Liao Hua was led through the entrance parlour of the Crimson Leaf Pagoda, an elegant name for a brothel. It was a multileveled affair once she entered. A central annex that was surrounded by an interior balcony reached by stairs to the left and right relative to the entrance.


    Wooden doors gilded with metal designs were placed at regular intervals around the balcony, shielded by paper screens showing the very lewd acts Hua had been expecting. There were three such levels and the number of rooms decreased the higher you rose. Hung from the railings of the third level were bolts of gauzy silk that fluttered about from the air brought in by hidden vents in the ceiling, their bottoms just brushing the ground floor.


    The annex had many elegant tables scattered about, comfortable benches accompanying them. Dozens of candles illuminated the annex and the multitude of incense censers burning with the scents of sandalwood, cloves, and frankincense left a haze that further obscured the annex. More screens offered the impression of privacy but then again, did you care how much of you that your fellow purveyor of flesh saw?


    Across the entrance were more screens and greater layers of fabric. Hua inhaled, scenting tea, spices, and sweat. Melted sugar as well. The kitchen, then. She could hear only a few people in there. If she strained, she could tell most of the rooms were empty.


    “The Young Mistress’ servant has informed this old lady of her purpose in visiting my establishment. The acquisition of the Lady Song Song.”


    “Where is Liu Xin?”


    “He is… handling the matter so that the Young Mistress need not. It was implied that this was to the Young Mistress’ preference. To avoid dealing with mortals.”


    Hua wasn’t going to gainsay Liu Xin on the matter if it meant she had to interact less with irritating mortals. “And yet, that does not answer the question.”


    “He is negotiating for the release of Lady Song on the upper floors. Please, allow this old lady to serve. Unless you would prefer any of the boys in our employ.” She flared open her fan and hit her smile. “Or any of the younger ladies in our employ.”


    Hua levelled a withering gaze at the Madame and pointedly flashed the white ribbon around her arm. The Madame’s mischievous gaze softened just slightly.


    “One might argue that is a greater reason for the comfort of a warm embrace. Ah, but forgive this old lady who has spent far too long dealing with matters of flesh. Please, sit here. It is the most comfortable seat.”


    Hua sat on the pillowed bench. Fuck, but it really was comfortable. She couldn’t help the indolent slouch as her muscles relaxed and removed her conical hat.


    The Madame rang a small bell. From the drapes veiling the kitchen emerged two people, one girl and one boy. They were both older than Hua, but they trended towards the youngest who could legally work in a brothel. A likely concession to Hua’s own youth. They carried silver trays inlaid with that pervasive leaf patterning. They were both pretty, dressed in robes that just passed the bar of decency, but in their loping strides, the girl’s milk-pale ankle was exposed. Just a thin line of white flesh above her vibrant lotus shoes.


    Hua made certain not to stare at the girl as they arrayed the many cups, bowls, jugs and assortment of snacks. She was not unattractive, what with her elegantly painted face and delicate bones, but her dark eyes left a bitter seed in Hua’s chest. That seed grew quickly, creeping up her chest as the girl leaned over the table, her robe slipping to reveal the column of her neck. Leaves of bitterness grew at the smile Hua was offered, equal parts demure and alluring.


    Far too late, she realised she was staring. Hadn’t been able to look away for a moment. Fallen into complacency at the first kind smile she’d been offered.


    “The Young Mistress has beautiful eyes. Would she prefer tea or wine?”


    A great crash distracted her before Hua said something foolish. She drew her attention to a door on the second floor. Was that a fight going on? It had the right rhythmic pounding for one, thump-thump-thump. A screech as something heavy was moved. The sound of a bed splintering. ‘You fucking whore!’ Odd, given that this was a whorehouse. That was the same as falling on a spear and being surprised you were in pain.


    The serving girl’s smile became strained. It allowed Hua to compose herself.


    “Wine. Very much wine.” Hua gave her a saccharine smile in return. “How do you endure such vigorous customers?”


    “With practice, even the unruliest men can be tamed.” Then her smile returned to the business of seduction and pacification. She poured wine in a cup and presented it to Hua. “But I’ve found curious ladies to be the most rewarding.”


    “You go beyond yourself.”


    “Is that not what the Young Mistress enjoys most?”


    Maybe Hua could deal with mortals if they were both brave and pretty. She took the beautifully engraved porcelain cup. It was warmed appropriately. The reflection of her golden gaze outshone the amber liquid. The aroma of it was potent, layered heavily. Spices and botanicals. Light incense by a lake hidden in the depths of the forests and you could understand some of the layers in the wine. The first sip she took, the wine clung to her tongue and coated the roof of her mouth. The was no burn, not until it hit the back of her throat, and even then, it was gentle.


    This rice wine was impeccable. Beautiful cups, beautiful wine, and beautiful women. I can never come back here.


    “Has Madame served this Young Mistress from her reserved stores of wine?” she asked, still watching the alluring girl as she assembled a serving of varied snacks.


    “One must always prepare the best for an honoured guest. It is a new method. They keep the wine in oaken barrels for years before unveiling it. Imparts additional flavours.”


    “Would the Young Mistress like to take some home?” the girl asked, flashing her a mischievous smile. On the side table, she set down a platter with almond cakes and candied ginger, apricot slices and rice balls, and a set of deep-black chopsticks. “One would be delighted to personally serve the Young Mistress.”


    The walls shuddered. Hua followed the sound to the third floor, amused to hear the distinct sound of wood wailing on human flesh. It was a sound she had become increasingly familiar with. Liu Xin was clearly having fun.


    “Perhaps I should go assist my servant,” she mused, picking up a piece of ginger. Caramelised sugar crunched when she bit into it before the softer centre was exposed.


    The Madame shuddered at that idea. “Young Mistress, surely you cannot leave before a fine performance.”


    Ah, so they did fear Hua getting involved. A martial artist took time and effort to inflict the same kind of devastation a Cultivator could in moments. Hua had destroyed a solid boulder like it was nothing and all it cost was a bit of energy.


    Hua nodded, sweeping her hand in a permissive gesture. The serving girl rose, stretching out sinuously to her full height. She wouldn’t come up to Hua’s shoulder. Easy to lift, easy to move. Hua swallowed as the back of her robe dragged down slightly and more of her neck was revealed. The divots of her spine, the uniformity of her soft skin. Hua’s gaze fell downwards as the girl walked away with great elegance. Down and down her eyes went, stopping at her shoes. The courtesan had tiny feet, but the sound of her gait was wrong to have true lotus feet, Hua noted. The pooling heat in her gut cooled slightly. How disappointing.


    There was a raised platform to the left side. Hua had an unobstructed view and watched the girl take a seat on a plush cushion. She knelt like honey poured in a bottle, boneless. As if Hua needed more convincing to watch. The boy arrived moments later with a zither. Hua hadn’t noticed him leave. Had stopped paying attention to anything but the courtesan.


    The girl dragged her fingers along the strings. The sound that made was like long nails walking down her spine. Then the boy hummed a resonant sound. His humming became more distinct until he opened his mouth and sang with a voice so beautiful it made her heart clench. A voice clear and light, windchimes in spring, light reflecting across an ice cave. Hua was instantly lost to it. She had never heard a voice so beautiful in the false world.


    A note was played on the zither. Hua was completely enthralled by the girl playing the zither. The elegance of her fingers plucking the strings produced a sound at one melodic yet powerful. The cascade of her dark hair over her partially exposed shoulder was like calligraphy drawn across stark paper.


    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    “Already spending your time looking at other girls? Did I mean nothing at all to you? I could hate you,” Qing said. Or the heart-demon pretending to be Qing.


    They were a beautiful pairing, the two of them. Hua wanted to unhinge her jaws and bite through the boy’s neck, paint him red and taste his voice chords. The girl’s hands could be broken and her heart ripped out.


    Would that appease the fake Qing sitting across from her? Hua wanted to ignore it. But even knowing it was part of this false world didn’t matter because it took the appearance of the true one.


    “May this old lady ask a question?”


    “You may,” Hua said to both.


    “What did the Young Mistress seek to achieve by threatening that fool Blue Hand? What purpose would killing so many serve?”


    “It was expedient. And I didn’t even kill him. Just one person had to die to make my point.”


    “And the next time it happens, will you kill mortals until you have an answer?”


    “Yes. Why are you asking questions with obvious answers?”


    “The Madame senses a dangerous degree of frustration within the Young Mistress. You dislike mortals but we are vital to your survival.”


    “Are you now?” she said around a sip of her wine.


    “Would the Young Mistress till the fields herself? Would you shuck the rice and transport it across the province? Grind wheat and milk cows. Spend your days fishing and cleaning robes? Who would spin the silk of your superlative robes? I doubt the Young Mistress would enjoy transporting her supplies up and down rives under the sweltering heat, dealing with pirates and monsters. All vital things that allow you to do what you consider important, and they can only be done because there are mortals.”


    “There will always be a limitless number of mortals to do that work,” Hua challenged. “Your argument holds no practical weight. If I disapproved of this establishment, of Madame or the pretty boy she has singing for me, if I tired of this entertainment and desired the Sealord’s daughter brought to me, it would cost me nothing to murder my way through this building. How exactly do you see yourself as vital compared to that power?”


    The girl’s tempo changed to something unrelenting in its sharp disapproval. The boy followed suit, pitch rising to something almost painful. It was still beautiful, but it was an attack all the same. Hua could have killed them for the insult, but they made for far too pretty a combination.


    “Greatly. More so than anyone else you might deign important in this city.”


    “Explain before I find a reason to level this building.”


    “Ah, yes, destroy the most important establishment in the district. Once the Young Mistress has left our cooling corpses strung up as a demonstration, what shall she do about the horde of horny men with no outlet? A man thinking with his cock will do many stupid things, including fighting a Cultivator. A group of bored men who can’t get their cock wet. That’s a recipe for rebellion and rebellions change dynasties.”


    “The Yellow Caps likely thought the same and look where they ended up. Their leaders dead, their shamans strung up, and their soldiers fertilising the fields other mortals work.”


    “If you kill enough, more will rise against you. You will kill legions, of that I am certain, but they will sing ‘who cares who dies so long as she does’ until you fall. There will be one arrow, one spear, one sword that makes it through. Maybe because they were lucky or because you were exhausted from a lack of food. Whatever the case, that will be the end of you.”


    “Were that it so easy for prayers to become living miracles,” she said, staring at the false Qing. Hadn’t Hua begged and pleaded for a miracle?


    “Then the pragmatic option that isn’t often writ written in song. Poison would affect a Cultivator. There are many, very many tasteless poisons that can ravage the body. If you don’t know what it tastes like, you won’t know those that wither your spiritual channels and leave Qi unable to flow through your body against those that grow stronger when Qi is applied to them.”


    “You make very many assumptions on my ignorance of poisons.”


    “I suppose a Young Mistress from the Clan that produced the Hummingbird Blade would know her poisons.” That was meant to be an insult by the tone. “Very little difference between us mortals when I consider it.”


    A door on the upper levels broke open as a man crashed through it, saving Hua the effort of a response. From that door came a man who slammed against the balcony—which only creaked; excellent wood and mounting from a carpenter who she hoped received an appropriate reward for such hard work, perhaps even a wood polishing from the Madame—and took a wooden stave to the face. The stave spun away after striking the man’s forehead.


    She barely caught a glimpse of Liu Xin before he grabbed the man by the ankle and dragged him back inside. For a mortal who had only caught a few snatches of sleep these past few days, he was still an excellent fighter.


    Hua reached out and plucked the spinning stave from the air. There was a joke to be made here. Hua refused to think it. She set it down beside her.


    The performance from the courtesans continued ceaselessly as if that interruption hadn’t occurred. Hua tipped her cup in acknowledgement and drank another deep gulp of wine.


    “Perhaps the venerated Liao Clan might assist in pacifying the spirits of the dead?” the Madame said wearily, giving up on pretending there wasn’t a brawl occurring. She refilled Hua’s cup with aromatic liquor. “This unworthy one’s business is rather hard to conduct when ghosts are howling and jiangshi are sucking men dry, and not in the way they prefer.”


    “Unfortunately, men are closest to heaven, and jiangshi desire heaven the most.”


    The Trigram for Heaven, Qián, was formed of three parts yang Qi unified in a single whole. Truthfully, any powerful source of yang Qi could resurrect a corpse. Sometimes fire, sometimes lightning, and sometimes the death of a powerful cultivator.


    There were ways of dealing with them. Most daoshi could perform the rites. Any Cultivation Clan had someone who could deal with them.


    Extreme violence was also an option.


    “Especially after the local Temple was drowned and the last surviving priest lost his head,” the Madame added pointedly.


    Hua could acknowledge that she was in the wrong for that one. In her defence, she had never seen a priest acting like little more than a bandit. It was a shock to the system after many more shocks. She wasn’t thinking straight.


    That didn’t mean the Madame had to call her out on it.


    “The Liao Clan will certainly provide assistance in performing funerary rites. I will personally ensure it. For the drink and entertainment you’ve provided me tonight.”


    “A thousand thanks be on your head. Even with the comparative lack of damage to the district, some of my girls were still lost.” The madame drew her white outer cloak closer around herself. “I see you know the pain of recent loss.”


    Hua was wearing a white sash and ribbon. The colour of mourning. She did it for Qing. It didn’t make her feel any better. Didn’t make the liar disappear or—


    The floor broke. Not the floor below Hua, which was still solid, but she knew the sound of that much wood splintering and bodies crashing to the ground. It had come from the same area Liu Xin was fighting in. It was then that the rest of the brothel''s inhabitants made themselves known. They flooded out of the room. A truly comical number of courtesans and workers came to occupy the balcony of the second level, displaced by the sudden violence occurring. They moved with practised efficiency to escape, steely nerves keeping them from crying out.


    All except for the shrill cry of a toddler. It created the greatest disharmony, one unmatched by the percussive pattern of blows being reigned down or the trample of dozens making their way to different rooms.


    She ignored Liu Xin locked in a brawl with a man on the staircase. Seeing him smash the man’s face into the railing wasn’t as important as the abomination that manifested before her.


    “How… how old is that boy?”


    The Madame followed her gaze and lost all colour beneath her makeup. Whatever she saw in Hua’s gaze made her wince.


    “I believe he turns two, Young Mistress.”


    She lived only because she answered her question immediately. Unlike the other fools who had wasted her time.


    “I would examine him.”


    The Madame gestured sharply at the woman carrying the toddler. The mother saw Hua and winced. Hua maintained her glare as the woman made the journey downstairs, walking like she was going to see an executioner.


    Hua wouldn’t mind playing that role right now.


    “Young Mistress—”


    “Quiet,” she murmured, staring at the boy who wore a leather necklace over his thick robes. He was chewing on his fist and blinked red-rimmed eyes at Hua. Green eyes. His dark-eyed mother did not share them. His head was shorn close to the scalp a week or so ago, but it was growing in again. It simply made him look like someone had plucked the tuft of a white-naped crane and glued it to his head.


    Hua felt the urge to scream. There was no denying it.


    Bastards. Someone had been having bastards and leaving them around. Which idiot of their Clan had the audacity to force a bastard on a brothel lady?


    It was insanity. Bastards weren’t useful, generally, because it was already ruinously expensive to quicken a child to Body Tempering let alone Qi Gathering. Why waste the time and money on a bastard? Bastards were instead just points of weakness expressed in the blood for their enemies to uncover.


    “How did this never come to my attention?”


    “The Madame has been paid greatly to maintain discretion. And the Madame is certain many in your clan are fully aware of the arrangement.”


    Hua was going to kill a relative. Many relatives. Of that, she was quite certain. Possibly drown them in the fucking Liao River and leave their corpse for the carrion to pick at.


    She suppressed herself before she exploded in a shower of sparks. Gave her focus to the abomination of a boy. It wasn’t just a necklace around the boy’s neck, but an arrow attached to the leather strap. It was silver and resembled the leaf of a willow tree. Wealth arrives from Eight Direction, Hua translated, the script bearing differences from what was more commonly used in the city. Without her enhanced eyesight, she would not have seen it. The mother didn’t look particularly foreign, but she could have come from the border where blood and language intermingled more freely.


    Further away from the abomination, Liu Xin was ascending to the third level. Again. He made his way to the door above the one all the people flooded out of and pushed his way in. The violence Liu Xin was engaged with was the only reason she kept any degree of composure. Even the lovely zither wasn’t doing much for her mood.


    “Who made this child.”


    “He gave no name.”


    “Who?” Liao Hua repeated, lighting arcing between her fingers. The child looked on in quiet awe at those sparks, never understanding the danger he was in. Truly, a bastard born of lightning.


    “He gave a courtesy name. It is hard to tell age with your natural hair colour, but it was likely the Elder Yu.”


    Weiji had told her this. Or rather, cut himself off before he said it bluntly. My grandfather has three bastards. That’s what he meant to say. Which he meant he knew about the bastards and did nothing.


    She was going to strangle Weiji before she murdered his grandfather. They both deserved to be thrown in a ditch. And to think, she had praised Weiji. Thought him good and useful.


    There was a shriek from the balcony.


    Hua turned away from her bastard relative just in time for a body to fall in front of her.