Chapter 2
Chapter 2
All the courtesans were brought before their new owner.
The new owner’s face was hidden behind the beaded curtain of a private room in Yujing Tower, too indistinct to make out clearly.
But kneeling there, I could see enough.
She had slipped her bare feet into a pair of purple embroidered shoes adorned with twin crushed-jade butterflies. The exposed arches of her feet were smooth and delicate, their color three shades fairer than the ivory waist plaques worn by the officials at court.
After sixteen years in Yujing Tower, I had at least learned how to infer the whole from the smallest detail.
Anyone could guess that this noblewoman who refused to show her face had to be a stunning beauty.
Courtesans were ranked by their looks. If she were to hang her plaque at Yujing Tower, she would have to be ranked Class A Upper at the very least.
But before I could finish calculating how much gold and silver this noblewoman might fetch in a single night if she ever fell into the pleasure trade, the maid at her side spoke.
“Our mistress is a woman, and knows how hard it is for women. She wishes to dismiss you all.”
“Take your indenture contracts and the silver for settling down, then go home.”
Most of the girls in the tower were overjoyed. They tore up their contracts, took the money, kowtowed, and left.
In the blink of an eye, every courtesan had scattered.
Only I remained standing outside the curtain, my entire body stiff, unmoving.
I had been born inside Yujing Tower. Since childhood, I had never gone beyond Yujing Tower and the two streets around it.
Everything I had learned was for surviving in the world of wind and moon.
If I did not become a courtesan, what else could I, Lei Jingchun, possibly do?
Seeing that I did not move, the beauty behind the curtain finally spoke. Her voice was low, gentle, and soft. “Is the silver not enough?”
“No,” I said, my face wooden as I looked straight at the hazy, breathtaking silhouette behind the curtain. “I want to stay in Yujing Tower.”
“Why?” she asked, curious.
I thought for a moment, then gave the beaded curtain a charming smile. “Because I was born to be a courtesan.”
“No one is born to be a courtesan,” she said faintly. “Are you in some difficulty?”
“A woman with no home to return to and greed in her heart,” I said with a radiant smile, my voice as light as drifting willow fluff, “has no choice but to be a courtesan.”
She did not answer.
A long silence fell behind the beaded curtain.
“I have two foundling homes under my name, and three academies for women,” she said slowly after a long while.
Those were fine places to go.
But why should I become a respectable woman? Just for the propriety, righteousness, honor, and shame that the world cared about?
Sorry, but I, Lei Jingchun, had no need for such things.
Sunlight pierced the lattice window, refracting through the crystal beads of the curtain into dazzling, illusory colors.
I spoke with a cold smile, laying my cards bare before this mysterious noblewoman.
“So Your Highness, the Grand Princess, exhausted all her efforts to bring down the Third Prince just to dissolve Yujing Tower, which was under his name?”
Courtesans had their own sources of information.
Yujing Tower had originally been the Third Prince’s property. The Third Prince’s embezzlement of provisions and fodder meant for the northern frontier had come to light, and he had already been stripped of his title and placed under house arrest.
At first, I had not known who the mastermind behind the Third Prince’s downfall was.
Not until I saw those jade-smooth, snow-white feet behind the beaded curtain, like congealed cream and mutton-fat jade, did I realize this person was the current emperor’s eldest sister.
Of course. Other than Grand Princess Li Zuiwan, known as the White Jade of the Imperial Palace, what noble young lady could possess such bearing and grace?
The person behind the beaded curtain seemed not to have expected a mere courtesan to guess half by instinct and half by deduction who she was. She froze for a moment.
The maid beside her wanted to scold me, but the Grand Princess raised a hand and stopped her.
“Know too much, and be too fond of showing it off, and you’ll be killed to keep you quiet.”
A hint of laughter slipped into Li Zuiwan’s voice despite herself.
No.
I would wager, Grand Princess, that you would not.
Most of the courtesans in Yujing Tower were daughters and wives from poor families, driven by one circumstance or another into the pleasure quarters.
If you were willing to let them all go-and even give them money besides-then surely you could not harden your heart enough to kill me.
“Yujing Tower has another use,” I said, paying no mind to Li Zuiwan’s threat. “Amid rouge and dance, music and wine, bedsheets and pillows, it can gather information.”
“If I use women’s bodies to obtain all that, then what difference is there between me and that useless nephew of mine?”
Li Zuiwan posed the question to me.
“Ah Rong just went home with silver in her hands, but her husband is a gambling wretch. He was the one who sold her here in the first place.”
“Your Highness may care to guess how long it will be before she is sold as a courtesan again. Three days? Seven? Half a month?”
“So long as the world does not change and the law does not change, there will always be women who become courtesans-some willingly, some by force.”
“Your Highness asked me just now what difference there would be between using a brothel to gather intelligence and gain power, and what the Third Prince did. The difference lies precisely here.”
“When a man ascends the throne, the people under heaven he sees do not include women. But when a woman ascends the throne, she can see far more.”
“To achieve one’s purpose, even if the methods are somewhat low, what is there to condemn?”
“In the end, only the one who wins can change everything.”
When I finished, I closed my mouth and quietly waited for Li Zuiwan’s reply.
Another maid behind the curtain handed Li Zuiwan a sheet of paper.
She lifted her hand and read it carefully from beginning to end. Only then did she let out a soft laugh.
“Chancellor Lei’s bloodline, lost outside the family? No wonder you possess such insight despite being in a place of pleasure.”
After our exchange of truths and half-truths, feints and probes, I finally received a rare word of praise.
I bowed toward the beaded curtain. “May I ask what the Grand Princess has decided?”
“Yujing Tower is yours,” Li Zuiwan’s low voice came from behind the curtain.
I raised my hand, lifted the beaded curtain, and walked straight inside. I had meant to thank Li Zuiwan for her grace.
But the moment I saw her face, as if washed in moonlight, the words circled on my tongue and changed into something else. “Then may I ask the Grand Princess to inspect the goods?”
The White Jade of the Imperial Palace, unparalleled beneath heaven.
I had thought it was a reputation forced upon Li Zuiwan by people dazzled by power and eager to flatter her.
I had not expected it to be true.
Yujing Tower and the nearby pleasure houses were filled with beauties, and even I, when I removed the disguise from my face and looked into the mirror, felt I had skin like snow and features like flowers.
Yet before such a dazzling countenance, all else was nothing but dust and mud.
I had never yet received a guest. Rather than entrust my clean body to those lecherous beasts who were worse than pigs and dogs…
It would be better…
Better to entrust it to this Grand Princess, whose beauty was like spring melting snow, whose face put the smoothest jade to shame.
Li Zuiwan clearly understood my meaning as well. With a soft laugh, she dismissed the maids at her side.
A jade incense burner, a cool bamboo mat, brocade embroidered with mandarin ducks; powder melted into fragrant sweat that dampened the pillow shaped like a little mountain.
Afterward, I received the tally of Yujing Tower’s managing madam, along with sixty taels of silver.
The former was something Li Zuiwan gave me of her own accord.
The latter was something I asked Li Zuiwan for myself.
Even if the Grand Princess came to Yujing Tower to seek pleasure with a courtesan, she still had to pay!