Chapter 155| Chapter 156| Chapter 157
Chapter 155: Pouring the Chamber Pot
“Qing’er, don’t be afraid. They’re just a lawless rabble; they’ll never break in,” one of the hostesses said, attempting to comfort Lu Yunxi.
After all, the “man-eating witch” the angry mob outside was screaming for happened to be Lu Yunxi herself.
“How dare they try to tear down our front gates?!” another worker barked, aggressively cracking his knuckles. “Let me go out there and show them what happens when you mess with the Fengyue Tower!”
Lu Yunxi merely arched an eyebrow. Utilizing her advanced acoustic tracking, she quickly mapped out the exact layout and density of the crowd packed onto the street outside.
Right about then, the deafening racket outside began to falter. Perhaps because their relentless hammering had yielded zero return on investment, the protesters seemed to be losing steam, discussing whether they should relocate to a different plaza to keep the momentum going.
But just as Lu Yunxi reached out to unbar the heavy oak doors, a distinct voice sliced through the murmurs outside.
“Stay alert, everyone! That witch is an exceptionally brutal fighter—no mortal has ever managed to pierce her guard!”
Lu Yunxi recognized the exact vocal frequency instantly, her lips curling into a sharp smile. It was none other than the Madam’s delusional son, covertly operating as a hidden instigator to keep the mob focused.
Under his tactical prodding, the protesters who had been on the verge of dispersing suddenly surged with a fresh wave of excitement, aggressively renewing their assault on the wooden gates.
Refusing to waste any more time playing defensive, Lu Yunxi simply threw the doors wide open.
She stood casually at the threshold, her brow lifted as her eyes swept over the massive assembly. “I intercepted a bulletin stating you were all desperately hunting for me? Well, here I am.”
The rowdy, chaotic avenue plunged into an instantaneous, absolute dead silence. Every single protester froze, their eyes widening as they stared blankly at her face.
Following a long, paralyzed pause, a wave of frantic gasps rippled through the front lines.
“Heavens… she really is a monster! If she weren’t an unholy entity, how could her visual parameters possibly be this high?!”
The crowd nodded in feverish agreement, their eyes practically glued to her features, completely unable to break the line of sight.
“Witch!” a man in the front row bellowed, leveling an aggressive finger at her face. “You dare deploy your unholy beauty to bewitch honest citizens, subverting their focus so they abandon their daily labor! Do you have any conception of how severe your crimes are?!”
The mob roared in approval, glaring at her with synthetic righteousness.
Lu Yunxi: ? ?
Before her brain could even process the absolute absurdity of that logic, a secondary instigator escalated the command.
“Execute her! Put the monster down!”
“He’s right! We cannot permit an unholy aberration to destabilize our provincial economy!”
“Brothers, advance! Burn the man-eating witch to ash!”
Spurred by the anonymous prompts, a tight circle of thugs surged forward, systematically closing ranks around Lu Yunxi. In a flash of movement, they ignited the tips of their heavy wooden batons, transforming them into blazing torches.
Lu Yunxi remained perfectly still in the epicenter of the perimeter, calmly analyzing the facial variables of the attackers closing in on her with their makeshift weapons. Her expression was entirely detached, acting exactly as though a wall of fire meant absolutely nothing to her stats.
Her unbothered posture instantly enraged the front lines. Insulted by her lack of panic, they accelerated their pace, driving the flames directly toward her clothes to force an immediate execution.
However—
The exact millisecond the tips of the torches came within striking distance, her physical parameters exploded into action.
Her hands transformed into a blur of overlapping shadows. Moving with blinding speed, she intercepted the weapons mid-swing, fluidly twisting the batons in their grips and reversing the trajectories so the roaring flames were driven right back into the faces of the advancing crowd.
“Aaaagh! Mercy! Help!”
“The fire! I’m taking burn damage!”
“Fall back! Break the formation before we ignite our own units!”
The vanguard, which had looked so terrifyingly unified moments prior, dissolved into an absolute, screaming panic.
Sensing the shift, a hidden voice nestled deep within the rear ranks tried to salvage the raid.
“Maintain your focus! Do not let a minor setback break your nerve! While the fire parameters are still peaking, drive forward and incinerate the witch!”
“As long as the entity is permanently deleted, the sacrifice of a few low-level units means absolutely nothing!”
Lu Yunxi’s gaze sharpened into a lethal glare. Moving like a bolt of jagged lightning, she sliced through the panicked crowd, her hands continuously flipping the remaining torches around until every single flame was directed squarely at the hidden instigators who were attempting to fan the flames.
The cowardly instigators who had been safely operating from the shadows were instantly engulfed, breaking into frantic, undignified wails.
“Extinguish it! Quickly! What are you brainless idiots staring at?! Fetch some water to clear my status bar!”
“You useless fools! Water! Get me some water!”
“Ahhhh! Help me! Abandon the witch raid! Saving my health bar is the absolute priority right now!”
Lu Yunxi let out a cold, mocking snort. “Did you not explicitly state that sacrificing a few lives meant absolutely nothing as long as I was neutralized? Why the sudden change in corporate policy? It appears you believe only other units should be sacrificed for the cause, while your own vessels remain entirely exempt.”
With that said, she lowered her head, layering a profound look of fragile, victimized disappointment over her features. “I simply acquired a modest amount of baseline self-defense training during my time at the academy, yet you all coordinate such a vile, coordinated defamation campaign to ruin my reputation… Alas! Surviving as a common maiden in this province is simply too exhausting!”
The manipulated peasants froze, completely thrown off by her words. Within seconds, a few sharp-eyed porters realized the agonizing shrieks and curses echoing from the dirt sounded intimately familiar. They were the exact same voices that had been aggressively egging them on from the rear lines to slaughter the girl.
The crowd looked at Lu Yunxi’s deeply crestfallen, miserable expression, then turned their heads to look at the brawny instigators rolling in the dirt, screaming profanities as they tried to put out their clothes. The truth clicked instantly.
“Unbelievable! You absolute parasites utilized our numbers, fabricating a horrific monster myth just to manipulate us into executing an innocent maiden for you!”
“To orchestrate such a vile, deceptive plot against a defenseless student—your internal morality parameters are completely rotten!”
“An elite academic cultivator like her? How could a proper student ever be a man-eating demon?!”
A wave of pure, unbridled fury flared in the eyes of the peasants. To be used as mindless, low-level chess pieces by a pack of cowards was the ultimate insult to their intelligence.
Turning their backs on Lu Yunxi, the mob decisively surrounded the weeping instigators and began executing a brutal, synchronized physical beatdown.
Lu Yunxi lingered on the sidelines for a few minutes, watching the satisfying counter-raid unfold. Seeing that the local pathfinding had resolved the issue and left her with zero chores to complete, she prepared to step back inside—until her sensory stats locked onto a secondary group approaching from the far end of the avenue.
This new faction kept their focus anchored entirely on her positioning. A single glance at their structural variables confirmed they were a specialized tier of troublemakers.
She paused her retreat, observing their advance.
While the initial crowd had been comprised of common regional workers—predominantly local farmers and dock porters—this secondary group boasted an entirely different gear score. Every single individual was draped in premium silks and fine robes that cost a minimum of several gold coins per thread. However, their physical builds appeared soft, fragile, and thoroughly unconditioned, indicating they spent zero time grinding physical parameters.
“Haha! Tell me, are you that famous Miss Qing’er I’ve been hearing so much about?” the leading youth boomed, halting his entourage directly in front of her gates. He snapped open an expensive paper fan, his eyes narrowing into a leering, impudent focus as he swept a thoroughly disrespectful glance across her form. “The local chat logs were hyping you up as a peerless visual masterpiece, but seeing you in the light… you’re remarkably average!”
The sycophants trailing behind him immediately burst into a chorus of flattery.
“Young Master speaks the absolute truth! A common brothel maid like her isn’t even worthy of carrying your footwear!”
“It appears the aesthetic quality of Taohua City has been severely overstated. As expected, the capital server hosts vastly superior visual assets.”
“Young Master, the premium carriage has already been prepped at the junction. The moment you grow bored of this backwater, we can log off and depart at your leisure!”
“…”
Concealed deep within the alley shadows a short distance away, the Madam and her son monitored the confrontation, desperately covering their mouths to stifle their gleeful laughter.
“Mother, what did I tell you?” the young master whispered proudly, his chest puffing out. “Given Qing’er’s volatile, unhinged personality, the exact moment a wealthy elite tries to enforce his authority over her, she’ll inevitably throw a tantrum and trigger a massive regional incident. She’s walking right into our trap!”
“Oh, my brilliant, exceptional boy!” the Madam cooed, patting his shoulder as tears of pure relief welled in her eyes. “You truly understand how to manipulate the server. No matter how monstrous Qing’er’s raw physical combat parameters may be, she is still ultimately just a woman bound by societal constraints. She would never harbor the courage to inflict physical damage on high-ranking, wealthy young masters.”
The teenager nodded in smug agreement. During his tenure at the private academy, he had meticulously analyzed human social dynamics, noting that every single female entity automatically fawned over high-status, affluent males while treating low-level commoners with absolute disdain. Consequently, he had sworn a solemn vow to maximize his wealth stats and become a superior elite under heaven!
Glancing back out at the serene, motionless girl standing by the gates, he let out a quiet, mocking sneer.
Look at her—completely paralyzed with fear! To break a high-tier anomaly like Qing’er, basic peasant incitement was never going to cut it. He had specifically leaked exaggerated, hyper-inflated rumors regarding her peerless beauty directly into the academy’s elite chat groups, painting her as a mythical prize. Naturally, a pack of arrogant, wealthy young masters had immediate spawned into the sector to hunt her down.
Lu Yunxi’s face remained an absolute mask of serene neutrality. The mother and son clearly operated under the delusion that their hushed plotting was entirely secure, but her maxed-out sensory stats caught every single syllable of their dialogue, leaving her completely deadpan.
At the moment, her cognitive processing units were heavily fragmented: thirty percent of her attention was tracking the retreating peasants, ten percent was analyzing the soft young masters in front of her, and another thirty percent was locked entirely on the Madam’s whispering hiding spot.
Because her focus was so thoroughly divided, her immediate reflexes suffered a microsecond of latency.
It wasn’t until the brawny instigators had been thoroughly chased down the avenue that she suddenly felt a rigid sensation pressing directly against her jaw.
Lu Yunxi instantly pulled her wandering focus back to her immediate radius. Lowering her eyes, she looked down to find the tip of a premium paper fan resting insolently against her chin. Her brow twitched with icy annoyance.
She took two smooth steps back, breaking the physical contact as her features hardened into a freezing glaze. “What do you think you’re doing? Control your hands, sir, and maintain some baseline self-respect.”
“Self-respect?!” the wealthy youth echoed, bursting into a boisterous, arrogant laugh.
The sycophants flanking his position followed suit, throwing their heads back as they roared with synthetic, hysterical amusement, looking thoroughly unhinged.
Lu Yunxi was entirely too exhausted to waste cognitive energy interacting with a pack of mentally impaired NPCs. Turning on her heel to walk back into the pavilion, her path was instantly blocked by the leading young master.
“Miss Qing’er, analyzing your current structural parameters, your visage doesn’t even qualify you to carry my footwear,” the youth stated, his eyes mapping her form with unbridled, predatory entitlement. “However, that doesn’t mean you are entirely devoid of an opportunity to enter my service. My estate happens to be facing a labor shortage—we are currently hunting for a low-level maid to empty my personal chamber pots.”
“Empty your chamber pots?” Lu Yunxi repeated softly, her voice dropping into a dangerously level pitch.
Is this fool genuinely attempting to optimize his path toward a swift execution?
Chapter 156: I Don’t Dare to Do It After Knowing
“That’s right. Don’t you worry, you’ll just be waiting on me in my private chambers,” he said, nodding to confirm her guess. “You won’t be in charge of the chamber pots for the whole estate. You’ll be my personal maid, so you only have to attend to me when I use the toilet.”
Lu Yunxi paused mid-step, deliberately committing the man’s face to memory. She made sure she would never forget his features so she could beat him to a pulp every single time she crossed paths with him in the future.
The young master wore a flashy, golden exterior, but he looked incredibly wretched. His eyes were constantly narrowed into a sleazy squint as he unashamedly ogled the hostesses with blatant malice.
She offered him a blindingly sweet smile, slowly closing the distance between them. “Emptying your personal chamber pot… My word, you are far too generous, sir!”
The young master smirked triumphantly. “Naturally! Every woman who lays eyes on me instantly begs to join my quarters, though they rarely pause to consider if their status is worthy of—ARGH! What do you think you’re doing?!”
Caught completely off guard by a sudden, heavy punch to the jaw, the young man reeled backward. He clutched his face, staring at her in absolute disbelief.
“Can’t you tell? I’m hitting you,” Lu Yunxi replied gently. Her hands didn’t stop moving for a fraction of a second as she rained down a relentless volley of punches.
She didn’t just strike him anywhere; she systematically targeted the most agonizing nerve clusters on his body, deliberately fracturing his facial parameters over and over again. The young master shrieked in agony.
His entourage stood frozen in sheer shock. It took them several long seconds to recover their wits.
“Halt! Drop your hands this instant!” one of the sycophants hollered, his face flushing bright red with panic. “Do you have any conception of who our Eldest Brother is?! The mere mention of his lineage will scare you to death!”
Yet, despite his aggressive shouting, the boy didn’t dare take a single step forward into her combat radius.
Lu Yunxi shot him a dismissive glance. Keeping a tight, iron grip on the squinty-eyed young master with one hand, she continued her physical re-education with the other, delivering a deadpan response: “Oh, no. I’m completely terrified.”
“Our Eldest Brother’s biological sister is an esteemed consort to the Emperor in the imperial capital!” another follower barked fiercely, planting his hands on his hips. “If you refuse to yield, don’t blame us for executing a brutal retaliation!” Had his legs not been visibly trembling like leaves in the wind, one might have actually believed he possessed some courage.
“The imperial family?!” Lu Yunxi merely arched an eyebrow, completely unbothered.
However, deep within the alley shadows, the Madam and her son let out a sharp, horrified gasp. They had been happily lurking on the perimeter, enjoying the theatrical breakdown of the man-eating monster myth. They had just been preparing to step out of the dark to trade some pleasantries with the wealthy youth to claim a favor when the revelation shattered their nerves.
“We are completely ruined! Son!” the Madam whimpered, her voice cracking with pure panic. “If the imperial palace decides to initiate a regional investigation, I have no idea if Qing’er can survive it, but our Fengyue Tower will undoubtedly be wiped from the server!”
Deep, bitter regret washed over her. She had operated under the assumption that the youth was merely the son of some affluent regional merchant. Who could have guessed he shared a direct bloodline alignment with the royal court?!
“This… Mother, do not panic!” the teenager gritted out, forcing down his intense dread to offer some comfort. “Qing’er was entirely oblivious to the Young Master’s identity before this moment. Now that the data has been made public, she definitely won’t harbor the courage to strike him again! Furthermore, the two of us have been cleanly hiding our tracking markers, maintaining the alibi that we’re away on a commercial trip. No matter how much wrath the imperial court unleashes, the algorithms can never pin the blame on our profiles.”
Intercepting their hushed dialogue via her acoustic tracking, Lu Yunxi’s eye twitched with intense amusement.
“What’s the matter? Paralyzed with fear now, are you?!” The young master pinned beneath her grip caught her momentary pause and instantly recovered his arrogance. “Hmph! You actually dared to inflict physical damage on my avatar—you will pay an astronomical price for this! Let me think… From this day forth, you won’t just attend to me when I use the toilet; you will also be personally responsible for emptying the chamber pots of every single one of my wives and concubines!”
Lu Yunxi pulled her divided focus back to her immediate radius just in time to catch those suffocatingly dense remarks.
She offered another sweet, serene smile and raised her fist once more.
“Stop! Time out! Are you completely insane?!” the squinty-eyed youth shrieked, his eyes widening to the size of saucers as her fists began falling like a torrential downpour. He frantically threw his arms up to block the trajectory, but his low-level defensive parameters stood zero chance against her Grandmaster-level kinetic output.
“Release me! You… quickly! Do your jobs and rescue me!” He gritted his teeth, preparing to unleash a torrent of profanity at his attacker, but catching the terrifyingly pleasant smile on her face, a cold shiver rippled down his spine. He frantically spun his head to scream at his entourage.
However, while the group of stunned sycophants served as his academic followers, they all originated from affluent, prominent regional families themselves. Standing a mere tier below him in status, none of them were willing to throw their fragile avatars into a meat grinder just to take a beating on his behalf.
Enduring a non-stop barrage of blows, the young master flew into a rage at their transparent, hollow friendship. “There are a dozen of you wretches! Can a massive crowd like you seriously not neutralize a single woman?!”
The eyes of the followers suddenly lit up. Emboldened by their superior numbers, they cautiously formed a wide perimeter around Lu Yunxi.
However—
Though they successfully encircled her positioning, they refused to close the distance. They simply maintained a rigid, static circle, remaining completely motionless on the cobblestones.
Staring at his security detail acting like decorative status props, the squinty-eyed youth almost spat blood from sheer frustration. Enduring the throbbing pain racked through his system, he let out a furious roar: “What are you standing there for?! Execute the attack directives immediately!”
Lu Yunxi: “…”
As if they were low-level automata that had finally processed a delayed command script, the followers began to slowly shuffle toward her positioning.
Slowly… agonizingly slowly…
Lu Yunxi watched their advance for a moment before bursting into a sharp, amused laugh. The absolute latency of their physical movement parameters was slower than the pathing of a snail.
The young master finally surrendered every shred of hope. He clamped both hands over his bruised forehead, his face a mask of profound, unbearable despair.
Yet, the exact microsecond they sensed her guard drop—
The physical momentum of the entourage suddenly shifted, and they rushed forward in a rapid, synchronized ambush.
Facing a flurry of fists driving at her from every conceivable angle, Lu Yunxi remained entirely unbothered. Executing a fluid, micro-step pivot, she effortlessly melted out of their tracking lines, launching an immediate, lightning-fast counter-offensive.
A sharp left hook, a driving right cross—both her fists moved in a seamless blur of dual-wielded execution. Within a matter of seconds, every single one of the young master’s elite academic followers was flattened, groaning miserably in the dirt.
Lu Yunxi offered a light, elegant smile, her gaze casually sweeping over the precise alleyway where the Madam and her son were currently shivering. Lowering her head, she looked down at the pile of wealthy youths trembling at her boots.
“Do not stress over your vitals; I have no intention of deleting your avatars. At the end of the day, I am a law-abiding, peaceful citizen,” she said, clapping the dust from her palms as a brilliant logistical strategy suddenly struck her. “However, my commercial enterprise happens to be facing a severe staffing shortage in our sanitation department. I believe I shall assign the chamber pot maintenance duties to your crew.”
The noble youths froze, their faces instantly flushing with unbridled outrage.
“Do you harbor any conception of who you are insulting?!” one screamed. “We are the direct descendants of high-ranking capital officials! How could our parameters ever be assigned to manual waste management?!”
“You expect me to scrub a toilet?! Bah! You are dreaming!”
“The sons of our elite lineages do not possess such fragile bones! Even if you beat our health bars to absolute zero, we will never comply!”
“…”
The crowd erupted into a chaotic, overlapping chorus of defiance, glaring up at her with pure, venomous resentment.
Lu Yunxi merely arched an eyebrow, her tone thoroughly pleasant. “Do not worry, you won’t be required to wait on my personal quarters. Your specific shift will simply involve managing the collective chamber pot sanitation for the entire Fengyue Tower establishment.”
The young masters’ faces turned a deep, apocalyptic shade of crimson. They looked entirely prepared to trigger a permanent logout rather than surrender their dignity.
Lu Yunxi didn’t care about their protests in the slightest. Instructing her network to secure them with heavy-duty hemp rope, she had the entire squad carelessly tossed into the rear woodshed.
“Turn the proposal over in your minds with care,” she called out through the locked door. “Under my corporate guidelines, those who refuse to complete their daily chores receive zero food rations. Alternatively, you may contact your family accounts to liquidate enough silver to buy out your contracts. The fee is exactly one thousand gold pieces per head. The exact moment the silver clears my ledger, you are free to log off.”
The moment she marched the captive nobility away, the Madam and her son lost all structural integrity, their legs turning to jelly as they collapsed straight onto the alley dirt.
“Son… Qing’er genuinely executed a physical assault on a royal relative…” the older woman whimpered, her voice cracking with absolute horror. “What are we supposed to do when the Imperial Guard spawns into our district to balance the ledgers?!”
She wept tears of bitter, catastrophic regret. She was the one who had systematically engineered the PR campaign, hyping Qing’er’s volatile reputation across the elite academic chat groups to bait high-tier entities into purging her. Who could have possibly foreseen that instead of being driven off the server, Qing’er would simply lock the capital elite in a woodshed?! This environment was entirely too dangerous for her commercial enterprise to survive!
The teenager’s teeth chattered violently against his lip. How could he have possibly calculated that Qing’er was this profoundly unhinged? She had casually thrashed the highest-ranking nobles in the province without a single blink! He didn’t even possess the courage to cross the low-level instructors at the Taohua City Academy, let alone a faction backed by the imperial palace!
The two of them huddled on the dirt with thoroughly miserable expressions, lacking even the physical strength to hoist themselves into a sitting posture. After whispering and reviewing their escape vectors for another hour, their panic finally stabilized.
“Sell the entire enterprise?”
Lu Yunxi arched an eyebrow, staring at the Madam in genuine surprise.
The Fengyue Tower generated a staggering nightly revenue stream. While the Madam was notoriously tight-fisted and treacherous, she possessed excellent corporate instincts. Volunteering to liquidate a cash cow that laid golden eggs every single day… meant she was facing an absolute existential crisis.
Crossing her arms, Lu Yunxi ran the parameters through her mind.
The pieces clicked instantly. She recalled the squad of wealthy young masters she had locked in the woodshed a few days prior. The Madam still commanded a network of loyal scouts and informants, and she had personally witnessed the skirmish from the shadows; it was impossible for her to be oblivious to the abductions.
Yet, the management had offered zero resistance, consistently taking wide detours around the rear woodshed as if the structure didn’t exist on her map. The Madam wasn’t trying to punish her—she was utterly terrified of the imminent, catastrophic retaliation the young masters’ families would unleash the moment they discovered their sons were scrubbing toilets in a provincial brothel! She was trying to dump the asset and run before the imperial guards spawned.
Lu Yunxi turned the acquisition over in her thoughts and offered a smooth nod of agreement.
No matter how much raw physical combat dominance she wielded within the pavilions, the legal notary and corporate deed of the Fengyue Tower had always remained anchored to the Madam’s profile, granting her the absolute right to manage the hostees.
But if the deed to the Fengyue Tower was officially transferred to her ledger…
After aggressively driving down the price against the desperate, panicked seller, Lu Yunxi successfully finalized the acquisition at an incredibly favorable rate.
From that hour forward, the Fengyue Tower officially registered as her personal property.
Chapter 157: Wanghua Tower
Inside the pavilion of the Fengyue Tower, a heavy blanket of unease had settled over the hostesses and support staff following the Madam’s abrupt departure. It wasn’t that they harbored any genuine affection for the woman, but they had grown entirely accustomed to her rigid management style. Now that the keys to the ledger had suddenly shifted hands… they couldn’t help but walk on eggshells. Even though Lu Yunxi had proven herself to be exceptionally fair and kind, the staff remained plagued by lingering anxieties about the future.
Of course, there were those who placed absolute, unshakeable faith in her. Master Bao and Ling’er were thoroughly elated by the acquisition.
Lu Yunxi wasn’t blind; she quickly noticed the baseline confusion paralyzing her workforce.
To clear the air, she summoned every single employee to the main hall one morning, held a comprehensive mobilization assembly, and finalized the briefing by pinning a fresh corporate notice to the board.
The announcement hit the estate like a drop of cold water plunging into a vat of boiling oil, causing the entire hierarchy to violently explode with chatter.
Inside the newly constructed, communal dining hall.
The hostesses had assembled at the long tables, happily sampling a breakfast menu that had been vastly upgraded under the new regime.
“Ling’er, have you caught the latest update? We’ve been officially granted permission to return to our homes!”
The moment Ling’er set her tray down, a young maid who shared her morning shift leaned across the table, her face a mask of pure, unbridled euphoria.
Ling’er’s fingers froze against her chopsticks. Forcing a tight, delicate smile onto her face, she asked softly, “Yes, Miss Qing’er explicitly stated the terms in the briefing… Do you truly desire to return?”
“Naturally! My mother and father must be waiting on my return every single day,” the little maid chirped, cradling her chin in her palms, her eyes wide with nostalgic longing. “It has been so incredibly long since I last saw their faces.”
Ling’er opened her mouth to counter the optimism but ultimately bit her tongue, letting the subject drop. Back in her own family household, her parents had ordered her around exactly like a stray dog, forcing her to complete every ounce of the domestic labor alone while treating a full meal like an unattainable luxury. But she supposed the algorithms differed for everyone; perhaps some of the other girls truly belonged to families who coddled and pampered them.
Every single maiden who harbored a burning desire to escape the pleasure district immediately began packing their modest crates, preparing for their long-awaited departure.
Concurrently, Lu Yunxi instituted a temporary commercial shutdown of the Fengyue Tower, hiring a professional crew of local contractors to systematically gut and renovate the entire architectural layout.
Once she finalized the logistical assignments for the renovation crew over the coming weeks, she wasted no time climbing into the driver’s seat of a heavy transport carriage, personally escorting the homeward-bound girls out of the city.
In all honesty, Lu Yunxi didn’t hold a highly optimistic projection regarding this journey.
The faction desperate to return home consisted almost entirely of naive, lower-level girls who had only spawned into the establishment a month or two prior to her own abduction. Conversely, every single hostess who had weathered the system for a long duration flatly rejected the furlough.
She refused to believe that an extended stay inside a brothel magically erased a person’s homesickness. The reality was far bleaker… the veterans simply understood they were already entirely homeless.
Yet, even if she calculated that the final metrics would be devastating, she recognized that the girls needed to witness the reality with their own eyes. After all, reuniting with their lineages was the deepest, most heavily guarded desire burning in their hearts.
“Sister Qing’er, which territory are we mapping out next?”
A leather curtain was swept aside, and several small heads popped out of the carriage cabin, chattering rapidly like a flock of birds.
Sister Qing’er?
Lu Yunxi sat at the reins, adjusting the hitch. Hearing them call her by her stage name, she let out a quiet breath of relief. During their first hour on the road, the girls had continuously addressed her as “Mother,” triggering an immediate cognitive rejection in her brain. She didn’t possess a single daughter of that demographic!
“Don’t worry about the distance,” Lu Yunxi replied over her shoulder, her features softening into a relaxed grin. “Just keep your eyes peeled; the regional map changes once we clear the pass.”
The little maids broke into a chorus of giggles and cheerful gossip, their faces bright with a pure, unadulterated joy that made them look exactly like songbirds newly liberated from a cage.
“Sister Qing’er, how many miles are left until we reach my family’s village?”
“Sister Qing’er, I intercepted a rumor that the primeval forests of this continent are breathtaking! Can we plot a detour to explore the foliage?”
“I want to sample the regional delicacies from the street stalls! The kitchen staff swore the marketplace vendors serve the most incredible snacks!”
“…”
Lu Yunxi answered their rapid-fire prompts with immense patience, systematically introducing them to the landmarks as the carriage rolled down the main highways.
While their party enjoyed a leisurely, scenic journey across the province, the skeleton crew left behind at the Fengyue Tower pushed through an incredibly grueling work schedule. Yet, despite the intense physical labor, the resident handymen were thoroughly energized. They had never participated in structural engineering or property development before; navigating the new mechanics felt completely refreshing and novel!
Time dilated.
In what felt like a brief blink of the eye, three full months bled away.
Lu Yunxi’s heavy transport carriage finally rolled back through the gates of the compound. Down in the rear courtyard, the waiting hostesses spotted her arrival, abandoning their chores to gather around the vehicle with deafening cheers.
“Miss Qing’er, you’ve finally returned to the sector!”
“Sister Qing’er! Tell us everything—is the open world as magnificent as the storybooks say?!”
Before the crowd could even trade their initial greetings, the heavy leather curtain of the carriage cabin was drawn back.
Looking inside, the hostesses realized the math didn’t add up. Of the original faction that had proudly departed to reunite with their families, a significant portion had returned to the compound.
The courtyard plunged into a stunned silence.
“What… what occurred out there? Did you all not vow to settle back down with your parents?”
Lu Yunxi shook her head, offering her underlings a subtle, warning glance to cut off the line of questioning. “The team has been navigating a grueling travel schedule for three consecutive months; their stamina parameters are entirely depleted. Order the kitchens to brew a selection of warm broths and fresh pastries. Once everyone has replenished their vitals, they need to report straight to their bunks for absolute rest.”
The hostesses quickly caught the hollow, fragile smiles pinned onto the faces of the returning maids. Sensing the underlying trauma, the crowd quietly dispersed, checking their curiosity.
However, the moment the traveling party had successfully recovered their stamina parameters later that evening, their close companions slipped into their dormitories to extract the data.
“Tell us the truth. Why did the repatriation fail so catastrophically?”
“Alas! It is an incredibly grim narrative…” the leading maid whimpered, burying her face in her hands. “The first sister we attempted to drop off didn’t even manage to cross her family’s threshold. The moment her father spotted her silhouette, he charged out with a heavy utility broom, screaming profanities and chasing her down the dirt lane! He roared that the second she crossed the threshold of a brothel, she was permanently wiped from the family genealogy!”
“The second sister managed to secure entry and was even poured a cup of tea,” another traveler whispered, her shoulders shaking. “But her mother and brothers only cared about her fluid silver balance. The exact moment they verified she hadn’t brought a massive chest of gold home to subsidize their accounts, they violently threw her baggage into the dirt, ordering her to march back to the city to milk more coin out of the clientele before she dared show her face again.”
“The third sister’s situation was the most devastating. Her entire lineage had completely vanished. It appeared a severe regional famine had struck their village last winter; driven to absolute desperation by starvation, they had forged into the mountains to harvest wild mushrooms, and the entire family unit was wiped out by toxic consumption.”
“Then it was my turn as the fourth candidate,” a young maid let out a hollow, completely unhinged chuckle. “My parents actually threw a massive banquet to celebrate my return! They were incredibly welcoming… right up until they casually informed me they had already notarized a contract to sell my vessel to a fifty-year-old widower, who intended to use my body as a proxy bride to clear his younger brother’s gambling debts!”
“…”
The hostesses who had remained behind sat paralyzed, their minds reeling from the sheer brutality of the data.
Though they had possessed a baseline understanding that returning to the mortal world would be difficult, they had never anticipated that multiple families would refuse to even grant their own flesh and blood entry into the home.
The horrific accounts of the failed repatriation spread through the corridors of the Fengyue Tower like wildfire. By the time Lu Yunxi held a secondary assembly, asking if any remaining handymen desired an official discharge to seek out their lineages, not a single hand was raised. Every maiden chose to permanently anchor her contract to the estate.
“Sister Qing’er, the architectural renovation of the main pavilion has been completely finalized…” Ling’er reported, flipping through her updated manifest before pausing over the final line. “Oh, and regarding the prisoners secured in the rear sector… should we execute an official release? They are continuously consuming our baseline food rations and taking up valuable real estate in the inventory lines. Managing them is becoming an absolute logistical nuisance.”
Lu Yunxi looked up from her paperwork, her brow furrowing with confusion. “Prisoners? What prisoners are you tracking?”
“The group of brawny young men who claimed to be the direct descendants of high-ranking capital ministers,” Ling’er clarified. Because the captives continuously spouted high-level political threats, she had been forced to assign a double guard detail to the woodshed simply to prevent them from breaking containment and triggering a retaliatory raid against the building.
Lu Yunxi ran the historical data through her mind for a long moment before a realization struck her. Right—the pack of arrogant, wealthy young masters who had tried to enforce their entitlement over her right before she bought out the Madam. She had thrashed their entire vanguard and ordered them locked away.
“They are still sitting in the woodshed?” She was thoroughly deadpan. “Why on earth have they been left to idle? Assign them to manual labor immediately! Our property development requires a massive volume of physical labor; put them to work!”
“We tried, Sister Qing’er!” Ling’er replied, looking thoroughly miserable. “But their baseline manual labor parameters are non-existent. The moment we assign them to the sanitation lines, they break our premium porcelain. If we order them to cook, they burn the ingredients into a toxic black sludge that even the courtyard rodents refuse to touch. And if we hand them a broom… their sweeping execution leaves the floors filthier than before.”
Lu Yunxi: “…”
“Furthermore, an anonymous commercial courier recently cleared our security perimeter, delivering a massive chest of premium gold ingots from their family accounts,” Ling’er added. “The extraction terms state they wish to liquidate the gold to buy back their heirs’ contracts. Sister Qing’er, do you authorize the release?”
“Let them go. Keeping high-profile, non-functional entities anchored to our infrastructure will only clutter our long-term commercial operations,” Lu Yunxi nodded, finalizing the decision. “But hold the release for one hour. I will personally synthesize a high-tier medicinal draught to permanently overwrite their recent memory sectors.”
During her three-month absence, a massive percentage of the local hostesses had routinely visited the woodshed to laugh at the upper-class nobility scrubbing floors. If those arrogant young masters returned to the capital with their memories intact, they would inevitably leverage their families’ military parameters to launch a catastrophic revenge raid against the girls.
Lu Yunxi marched straight to her private alchemy lab, compounding a specialized memory-wiping potion she had memorized during her tenure in the cultivation sect. She brought the vials down to the cells herself, instructing her guards to systematically force the liquid down the throats of the captured nobility.
The formulation was highly potent, carrying a rigid hard-coded restriction: it could seamlessly erase every shred of cognitive data accumulated over the preceding three months. However, the microsecond flaw lay in its precise boundaries—the potion could only affect the exact ninety-day window. Since Lu Yunxi had initially thrashed the young master right at the threshold of those three months, the physical trauma of that specific beating would likely remain vividly etched in his consciousness.
Still, Lu Yunxi didn’t care about a minor grudge.
Once the capital elites were loaded into their unmarked carriages and cleared from the map, she locked her focus entirely on her upcoming commercial expansion.
Not only did she need to fundamentally restructure the core business model of the Fengyue Tower, but she also had to deploy a seasoned operative to oversee the daily transactions of the Qing’er Detective Agency.
In truth, she had harbored severe reservations regarding her plans to permanently alter the brothel’s livelihood. The corporate shift required the hostesses to completely abandon their historical seduction routines, forcing them to retrain their skillsets from scratch and adapt to a grueling martial lifestyle.
Yet, to her immense surprise, the entire workforce accepted the restructuring with absolute, unanimous enthusiasm.
To ensure her maidens possessed the baseline parameters required to defend themselves in the open world, Lu Yunxi systematically instructed them in the fundamental arts of cultivation—incorporating basic iron-fist boxing, fluid palm deflection strikes, high-tier Qinggong movement techniques, and internal energy regulation.
Furthermore, she quietly raided her spatial inventory, stocking the library shelves with an absolute mountain of rare, high-grade martial arts manuals. Under her hard-coded encryption, the manuals would automatically unlock for any student who maintained an untarnished moral character alignment. Driven by a desperate collective desire to complete their worldly trials and experience the open map, the girls pursued their training with near-suicidal intensity.
During the initial phase of their movement training, several hostesses went so far as to hurl their physical vessels straight off the cliffs of the gorge simply to force their passive Qinggong mechanics to activate under life-or-death pressure.
Lu Yunxi’s heart had nearly suffered a catastrophic system halt from sheer terror when she witnessed the falls.
Yet, tumble after tumble, the girls would simply pull themselves out of the bushes, their faces bright with boisterous laughter as they dusted off their robes.
Following three months of absolute, hyper-intensive training, the transformation was total.
The tarnished sign of the Fengyue Tower was officially dismantled, replaced by a gleaming new plaque carved from polished cedar: [The Wanghua Tower].
With their parameters optimized and their spirits forged anew, the maidens threw the grand doors wide open, ready to welcome the world.
