Never had Ling Wu imagined that one day she'd get to see those storybook illustrations performed live, right before her eyes.
It all started at noon, right after the two of them had finished enjoying the Flower Queen's performance.
Flushed with delight, Ling Wu copied what the other patrons did, digging out the gold ingots Yizhen had left her and showering tips.
The Flower Queen, seeing that her generous new patron was a woman, kept glancing her way, smiling brilliantly.
When a beauty smiles, all else dims.
Ling Wu, over the moon, reached for more money. Yunshu blocked her hand: they had to keep some for the other pleasures.
She grew ever more convinced that Ling Wu was missing a screw.
First person in history to wager her entire fortune on a single song.
Thanks to the lavish spending, the madam personally led them up to a private room on the second floor—much quieter than downstairs.
On her way out, she said with a smile: "Our Golden Night Pavilion isn't as prim as other establishments. You two must have been troubled by the world's prying eyes for a long while. Enjoy yourselves today! Everything you could need is in the cabinet by the bed. Just call if there's anything—this humble one will attend."
Without waiting for a reply, she pressed a handkerchief to her mouth and swayed out, hips rolling.
Ling Wu was still puzzling over the madam's words when she noticed Yunshu's face cycling red and white—quite a spectacle.
"Spread one rumor about me and you're a dead cat!" she hissed through gritted teeth.
She had no interest in explaining anything to this fool. She composed herself and started drinking instead.
A rare visit like this—she wasn't about to shortchange herself.
The incense in the private room was thick, white smoke curling up from the censer. Ling Wu leaned in for a sniff and felt her head swim.
Though it was daytime, with the curtains drawn the room was as dark as night. Candles glowed faintly on their stands, and with the gauze drapes, the whole space took on a hazy, intimate air.
Besides the bed there was a low couch, with a guqin set before it.
Everything was new to her. She wandered about examining—fingering a candlestick one moment, patting the couch the next.
"Soft, so soft~" She couldn't keep her hands off the couch's upholstery.
Yunshu watched over her wine cup, expression turning odd. Several times she opened her mouth—and several times let it be.
That couch was not meant for petting.
The novelty wore off soon enough, though, and Ling Wu's eyelids began to droop.
Not really her fault—eat, then sleep, was her natural state of being.
But Yunshu had beaten her to the bed, sprawled starfish-wide across it.
No amount of shoving budged her an inch. Plainly, she had drunk herself into a coma.
Ling Wu considered making do on the couch, but its design struck her as odd—not built for sleeping, somehow.
After all that back-and-forth, her drowsiness was gone entirely.
She sat down on the rug, chin in hand, fingers drifting idly over the guqin before her.
The flower house was indeed noisy. Faint sounds drifted in from all around—all of them men and women together.
She pricked up her ears to listen—and suddenly heard a woman's cry from next door, pained and pleased at once.
That infuriated her. Broad daylight, a lawful world—and someone dared lay hands on a woman right under her nose!
Without a second thought, she grabbed a talisman, made the sign, and zipped straight through the wall.
The room was furnished just like hers. And there, on the couch—two entwined figures. A man bare-backed; a woman before him, hands braced, cheeks flushed, gaze unfocused. The couch creaked and swayed beneath them, low sounds escaping her, their breaths tangling in the candlelit air.
Wrapped up in each other, neither of them noticed the person standing a few steps away.
Slowly, it dawned on Ling Wu: the man wasn't harming the woman at all. They seemed to be... acting out a scene from her storybooks.
The pose was very familiar to her—the woman in the illustrations was held exactly like that. The only difference was that the storybooks drew them face to face.
She wanted to step in and correct them, but her legs had suddenly gone on strike, refusing to lift.
At that moment the man, shifting position, caught sight of her from the corner of his eye—and his voice shot up a full octave in a scream. The woman nearly tumbled off in her panic.
Ling Wu scratched her head and smiled apologetically at the pair. "Sorry. Didn't mean to disturb."
She gave them a look over, then added, "Though your posture does seem a bit off. That's not how the storybooks draw it."
Fat lot they heard of it. The man was frightened half out of his wits; the woman huddled up small and refused to come out.
By the time Yunshu arrived, the scene held only a furious madam and Ling Wu.
Ling Wu, neck red, was still arguing her case—"the storybooks are the authority, that posture needs correcting"—while the madam, white-faced, clutched her chest with one hand and the table with the other, looking ready to collapse at any moment.
In the end, it took two gold ingots of compensation to settle the matter.
Yunshu listened to her grievances. Her expression went from blank, to shattered, to finally just silent.
She honestly had no words for Ling Wu.
And she didn't dare breathe a word of it to Qingchen either—if he learned she'd led his precious disciple to a pleasure house for drinks, and the disciple had walked in on a live performance to boot, he would skin her alive.
Ai. Yunshu suffered.
Ling Wu suffered too. She'd just counted: three gold ingots left in her purse. This flower house was a money pit. She was never coming back!
That blasted madam! What had she done wrong! "Honored guest, honored guest" one minute, then take the money and refuse to know her the next!
What she didn't tell Yunshu was this: watching that scene, her mind had somehow filled with Qingchen—she'd caught herself wondering, for no reason she could name, what Master would look like in a scene like that. She shook her head hard and flung the thought away.
By the time they returned to the Shen residence it was dusk, and Ling Wu walked straight into Qingchen.
He leaned against the doorframe, watching her with a smile that wasn't quite a smile. "Did Ah-Wu enjoy herself?"
The pair froze, as if facing a great enemy.
How had Master found out? Ling Wu's eyes blinked furiously. She'd cast a concealing sign before even going in, precisely so he couldn't catch her and lecture her about wasting her days on play.
Yunshu trembled in her pouch. Oh granny and great-granny both—take it up with her, not with the cat.
She'd only handled the door. Everything after was entirely Ling Wu's own doing.
Thankfully she was inside the demon-catching pouch, free to play dead in plain sight.
Ling Wu steeled herself. "Master flatters this disciple. 'Enjoy' is too strong a word—she only had a simple meal. Her purse, alas, was embarrassingly light."
"I had no idea," Qingchen said, "that people went to pleasure houses to dine."
"This disciple—this disciple only watched the ladies play music and dance for a while! Nothing that would disgrace the sect!"
As it proved, deceiving Master ended badly.
He not only knew exactly which house she'd gone to—he knew, in full detail, that she had barged in on someone else's tryst.
And then came the greater torment.
Qingchen confiscated her last gold ingots—and a stack of her storybooks along with them.
He said, "When we return to Kunlun, Ah-Wu will copy out ten Heart-Clearing Mantras for me. One wrong character, and it's ten more."
Ling Wu's sky had fallen. She wailed inwardly.
No one hated writing more than she did! No one loathed copying texts more!
How long would this cursed Heart-Clearing Mantra take to copy! And not one character could be wrong!
She wanted to wheedle. One look at Qingchen's cool eyes, and she swallowed it back down.
Boohoo. Master was no fun at all!