A Single Tie Of Long Hair Seals A Lifelong Commitment - Chapter 75

The pleasure boat of the courtesan leader of Yifeng Pavilion, Qin Sensen, was named Jinboliu Guangfang (Lustrous Waves and Flowing Light Boat).

The boat’s splendor could be called a palace floating on the water.

The bow of this floating palace struck the rocks of the riverbank, listing as it docked. Many women surged onto the boat and dragged a stunningly beautiful woman out from inside.

They beat and cursed her.

They tore at her clothes.

Someone in the crowd shouted angrily, “A mere prostitute dares to wear fine silk? Strip it off her! She shouldn’t be allowed to wear it…”

Yifeng Pavilion’s star attraction was lauded for her talent, not for selling her body, so her attire was always decent, except when she was performing a dance on stage or under the water. Her hair was also always impeccably styled.

A group of furious-looking women dragged her onto the moss-covered ground by the Xuoshui River, surrounding her. Initially, they were somewhat restrained, only daring to shove her a couple of times, curse a few words, and spit.

The crowd erupted in cheers. The clamor of support and praise grew louder, and the women became bolder. They ripped her clothes, grabbed her hair, and pulled hard. She cried out in pain and was forced to tilt her head back. A woman with an angry, flushed face took the opportunity to deliver a heavy slap to her left cheek.

“She can write a few trashy lines to hook men? Rip her mouth apart!”

“It’d be better to slash her face!”

There were many sharp, jagged stones and broken tiles by the riverbank. Upon hearing these suggestions, some people actually picked up the damaging debris and harshly scratched her delicate face several times, their eyes openly displaying their jealousy and hatred.

“I am not… a prostitute…”

Li Yujing wanted to resist, but many hands held her fast, not allowing her to explain, defend herself, or fight back.

“I am not a prostitute!” she said, clearly articulating each word.

Her single voice was too weak, drowned out by the deafening cascade of curses. No one could hear her defense. Nor did anyone wish to listen or believe.

Since she brought an air of refinement to Yifeng Pavilion, all the pleasure quarters and brothels across the land began to imitate it. After the poetry contest at the East Prefecture’s birthday banquet, scholars and poets nationwide compared and judged her work. Qin Sensen of Yifeng Pavilion suddenly found herself on par with the great talented woman Gu Xie of Cangnan Valley, attracting the fervent pursuit of scholars across the realm.

A few years later, Gu Xie quietly retired, and her fame gradually waned. With the initial rise of women’s schools, Qin Sensen’s reputation became even more prominent.

Following this, the hearts and minds of all the men in the realm were elsewhere. They no longer liked uneducated women and began to admire “talented women.”

With beautiful women who understood poetry and song keeping them company day and night, composing verses and lyrics, many men lingered in the demimonde and were even less willing to return home. Some even sang verses:

“Hard to find my dull wife’s pretty face again, Today she is haggard and past her prime. Her wooden hairpin knows nothing of literature, Her plain hands have never touched the fragrance of poetry. She stares at book pages, utterly clueless, A fool with an empty mind. Her youthful years have passed, her looks have changed, How can she compare to a lovely maiden’s appearance?”

Such verses mocking their “old wives” at home for losing their looks, being illiterate, and utterly foolish, became widely circulated and popular.

The customs of the world changed. And so, some people panicked.

The women in the household compounds could no longer retain their husbands’ hearts, so they directed their anger at the two main culprits who had “stolen” their husbands. The first was the women’s school, and the second was the singing and dancing courtesans.

A literary storm erupted in the imperial court, and the women’s imperial examination system was blocked midway. The throwing of a single stone caused a massive wave. The ripple effect quickly reached the common people, inciting a collective attack by the unsuccessful scholars on the Spirit Vulture Academy, while simultaneously stirring up the backlash from housebound women against the low-caste “talented women.”

Like flies and ants gathering, the crowd swelled, and the protest turned into a crusade.

Li Yujing’s limbs were held fast, and the nearest robust women kicked and stomped her.

She seemed to have lost the strength to struggle, but the crowd did not stop. Someone took off their shoe and fiercely smacked a dirty footprint onto her back.

“She can play the zither and write, can she? Stomp on her hands! Let’s see what she’ll use to play the zither or write with now!”

Her hands were pressed to the ground, and a large foot stomped down hard, twisting and grinding her fingers.

“Fox spirit! What’s so great about reading a few books? Do you really think all the men in the world are obsessed with you? Look, is any man coming to save you?”

“A whore is a whore. Why pretend to be a woman of learning? If you were so capable, why didn’t you go take the Zhuangyuan (top scholar) exam? All you know is how to seduce other people’s husbands.”

The excruciating pain in her fingers briefly cleared Li Yujing’s mind. She found an unknown surge of strength, pulled her hand out from under the foot grinding it, and with bloodshot eyes, amidst the chaos, grabbed an arm—she didn’t know whose—and bit down hard.

“Ah!” A woman’s scream came from above. Then, even more violent, dense slaps rained down on her head.

Li Yujing bit down hard and wouldn’t let go.

She tore off a piece of bloody flesh.

When Gu Xie and Gao Guan galloped to the Xuoshui River bank, they indeed saw a dense crowd surrounding a half-naked woman. The woman had gone mad. Gu Xie was so familiar with that figure that she knew instantly without a closer look.

“Ah Yu…” Gu Xie dismounted, disregarded Gao Guan’s attempts to stop her, pushed through the crowd, and squeezed toward Li Yujing.

The woman still held a clump of bloody hair in her hand. A small patch on Li Yujing’s scalp was bleeding.

Li Yujing’s peripheral vision caught a glint of metal—a hairpin. Ordinary hairpins were pointed and round-bodied for easy wear. This one, given to her by Xie Wenjun, was flat-bodied and concealed an extremely fine blade in its sheath. She had never used it before.

Fortunately, the people beating her were focused on her body, and the hairpin had fallen into a rock crevice, caught among the fine moss, and was not picked up in the chaos.

“Ah Yu!”

Li Yujing crawled two steps, enduring the pain, and grasped the hairpin.

“Don’t come near! Don’t you dare come near!”

The hairpin’s sheath struck the ground with a faint “clang.” She swung it wildly in the crowd. Blood blurred her vision, and she didn’t know how many people she had injured in the confusion.

She spat out the piece of flesh she had bitten off and laughed like a maniac, “Hahahahaahahaha…”

She held her stomach, laughing until her body swayed, laughing until tears streamed down her face.

Tears mixed with blood stained her entire face.

Seeing her look like a lunatic, the crowd instantly backed away, creating an empty space.

Li Yujing, her makeup smeared, stood in the center of the clearing, holding the blade up to the crowd. “I am a prostitute. Then what about you? You still climb into men’s beds. How are you different from a prostitute? Is your body your own to command? I sell my body to survive, and aren’t you doing the same? The only difference is that you sell yourselves to the one person called your so-called husband!”

“You call yourselves respectable women, and therefore believe that people like me are filthy, to be spat on and stomped on by anyone. What? You are serviced by men, bear sons and daughters for men, and act as their servants and maids without receiving silver, so you are noble? We all seek to survive with our physical bodies. Is there truly a distinction of who is more despicable?”

“You don’t seek a foothold, you don’t think about change, you don’t gain freedom, you are numb and ignorant! Look at your pathetic selves! Living off your husband’s charity and pity—how are you better than a prostitute? You are woodlice in a gutter, shortsighted, seeing only the three feet in front of you, unaware that there are mountains beyond the mountains! Hahahahahahahahaha…”

Someone on the outer edge of the crowd yelled, “The officers are here to arrest people!” The crowd scattered. The women who had been arrogant and aggressive moments before tried to flee but were completely surrounded by the officers of the Southern Yamen’s Twelve Guards.

Someone with sharp eyes recognized the leader of the officers, clutched her wound, and threw herself down before Gao Guan’s horse, accusing, “Officer, that lunatic woman is attacking people with a knife! Arrest her quickly! Lock her up!”

Gao Guan looked at her impatiently. “I’ve never hit a woman in my life, but a slut dares to twist the facts? I’ll make an exception today.”

He raised his horsewhip, but before he brought it down, the woman fainted from fright.

Gao Guan waved his hand. “Carry her away.” He glanced casually into the distance, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him. He saw a wealthy figure standing in a high pavilion far away, who retreated inside the moment he looked over.

Li Yujing’s eyelids were covered in bloody tears. She couldn’t see clearly, but she vaguely saw a figure running toward her, against the flow of the crowd, intending to touch her. The sharp blade slashed forward again. Gu Xie reacted quickly and avoided the strike.

“Ah Yu, it’s me.”

Gu Xie took off her outer robe and draped it over her.

Li Yujing was trembling all over, gripping the fine blade tightly, holding it to her chest, refusing to let go.

“It’s over, Ah Yu, it’s over. Let’s get on the boat. Come.” Gu Xie took out a handkerchief and wiped the sticky blood that was blurring her vision. The blood wasn’t hers; it was the blood of someone whose blood had splashed into her eyes when she swung the knife.

But her face was crisscrossed with many cuts that were seeping blood.

One silk handkerchief after another turned red. Some wounds were deep. Gu Xie couldn’t stop the bleeding on Li Yujing’s face no matter how hard she wiped. Gu Xie held the medicinal stick to apply medicine. “It’s okay, Ah Yu. I will ask the Eldest Princess to find an imperial physician to treat your wounds. There will be no scars, no.”

Li Yujing gave a mournful smile. “Without this face, I’m useless to the Eldest Princess. How can I still be worthy of bothering an imperial physician to treat a low-caste woman?”

Blood continued to seep out.

Gu Xie was tending to one part only to find another bleeding. Just as she was about to apply the medicine, she saw blood seeping out again, and she had to hurriedly wipe it away. Li Yujing’s eyes were as dull as a dead pool; she seemed completely indifferent to the wounds on her face.

Li Yujing said, “I sent you a letter a while ago. There was no reply. Do you remember?”

Gu Xie paused.

Of course, she remembered. It was the only letter she hadn’t replied to. It was the time Li Yujing had asked her to tell her fortune regarding marriage.

Li Yujing said, “I thought the letter might have been lost on the way, and you hadn’t seen it. You understand destiny. Did you calculate then that I would fall to this state?”

Gu Xie lowered her head, not daring to meet her gaze. She mixed the white ointment, stirred it, and applied it to Li Yujing’s mangled hand.

Li Yujing wiped away the tears that were just forming in her eyes and said, “When my father was convicted, to make life easier for my mother and sisters, I didn’t think falling into a low caste was anything, at least I was still a useful person. Who knew it would be like this? Who knew it would be so difficult?”

Gu Xie said, “Don’t listen to those foul words. Your knowledge of classics and your ability to sing and dance are your own talents. You stand in the world based on your talent and earn your living by your ability. How are you lowly? The world misunderstands. Why do you speak of yourself that way? It sounds awful.”

Li Yujing said, “Is there a difference? Low-caste means prostitute. Let alone the world, didn’t even you and I think so back then? Earning a living by ability, what ability? Poetry and song? Didn’t I still have to climb into Sheng Yuan’s bed to find peace? Is surrendering myself to Sheng Yuan alone any different from surrendering myself to thousands of men?”

Was there still affection? Yes, there was.

But when she was intimate with Sheng Yuan, was it truly an act of free will born of affection?

Gao Guan boarded the boat and called out on the deck, “Headmistress.”

Gu Xie put down the medicine bottle. “High Commander Gao of the Southern Yamen is outside. I’ll go take a look. Ah Yu, you are not despicable. Please, don’t look down on yourself.”

The daylight outside was somewhat blinding. Gu Xie raised her hand to shade the light. “High Commander Gao.”

Gao Guan pointed to a small group of people and said, “Miss Qin Sensen’s incident seems to have been instigated by someone behind the scenes. There are a dozen pleasure boats on the river, but only Miss Qin’s boat was intercepted and had trouble. Has Miss Qin offended anyone?”

Li Yujing had bodyguards and attendants with her, who usually never left her side. Today, she wanted to ride the boat alone for some air, so she only brought two maids. How could it be such a coincidence that two incidents of trouble occurred today?

Gu Xie already had a suspect in mind.

The current Southern Yamen was not the Southern Yamen of the past; it belonged to the Twelve Guards and was no longer the former “miscellaneous office.” This High Commander Gao was also a favorite of the current Emperor and wielded real power. But could he be trusted?

Gu Xie said, “I am not yet clear.”

Gao Guan was not a fool. He immediately noticed Gu Xie’s suspicion and didn’t press the matter. “I’ll take these suspects back for interrogation first. Headmistress, please proceed as you wish.”

She hurried back inside. Gao Guan also rushed in after her.

Sure enough, the room, aside from a blood-stained handkerchief, was empty of Li Yujing. The window facing the water was open. Gu Xie leaned out and looked down. The ripples from the splash were still spreading in circles.

“Ah Yu!” Gu Xie, who was terrified of water, panicked instantly.

Gao Guan shouted to the guards, “Someone jumped into the river! Rescue her!” After shouting, he took off his saber and armor, leaped from the window, and plunged into the water.

Gao Guan and the people beneath searched for a long time, finally returning from the water in despair.

This section of the water was treacherous. It was calm on the surface, but the undercurrents were swift.

If a person was dragged in, they would be swept away in the blink of an eye.

Grief welled up in Gu Xie. Between the river and the sky, only her heart-wrenching sobs remained.