Chapter 1

Chapter 1

When my mother wasn’t taking clients, there were two things she said to me most often.

The first was, “Jingchun, if my life hadn’t been so wretched, you should have been a concubine-born daughter in the chancellor’s estate.”

In a sense, she was right.

My mother had once been the only daughter of a xiucai, from a respectable family with a clean name.

Later, after her father died and there were no men left in the household, she and her mother were sold off by their uncles and male cousins.

My grandmother was sold to a brothel.

My mother, because she knew a few characters, became a concubine to Chancellor Lei of the Lei Family in the imperial capital.

Unfortunately, her peaceful days did not last long. Not long after she became pregnant, Chancellor Lei’s wife grew jealous, seized on some fault of hers, and had her sold to Yujing Tower.

And so my mother followed in her own mother’s footsteps and became a whore.

As for me, I was born in Yujing Tower. Whatever blood ran in my veins, I was nothing more than a little whore born of a whore.

The second thing she often said was, “If a woman is going to marry, she must become the lawful wife.”

Every time I heard it, I scoffed.

What was so great about marrying?

And what was so great about being the lawful wife?

Become the lawful wife of some peddler or laborer, and you would starve, freeze, dig for wild greens, wash clothes, weave cloth, and work the fields.

When the man of the house came back from work, if you were even a moment late bringing him water to wash his feet, his palm would come flying at your face.

If you had even a little beauty, you would inevitably be pawned off as a rented wife or used to curry favor with some local tyrant or magistrate’s son.

Would that not lead to the same fate as any streetwalker?

The only difference was a thin fig leaf called reputation.

Become the lawful wife of some highborn household? Never mind whether someone of my status could manage it in the first place.

Even if I truly married into one, which mother-in-law or sister-in-law in a great clan was easy to get along with? I would still have to manage the household affairs, oversee the inner accounts, and raise the children.

If the husband had a conscience, perhaps he would only bring home kept women and concubines after my looks had faded.

If he had none, then maybe before I even crossed the threshold, there would already be droves of mistresses and bedmaids waiting inside.

But my mother’s body had been ruined from taking clients, so I never dared talk back to her.

I could only nod vigorously, using obedience to soothe her heart.

Yet no matter how obedient and well-behaved I was, fate had no intention of sparing us mother and daughter.

When I was sixteen, my mother still passed away.

Perhaps it was better that she was gone.

Buried three feet under yellow earth, she would no longer be tormented by sickness and pain.

And with her gone, I no longer had to pretend.

So I happily washed the soot and ash from my face, dabbed on rouge, and hung up my nameplate at Yujing Tower to sell smiles.

Sixty taels of silver for one night. No bargaining.

But before this unfilial daughter of hers could even sell her body, Yujing Tower changed owners first.