Miss and farmhand

The phrase "golden house to hide a beauty" refers to Emperor Wu's fondness for the noblewoman A Jiao, and how he built a golden house to welcome her as his empress.

Huang Chu also had a Golden Pavilion, but it was used as a place for prostitution.

The young lady only has one child.

There was only one client.

As night fell and the lamps were lit, the canopy bed in the young lady's room was drawn back, and shadowy figures flickered inside, their forms overlapping and inseparable. The lamps inside the canopy burned brightly and flickered.

The waves of pleasure surged, and occasionally a short, sharp breath escaped her lips, as if she were unwilling to succumb to the joy, stubborn and restrained.

The tent was steamy and hot, the heavy, pent-up desire finally making one feel uneasy. A snow-white hand parted the tent flap and emerged, revealing a wrist adorned with at least seven or eight delicate gold and jade bracelets, heavy with weight. The hand pleaded for help, gripping the railing, causing the bracelets to jingle crisply and erratically.

After another incense stick's time, the sound stopped, and the male homeowner called for water once more.

The man hung up the bed curtains, got out of bed naked, and brought in water. A handkerchief and a copper basin were prepared by the bedside. He mixed the water, wrung out the handkerchief, and began to wipe her body, carefully inch by inch.

Huang Chu lay there like a dead fish, indifferent to everything.

There were always seven or eight oil lamps lit on the canopy bed, making it as bright as day, even illuminating her shadow.

There were no shadows, everything was clearly visible, people had nowhere to hide, and even shame was shattered.

Huang Chu thought the man was perverted, and the presence of lights all over the bed was the first sign of this.

Besides lamps, there were also mirrors. The canopy bed was deep, and sixteen or seventeen small bronze mirrors hung side by side, all reflecting the light and showing her naked shadow.

Like the demons in the storybooks who were subdued by the demon-revealing mirror and returned to their original forms.

He was determined to shatter her last shred of self-deception and nail her to a lowly position.

In the layers of mirrors, the woman is pale, and the man is dark red.

People of humble origins, who worked in the fields or as laborers in docks and warehouses, all had this skin color.

Later, he made a fortune and even worked at a counter, but the color could never be restored.

The man's large, fan-like hands touched her body. His nails were carefully trimmed, but the calluses on his fingertips and palms still left streaks of crimson on Huang Chu's skin.

None of Huang Chu's father's students had such hands since childhood; they were always delicate, scholarly, hidden in sleeves or behind their backs. Even if they had calluses, it was only on the middle finger, soft and cool.

She touched it; it was in another man's hand.

After wiping her body and throwing away the handkerchief, the man lay down beside her, lifting her by the waist with one arm and pulling her into his arms. The man still had the habits of a countryman, disliking the heat and used to being naked in the room. His burning chest pressed against her, instantly shattering the image of the cool and handsome hand in Huang Chu's mind.

The moon reflected in the water, the flower in the mirror—neither can be held onto.

This made Huang Chu even more disgusted with men. They were utterly inhuman, like livestock.

The animal turned her face, forcing her to separate from that slightly chilly old dream.

Huang Chu's cheeks bulged in his palm, forming a fleshy bun. The man narrowed his eyes, staring at the curve.

"Are you angry?" He thought she was angry that she didn't stop when he told her to.

Huang Chu remained silent, which he took as a tacit agreement.

"We're having your birthday party next month. Just tell me if there's anything you want."

This is how men deal with women: when they get impatient, they use things to get rid of them.

Huang Chu was a little flustered. It was her birthday? She couldn't remember at all. The past was no longer relevant to her.

Her father has only been gone for two years, but it already feels like a lifetime ago. Who would have thought she would end up like this?

After a long pause, she murmured, "I want a luminous pearl."

The man frowned. "Why do you suddenly want that thing? You want to ask someone to find it at sea?"

Huang Chu could have simply said, "Never mind then, I'll give you something else." She wasn't entitled to anything in the first place.

But the words slipped out before she could finish: "I heard that luminous pearls can also provide light, which is better than lamps, saving me from getting burned by lamp oil."

There was a faint vermilion mark on her shoulder, about the size of a fingernail, from when he rocked the bed too hard and knocked over the oil lamp, splashing oil on her.

Despite using many medications, this trace still remains.

Like an indelible straw tag, a perpetual servitude.

Of course, this couldn't be said to a man. He fiddled with the gold and silver chains around Huang Chu's neck, giving a noncommittal reply, it was unclear whether he took it seriously or not.

He was captivated by the few things she wore on her naked body. He helped her sit up, leaned against him, and carefully adjusted the gold and jade on her body in front of the mirrors on the bed.

There were fifteen or sixteen bracelets on her two wrists, several rings on her fingers, and a jade lock pendant, broken rubies, and strings of agate pearls around her neck, covering and pressing her down like a magnificent shackle.

This is a man's taste: gaudy, cluttered, and he piles up and hangs the best things haphazardly.

If we weren't going to share a bed, my hair would always be disheveled, and even my head wouldn't be spared.

Later, the man said that nothing, no matter how good, looked as beautiful as her long, sweaty hair clinging to her body. Curly and black, it climbed from her lower abdomen to her chest, forming a cloud-like pattern, before returning behind her ears.

She seemed to be trying to appear cultured, but she didn't like the words, finding them lewd. The man, however, was very pleased and repeated them many times.

She found it ridiculous.

He stripped her bare, stripping her of even her dignity, only to then adorn her with these cold stones, like gilding a Buddha statue and placing it in a golden palace.

The maids at Jinlou were gossipy. Knowing that their mistress was not a respectable person, they were very talkative and boasted to the new out-of-towner, Granny Li, who was on night duty boiling water, about how senior they were and how much they knew.

However, she didn't notice that Huang Chu was also listening upstairs, curious about what the servants thought of her.

"...She was originally a well-bred young lady from a good family. She was engaged to a suitable husband, but her father suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. Her family business was also seized by her unscrupulous uncle. While the family she was engaged to was away, he sold her to this shopkeeper, took a large sum of money, and ran away. When her future in-laws returned, it was too late. They never saw each other again. It was even more tragic than in the stories."

"This building," the maid pointed upstairs, "is used to prevent people from escaping. You've seen upstairs, haven't you? They carry all sorts of nice things in, but they never wear them out, and they don't even host a party. What kind of good family would raise a concubine like this? Even mistresses don't openly admit they're not respectable."

Mrs. Li was speechless. "...It's a brothel."

"That's right. The innkeeper is rich and wants this kind of thing, but he doesn't want to go to those filthy places, so he built one himself, and the girls only serve one customer. Didn't you hear the noise? It was so embarrassing! A respectable girl suffered like that, she went to run into a pillar the next day, how could she have survived until today?"

Huang Chu listened in a daze.

It turns out everyone knew what kind of person she was.

No matter how precious her golden statue, she could never sit in the main hall. She was merely a clay idol on a man's bed; no matter how beautiful the gold paint on her face, the foundation was already rotten. The clay body was also cheap; if he bumped into it a couple of times, it would shatter, fall to the ground, and anyone could step on it, eventually sinking into the mud, slowly becoming unrecognizable.

Even she herself felt that this was how it should be, thinking that this was how it would last a lifetime.

It wasn't until the girl's words woke her up.

You can do it this way too.

So, she could actually commit suicide?