased as long as the man has silver!”

“Exactly. Stealing a little girl’s debut day—she hasn’t an ounce of decency.”

“Let her strut. One day she’ll end up hanging from a rope.”

Perhaps it was because she was the most sought-after courtesan in the house, or perhaps she had simply offended too many people. As lewd laughter rose and fell upstairs, several painted beauties below muttered curses under their breath.

In Yangzhou’s pleasure houses, a girl’s first night was marked with a banquet. The madam would invite patrons to drink and announce that the girl was ready to receive them in the future.

Sai Yuhuan had stolen mine. Everyone else was furious on my behalf, but I was secretly relieved.

By evening, however, that relief had taken on a different taste.

After Master Liu left, Sai Yuhuan sent someone to bring me to her room.

The last light of sunset filtered through the lattice window. Half-reclining behind gauze bed curtains, she wore a robe as thin as a cicada’s wing and made no effort to cover the generous expanse of skin beneath it.

“If I let a little temptress like you make a splash in the House of Crimson Delight, will there be any good days left for me?

“You’re lucky. Madam Chen has agreed to let you serve in my room for two years.

“Serve me well and there’ll be plenty in it for you. I’ll teach you a trick or two for seducing men, and you may even make something of yourself.”

The cloying incense in her room made me wrinkle my nose. She saw the look and mistook it for reluctance.

“Hmph. You’re young, but your ambitions aren’t. What, you think you’re too good for me?”

I shook my head at once, then nodded in a hurry. “I’m willing. I want to serve you, Sister.”

“Good. What’s your name?”

“Yan Suyu.”

“Which Yan?”

“The Yan from Yanluo, King of the Underworld.”

“And which characters make up Suyu?”

“Su as in ‘dawn and dusk,’ and yu as in the jade pendants that chime at one’s waist.”

Sai Yuhuan blinked. She clearly had not understood a word. After frowning in thought for a moment, she rolled her eyes in annoyance.

“Chime, rhyme—what nonsense! Your name has jade in it, and so does mine. Too much jade makes it common, then cheap, then worthless! What business does a brothel maid have calling herself jade? From now on, you’re Susu. No more yu!”

I bristled inwardly. How had she stripped the jade from my name just like that?

Yet after only three days in the House of Crimson Delight, I accepted it gladly.

Susu was Susu. At least it sounded like a proper name.

It was far better than White Wuchang, Black Wuchang, or Donkey-Dung Ball, as some of the women were called.

The girls in the house spent their days fighting over patrons, scheming against one another, cursing, and trading insults. Giving one another cruel nicknames was practically a pastime.

The two women who had cursed Sai Yuhuan most viciously on the day I arrived were White and Black Wuchang.

They were cousins. I heard they had once been respectable daughters of a minor official, but after their family fell afoul of the law, the two sisters were cast into a brothel.

Their surname was Chang. The elder, Chang An, was fair, while the younger, Chang Ning, had darker skin. Sai Yuhuan spitefully dubbed them White Wuchang and Black Wuchang behind their backs.

Another sister was notoriously stingy and always sneaked the cheapest face powder. It caked in patches on her cheeks, so the sharp-tongued Sai Yuhuan called her Donkey-Dung Ball.

Naturally, the others did not spare Sai Yuhuan either.

Her face was round and bright as a silver moon, her figure full and soft, and so she had been named after the legendary beauty Yang Yuhuan. Whenever the women quarreled, they viciously wished that a rope would one day hang this “Yuhuan” too.

Sai Yuhuan, however, took enormous pride in the name. In private, she even carried herself like the emperor’s exalted consort.

She was only a courtesan in a Yangzhou brothel, yet in her room she demanded all the ceremony due a pampered imperial favorite.

Her chamber pot had to be scrubbed with water steeped in jasmine. Her clothes had to be perfumed six times every morning. When she tired of the house pastries, she made me spend two hours each day walking from the north of the city to the south for warm white-jade cakes.

Her temper was fierce. One evening, I did not hurry back until the lamps had already been lit.

The moment I entered, she dug her balsam-stained nails into my arm and twisted.

“Where have you been running wild, you wretched girl? Thinking of escaping? Don’t dream of it. Your bond is held by this house. You could run to the ends of the earth and still be registered as chattel!”

After enduring her bullying for a whole month, my stubborn temper finally broke loose.

I shoved her as hard as I could, but she did not budge. She was five years older and generously built, while I was short and thin. I was no match for her.

When pushing failed, fury took over. I sank my teeth into her wrist.

“Ah!” So accustomed was she to my meek obedience that the bite left her stunned, her eyes opening wide as an ox’s.

“You—you dared bite me?”

My eyes burned red with anger. “Why wouldn’t I? I’d even dare kill someone!”

“Oh? You’ve killed someone?” Sai Yuhuan forgot the pain in her wrist. Hands on her hips, she tilted her chin and laughed. “Who did you kill? Where? With those twiggy little arms and legs, who could you possibly kill?”

I gave a cold snort. “Just now. I killed a grown man!”

“Hahahaha!” As if she had heard the funniest joke in the world, she collapsed against the beauty couch, laughing until she could barely breathe.

“That’s my maid! Daring enough to kill a man. Hahaha! You’ll go far, hahaha—”

She doubled over, tears streaming down her face. I watched her coldly and decided she must be mad.