The room was silent for a while.
Then Hong Xiu spoke.
“Grand Preceptor, I’m twenty-four this year.”
The Grand Preceptor was slightly startled.
“A girl in the Music Registry is considered old at twenty-four.”
“I’m an ordinary person with no cultivation. In a few more years, my face will wrinkle, my skin will sag, and my temples will whiten.”
“Do you intend to hide me away on an estate, only to cast me aside once I’m old and my beauty fades?”
“Or will you just leave me to my own devices once I’m old and my beauty fades?”
The Grand Preceptor frowned. “If you follow me, I naturally wouldn’t—”
“You would.” Hong Xiu interrupted him.
Her tone was flat. “You like me now because I’m still relatively young and can still smile for others.”
“Once I’ve been cooped up on your estate for a few years, you’ll grow tired of this face.”
“Hong Xiu!” The Grand Preceptor’s voice deepened.
“Grand Preceptor,” Hong Xiu calmly adjusted her sleeve, “what do you like about me?”
The Grand Preceptor opened his mouth, but couldn’t find the words.
“Do you like my music, or my drinking, or my flirtatious glances from behind the beaded curtain?”
“What you like is me sitting there, with everyone in the hall watching you, watching you toss jade pendants onto the stage, watching me being sought after by countless nobles because of a poem you recited.”
“You don’t like me; you like the way others look at you.”
Hong Xiu let out a laugh, tinged with mockery, but more so with a faint weariness.
Hong Xiu had been in the Music Registry for over a decade; what kind of people hadn't she seen?
In previous years, before she became the Courtesan Queen, there were always one or two nobles, just like the Grand Preceptor, who believed she genuinely liked them, that she was different from other girls—special, perceptive, and understood them.
But what was the outcome?
Once the novelty wore off, they’d turn around and forget her name.
The Grand Preceptor’s face darkened. “Hong Xiu, don’t be so ungrateful.”
“I’m precisely too grateful,” Hong Xiu said.
“If you want me to spend the rest of my life as a dog caged up, how is that any different from dying?”
She looked up at the Grand Preceptor, the smile fading from her lips, her enchanting face rarely showing such genuine emotion.
“Grand Preceptor, you are a powerful official of this dynasty. With a single word, you can push me onto the sacrificial altar, and with a single word, you can pull me back down.”
“But I only have one life, and I don’t want to hand it over to you, only for you to take it back when you tire of me.”
“I am a decaying flower, but I will never be an obedient dog.”
Let her rot in the mud; she never wanted to bend her knee to lick anyone’s shoe sole again.
The Grand Preceptor stared at her for a long time.
The air seemed to solidify, and the room was so quiet that one could hear the wind rustling past the eaves outside the window paper.
“Fine.”
“Very well.”
He turned and walked towards the door, pausing at the threshold. He turned his head slightly, not looking at Hong Xiu.
“Since you wish for a quick death, I shall grant it.”
He drew back the bolt and stepped out.
The door closed behind him, his footsteps grew fainter, then were swallowed by the clamor from further back in the courtyard.
Hong Xiu stood by the windowsill, slowly exhaling.
She looked down at the bright red dress she wore, reaching out to smooth the entwining lotus embroidery on her sleeve.
Suddenly, she felt utterly weary.
For over a decade, she had smiled for others, lived for others, only to end up in a different place, continuing to smile and live for others.
The Grand Preceptor’s suggestion, at first glance, truly offered a way out.
Change her name, hide on an estate, live as a pampered dog, and grow old in peace.
But she simply didn’t want to.
She was too tired.
Ever since she could remember, her entire life had been spent reading people’s expressions, learning the prettiest way to smile, the most pleasing way to speak, and how to hide herself completely from the gazes of a room full of men.
She had painstakingly climbed to the position of Courtesan Queen, no longer needing to bow and scrape to everyone, yet with a single word from the Grand Preceptor, she had to start all over again.
A different place, a different name, a different face, but the actions would be the same.
Smiling, pleasing, maintaining that mask.
It was too tedious.
Hong Xiu leaned against the windowsill, tilted her head back, and looked at the smoke-blackened rafters on the ceiling, suddenly feeling light.
It wasn’t exactly enlightenment or resignation; she just suddenly felt she didn’t need to pretend anymore.
No more forced smiles.
How wonderful.
That night, she slept a very deep sleep.
Early the next morning, the door was kicked open.
Several burly old women rushed in, grabbed her arm, and dragged her out of bed.
She was dragged into the courtyard, and in front of all the servants and maids in the backyard, her bright red dress was stripped away.
The late spring wind swept in, making her shiver.
Some nearby lowered their heads, not daring to look; some peeked from behind pillars, then quickly withdrew; others gazed with infatuation, their faces flushed.
Hong Xiu stood naked in the center of the courtyard, letting the old women hold her shoulders.
Someone brought over a basin of prepared cinnabar ink, in which a bamboo brush as thick as a finger was soaking.
An old Daoist in a gray robe walked over, glanced at her, dipped his brush directly into the cinnabar ink, and began drawing on her forehead.
Evil-warding talismans and evil-dispelling incantations were drawn upon her skin, one after another.
Each stroke was drawn deeply, the specially prepared cinnabar seeping into her skin, burning like fire.
Hong Xiu trembled all over from the pain, but she gritted her teeth and didn't utter a sound.
She even lowered her head to look at the talismans.
They were crooked and sloppily drawn, much like the things she had seen wandering charlatans draw in the Music Registry.
Warding off evil and suppressing malevolence.
How interesting, she hadn’t even become a ghost yet.
After finishing the talismans, the gray-robed old Daoist stepped back two paces and nodded to the soldiers beside him.
Two soldiers took her arms and dragged her out of the backyard.
She was dragged past the side gate of the Music Registry, through the long street, and past the crowds gathered along the roadside to watch the spectacle.
Some people cursed her.
“Wicked temptress who brought disaster upon the nation!”
“It’s her, she disrupted the imperial court, angered the Goddess, and caused the great drought in Jiangnan!”
“Burn her! Burn her!”
Stones were thrown from the crowd, hitting her shoulder and bouncing to the ground.
Hong Xiu stumbled, her gaze fixed on the path beneath her feet.
The bluestones, after being rained on, shimmered with a dull, watery sheen, and clumps of weeds grew in the cracks, trampled askew by the passing crowds.
She suddenly remembered the mute boy’s handful of wild berries.
So sour they made her teeth ache.
But cool and refreshing.
By the time she was tied to the sacrificial altar, it was already broad daylight.
The altar was set up on an open ground west of the city, piled high with dry firewood and pine resin at its base. Three wooden stakes supported a frame on top, with a groove precisely in the center, just large enough to secure a person’s waist.
She was pressed into that groove, her limbs bound to the wooden stakes with thick hemp rope, unable to move.
The Grand Preceptor stood on the viewing platform below the altar, watching with his hands behind his back, his expression placid, as if observing a perfectly ordinary sacrifice.
The platform below was packed with people.
There were men, women, old, and young, all pressed tightly together, craning their necks to look at the altar.
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