The unrestrained

Two unexpected visitors and their stories

The two women looked at each other. The weathered one was a bit braver. She stood up, “I’ll go first!”

She presented them with a casual salut, “What I’m about to tell you is an old story that happened around eleven years ago.”

From Jiang Wanyin’s tone, the people knew that what the women was about to say couldn’t be just an unimportant matter, trying to recall the things that happened eleven years ago. The woman, “My name is Sisi. In the past I sold my body. You can say that I was famous for a while. Ten-or-so years ago, I found a rich businessman and wanted to marry him, but it turned out that the man’s wife was a fierce one. She got a group of hunky men and cut my face through. That’s why I’m like this now.”

The woman spoke with no shame in her voice, not at all trying to beat around the bush. Many of the female cultivators covered their lips with their sleeves, while the men frowned. Sisi continued, “After my face became like this, my days were different from before. Nobody wanted to spare me a single glance, let alone do my business. My original brothel kicked me out. I didn’t know how to do anything else, but I couldn’t take in any business at all, so I joined up with the older sisters. Their customers didn’t have high demands. If a job is up, I’d tag along with them. I could manage with my face covered up.”

At this point, some of the people couldn’t take it any longer. They let the contempt in their eyes pour out without any intent to cover it. Some didn’t understand why Jiang Wanyin was making the crowd listen to the woman talk about her dirty past. The sect leaders, however, kept calm and waited for her to continue.

As expected, she finally arrived at the key point. Sisi continued, “One day, the sisters from our alleyway suddenly got a job, asking for all two dozens of us. With horse-drawn carriages, they brought us to a place. After those old sisters of mine finished with discussing the price, they were all ecstatic on the way there. I, however, felt that something wasn’t right. Let’s be honest here—they were either old, yellowed pearls or the same as me. We were paid so much, and even beforehand. How could there be such a lucky thing in the world? And the people who came to get us were fishy too. They led us into the carriages and took as away as soon as they came, not letting a single other person know about it. No matter how you look at it, they couldn’t have had good intentions in mind!”

The others thought the same thing. Their original disdain had already be replaced by curiosity. Sisi spoke, “When the carriages arrived, they directly brought us to a courtyard and let us off there. None of us had ever seen such a tall, grand, glorious house before. We’ve all been dazzled blind, too scared to make a sound. A boy leaned against the doorway, playing with a dagger. He let us in when he saw us. He closed the door, and we entered the room. In such a large room was only two people. A man lay within the brocade sheets on a large bed. He seemed to be thirty or fourty years old, probably sickened to the verge of death. When he saw that people entered, he could only turn his eyeballs.”

“Ah!”

Within Sword Hall, someone suddenly let out an exclaim of realization, “Eleven years ago?! This was… This was…!!!” We all understand who that person is.

Sisi spoke, “Beforehand, someone had already told us what to do—one after another, we had to use our best skills to look after the person lying on the bed. We weren’t supposed to stop for a single second. I even thought that it was some brawny hulk. Who knew it’d be a sick man? How could such a man endure our looking-after? I bet he’d give his last breath before we finished a single round. Could the dirty old man really be looking for such a death? And they were so wealthy too. It definitely wasn’t that they didn’t have the money to hire younger, prettier ones. Why did they have to hire us old, ugly ones? I was thinking about this even as I crawled on top of them, when suddenly there seemed to be the sound of a young man’s laugh. I jumped from the scare. Only then did I realize that there was a curtain beside the bed, and a man sitting behind the curtain!”