Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Memories flooded back like a tide, surging back to three years ago.

Actually, when I first arrived at the Drunken Spring Pavilion, I didn’t believe in transmigration.

I thought it was all just some absurd prank.

That was until the Bawd’s skeletal fingers pinched my chin-

She tilted my face back as if weighing a slab of pork, her murky eyes filled with nothing but calculation.

“Tsk. We actually got a real beauty in this batch.”

Beside me, a bound girl struggled and cried out:

“Let me go! I’m from a respectable family! I was kidnapped by human traffickers!”

*Slap-*

The Bawd delivered a backhanded strike, the sound crisp and loud.

“Once you step through the doors of my Drunken Spring Pavilion, you belong to me! Still think you’re some pure young lady? Dream on!”

Her words were directed at the girl.

But her cold, predatory gaze was pinned firmly on my face.

“Listen up, all of you. Behave, and you’ll have good days ahead. But if you’re disobedient and try to run…”

She let out a cold sneer, her tone grim.

“I have plenty of ways to make you wish you were dead!”

…

That night, we were all crammed into a communal dormitory.

In the middle of the night, I got up in the dark.

The moment my feet touched the floor, someone grabbed my wrist.

I looked back to find the girl who had made the biggest scene during the day.

As soon as I saw her face clearly, my whole body shuddered.

That youthful face looked seventy to eighty percent like my younger sister, who had died young.

“Do you want to escape too? Let’s go together.”

She said her name was Xizhu and that she was very familiar with this area of the Capital City’s backstreets.

Capital City?

The name made my heart skip a beat.

But I nodded quickly regardless.

Perhaps it was because her face so closely resembled my sister’s that I felt an inexplicable sense of closeness to her.

The front courtyard of the Drunken Spring Pavilion was bustling with song and dance, so we had to circle around to the back.

Facing the high walls, Xizhu didn’t hesitate to crouch down.

“Step on me to get up first, then pull me up!”

The moment I climbed over the wall, a sliver of delusion still lingered in my heart-

Perhaps outside the wall would be the break area of a period drama Film Set, or the neon lights of a modern city.

But there was nothing.

What met my eyes were flagstone roads, upturned eaves, and rows upon rows of ancient-style buildings.

Further in the distance, a majestic palatial city lay silent in the night, its vermilion palace walls over ten meters high.

There was not a single trace of the modern world here.

My body went cold. I gripped Xizhu’s arm, my voice trembling.

“What… what year is it?”

Xizhu gave me a strange look.

“It’s the third year of Dajing. Sister, did you scramble your brains when you fell?”

The Dajing Dynasty?

I had never seen this name in any history book.

Was this an alternate history, or the world of a novel?

Shock hit me like a bucket of ice water. Before I could recover my senses, the sound of chaotic footsteps came from behind us.

“Over there! Catch them!”

The Bawd had arrived with the brothel servants and thugs in pursuit!

We ran desperately, but in the end, we were pinned ruthlessly to the ground.

Like two fish caught in a net.