Chapter 4
The safest place was the one right under their noses.
Within moments, I had circled back to the place we had just fled. I bent my head and covered her mouth.
“Shh! Quiet!”
Having lost us, the guards could only return to report. Furious, the prince rewarded each of them with a ringing slap.
“You can’t even catch a woman!”
“Useless! A pack of idiots!”
They exchanged looks, not daring to answer.
The prince ground his teeth for a while, then spoke grimly. “Fine. She’s only a whore!”
“Turn around. We’ll buy another one at the brothel!”
Everyone hastened to obey.
As the carriage receded, Yumo sank down beside me, murmuring over and over. “Only last night, His Highness said I was charming and understood him, unlike the block of wood he had at home.”
“But—but how could he…”
“Then why did he marry the block of wood instead of you?” I asked acidly.
In Yumo’s eyes, I was still a lowly maid of all work. She flared up at once. “Hua Nu!”
Then she remembered that her life was in my hands and swallowed her anger.
“But I’m a woman. I have to have someone to belong with!”
“Oh.”
When I gave no other response, Yumo sighed forlornly. “I can’t rely on the prince. Who can I turn to now?”
She thought for a moment, and her eyes suddenly lit up. “Of course! The oil peddler is devoted to me!”
“Why don’t I go to him and become his wife?”
This erotic novel, with Yumo as its heroine, described in detail her steamy entanglements with men from every class and walk of life.
There was the wealthy, debonair prince.
The domineering, brutal emperor.
The gentle, affectionate oil peddler.
And her innocent childhood sweetheart.
If she survived the emperor’s brutality and escaped the imperial city, she would head straight for the next male lead: the oil peddler.
This run was merely moving the later plot forward.
I could not withstand her pleading. In the end, I stole a horse and took her all the way to Hebei, where the oil peddler lived.
Unlike the prosperous capital, Hebei had been struck by disaster. Its people wandered homeless. Drought parched the land, the rivers dwindled, the crops failed, and the starved dead lay everywhere.
Yumo was only bold in bed. Everywhere else, she was timid. She saw more corpses along the road than she had seen living people. Her initial terrified screams gradually gave way to numb silence.
I taught her to pin up her long hair, exchange silk for coarse hemp, and stick to deserted paths. Despite a few scares, we reached our destination safely.
The last glow of sunset was fading, smoke trailing from the chimneys. As the final streak of evening color vanished, dusk enveloped the village.
When we found a farmhouse courtyard surrounded by locust trees, the light finally returned to Yumo’s vacant eyes. “Yes! This is it!”
“He lives in the third house in Locust Blossom Village!”
Her voice carried on the wind. Hearing it, a young man peered out from behind the door.
At the sight of Yumo, travel-worn but still breathtakingly beautiful, delight spread across the oil peddler’s face.
“Yumo!”
“Ah Lang!”
Reunited, they threw themselves into each other’s arms.