Chapter 158| Chapter 159| Chapter 160
Chapter 158: Kneel Down and Beg for Mercy
“Welcome, Madam. Are you alone today? Would you prefer to stay out here in the main hall, or should I show you to a private room?” Fengxian gently patted the silver coins tucked inside her purse, the bright smile never leaving her face.
Back when everyone had first voted to completely restructure the business of the Fengyue Tower—no, the Wanghua Tower—she had been plagued by a constant, nagging anxiety. She had spent years growing entirely accustomed to the rhythm of the pleasure district. Could she really adapt to a completely new lifestyle?
Yet, within mere days of the grand reopening, all her doubts vanished.
As it turned out, she was exceptionally adaptable!
Fingering the solid gold and silver coins resting in her pouch, Fengxian silently vowed to do her absolute best to solve this next client’s problems. This new life was infinitely better than her grueling days in the old Fengyue Tower. Back then, she had survived on a miserable three or four hours of sleep a night, spending the remaining hours endlessly rehearsing choreography or entertaining patrons. And for all that labor, she was usually only rewarded with cheap silver trinkets that fetched next to nothing when fenced.
If she had only known sooner…
“Madam, please, take a seat,” Fengxian said warmly, guiding the lady into a lavish, secluded chamber and brewing her a cup of premium, fragrant tea. “Shall we initiate your visit with a facial massage, or would you prefer to sample some of our specialty refreshments first?”
The lady scanned the private room meticulously, and once she was absolutely certain they were entirely secure, she let out a long breath and unpinned the heavy, veiled hat that had been completely concealing her features.
“The blemishes on my face have become far too severe,” the lady murmured, her brow furrowing with deep depression as she lightly traced a bright red, bean-sized pimple nesting beside her nose. “Tell me, is there truly a way to purge them?”
Fengxian immediately leaned in, inspecting the flare-up with a professional eye. She gently questioned the client regarding her recent dietary choices and daily routine, quickly diagnosing the root cause of the inflammation.
Granted, when it came to classical poetry, calligraphy, or dancing, every hostess in the house possessed her own unique strengths. But when the topic shifted to skincare and beauty preservation, these women were absolute masters, each commanding her own highly guarded secrets. Furthermore, Fengxian personally adored spicy cuisine and had spent years perfecting her own specialized acne remedies.
She offered an immediate, soothing smile. “Please do not worry, Madam. This type of blemish is remarkably simple to treat. I guarantee it will vanish completely within five days at the absolute most.”
With that, she fluidly drafted a specialized dietary prescription on a slip of parchment and presented it to her client. It was a time-tested regimen she had personally used countless times; there was zero risk of a negative reaction.
The lady sitting across from her hadn’t anticipated the consultation to conclude so rapidly. She stared down at the handwritten script with a wave of lingering hesitation. A close friend had highly recommended this establishment to her… but could a recipe like this truly solve a chronic condition?
Sensing her internal skepticism, Fengxian didn’t bother offering a defensive speech. Instead, she offered a gentle pivot: “Now that we have established your inner regimen, Madam, why don’t we proceed with a deep facial cleanse?”
She knew for a fact that any client who experienced their signature cleansing techniques would instantly become a lifelong patron of the Wanghua Tower.
The lady, visiting for the very first time, blinked in surprise before offering a tight nod. The friend who had urged her to come had sworn up and down that the services here would entirely eclipse her expectations.
Fengxian guided her to the inner alcove, where the lady reclined onto a plush massage bed. Lulled by the serene atmosphere, she gradually drifted into a deep, peaceful sleep.
An hour later, the lady’s eyes fluttered open. A wave of profound relaxation washed over her entire body, and the skin across her face felt incredibly smooth, supple, and completely refreshed. Her complexion had never looked more radiant!
She lightly traced her fingertips across her cheek, her face lighting up with a mixture of shock and euphoria.
Fengxian offered a knowing smile, presenting a polished silver mirror.
“This is incredible…” the lady whispered, tears of pure relief welling in her eyes as she stared at her clear reflection. “The inflammation has drastically subsided after just a single session!”
Because of the severe breakout, she had spent days cowering inside her estate, terrified to step foot in public lest she become the laughingstock of the social circles. She had confined herself to her courtyard, only permitting a few close confidantes to visit for private chats.
Inhaling a sharp breath, she realized that a simple face wash and a application of the Wanghua Tower’s custom moisturizer had instantly revitalized her skin parameters. Her confidence in the dietary prescription she had just received skyrocketed to an absolute maximum.
Sure enough, within a few short days, her complexion completely reverted to its pristine, blemish-free state. The lady was so ecstatically happy she nearly jumped for joy, instantly transforming into one of the Wanghua Tower’s most loyal, big-spending VIP clients.
Naturally, this was just one success story among many.
Within less than two weeks of their grand reopening, the Wanghua Tower’s reputation had completely saturated the city via word of mouth. Wealthy noblewomen and affluent matriarchs across every district had intercepted whispers of the establishment’s miracles, with lines of premium clients spawning daily to experience the wonders firsthand.
The Wanghua Tower’s daily revenue boomed into an absolute goldmine. However, because their clientele was strictly limited to the elite social circles of high-born ladies, the storefront remained deceptively quiet and tranquil from the outside.
The competitive merchants running the rival establishments along the avenue were thoroughly perplexed, endlessly debating what the new management was plotting.
“As expected, changing the executive leadership simply ruins an enterprise,” one brothel owner mocked over his tea. “The old Madam of the Fengyue Tower ran a flawless, high-traffic operation. Now these amateurs have slapped the name ‘Wanghua Tower’ on the plaque, and their front lobby is practically a ghost town!”
“This works out beautifully for our ledgers,” another chimed in, thoroughly satisfied. “Without the Fengyue Tower aggressively siphoning the male clientele, our nightly revenue will skyrocket!”
Operating under the blissful delusion that the new business was a massive failure, the neighboring shop owners happily extended immense convenience to the Wanghua Tower. For instance, the security directives along the avenue grew incredibly tight. Let alone high-level crimes like street brawls or abductions, even if a petty thief attempted to swipe a single sewing needle, the Wanghua Tower’s newly trained security detail would track them down instantly, neutralizing the target and dumping them at the local magistrate’s office.
The surrounding pleasure houses actively bolstered the local patrol rotations to assist. Consequently, the avenue transformed into the absolute safest sector in Taohua City—a zone so secure that unescorted maidens and young young children could comfortably stroll down the cobblestones alone even past midnight.
Though Lu Yunxi hadn’t actively engineered these neighborhood dynamics, she let out a massive breath of relief when the reports cleared. After all, if your business model targets high-society female clientele, maintaining an absolute, fortress-like safety parameter is a fundamental requirement.
As the weeks bled away, the Wanghua Tower’s corporate operations achieved perfect, unshakeable stability. Furthermore, under her rigorous daily curriculum, the hostesses made spectacular progress in their martial parameters and pharmaceutical mastery. At the very least, if any of them chose to venture into the open world in the future, they possessed the skills to ensure they would never starve.
Unfortunately, Lu Yunxi’s professional satisfaction was cut short. She had officially hit a brutal new bottleneck. Her internal experience bar, which had been steadily optimizing, suddenly froze once more, refusing to budge by even a fraction of a percent.
“Miss! We have a major security breach!”
While Lu Yunxi was sitting at her desk, deeply analyzing her frozen system panel, a young kitchen maid violently slammed the door open, panting heavily as she scrambled into the room.
“Deep breaths,” Lu Yunxi said calmly, immediately pouring a cup of fresh tea and sliding it across the wood. “Take your time and deliver the data.”
“Miss… those arrogant young masters you bound with heavy rope and locked in the woodshed months ago? They have spawned right outside our perimeter, and they’ve brought a massive army of hired muscle to execute a raid!” the maid gasped out, too frantic to even touch the refreshment.
Lu Yunxi blinked, her mind enduring a microsecond of latency before the historical records clicked. Right—the delusional youth with the squinty eyes who claimed to be an imperial consort’s younger brother, along with his band of sycophants. She had completely wiped them from her active checklist after liquidating their gold buyout, yet here they were, launching a counter-offensive.
Letting out a slow, controlled breath, Lu Yunxi rose from her chair and followed the panicked maid straight to the main gates of the Wanghua Tower.
“What is the meaning of this?! Fearing our righteous wrath, are you? Locking your doors like cowards?!” a petulant voice bellowed from the street. “Do you honestly believe that simply rebranding the storefront to ‘Wanghua Tower’ means we won’t recognize your coordinates?!”
“The sheer physical and psychological trauma my avatar endured within these walls demands absolute compensation! Yet you wretches dare to act as though nothing occurred?! Drag that miserable kitchen wench out here immediately!”
“Exactly! Where is that slave girl who calls herself Qing’er?! Force her out here onto the cobblestones to kneel down and beg for mercy!”
“…”
The pack of wealthy young masters, flanked by a massive wall of heavily armed thugs, completely blocked the main entrance. A handful of hostesses and the baseline gate guards had linked arms, stubbornly holding the line to prevent them from breaching the perimeter.
The Wanghua Tower’s new business model catered exclusively to elite noblewomen. If they permitted a gang of rowdy, hostile males to storm the front lobby, their brand reputation would take fatal damage, permanently alienating their clientele.
While the Wanghua Tower’s defensive deployment was structurally solid, they were severely outnumbered. If the siege dragged out into a battle of attrition, her smaller workforce would inevitably take severe structural damage first.
The exact moment Lu Yunxi reached the front lines, she watched several of her hostesses get violently shoved back by the mercenaries. Her gaze turned ice-cold.
The maidens holding the vanguard happened to be low-tier practitioners who had focused their stats on beauty therapies rather than physical combat. The high-tier martial artists of the house were currently out of the sector executing errands. After months of absolute peace along the avenue, the organization had dropped its guard.
Lu Yunxi didn’t waste another second. Launching her physical vessel into the air, she cut through the airspace in a brilliant flash, landing squarely in the dead center of the enemy vanguard within a fraction of a second. She fluidly drew her trusty iron fire poker from her inventory.
With a single, sweeping horizontal strike, a devastating wave of kinetic force erupted from the tool. More than half of the elite, seasoned mercenaries were instantly wiped off their feet, crashing heavily onto the dirt.
The remaining thugs rapidly retreated a full three paces, desperate to project an aura of calm authority, yet the terror burning in their pupils was absolute.
Lu Yunxi swept a detached, deadpan glance across the raiders. “Well? I intercepted a loud broadcast stating you were all desperately hunting for my presence. Now that I am standing right before you, why has the offensive halted?”
The squinty-eyed young master leading the charge let out a soft, nervous cough. He hastily took three massive steps backward into the safety of his rear lines before generating the courage to sneer, “I must admit, your speed parameters are remarkable to dare face my vanguard directly! Haha! But do you honestly believe my combat rating is identical to my stats from months ago?!”
Lu Yunxi: “…”
What exactly was his combat rating back then? Zero?
“I have personally mobilized hundreds of elite house guards from my family’s private estate for this raid!” the youth boasted, hoisting his chin up with supreme arrogance. “Every single one of these men possesses the parameters to fight ten opponents simultaneously! Their destructive capability is something your low-level stats can never hope to match! The brief lapse in execution just now was simply due to my units underestimating the enemy…”
His sycophants nodded in frantic, desperate agreement behind his shoulders.
However, caught up in the flow of his magnificent monologue, the delusional young master completely failed to notice that the faces of the surviving elite house guards flanking his position had turned completely, deathly pale.
The wealthy nobles of the capital had lived pampered lives, entirely sheltered from the brutal, unyielding realities of high-tier combat. But these seasoned mercenaries had survived the open world; they recognized instantly that they had just run headfirst into an absolute, monster-level god of war.
Chapter 159: The Mo Mansion
The mercenaries inwardly groaned, panic bleeding into their thoughts.
This girl isn’t a fraction as fragile as the young master predicted!
Fragile? That was the understatement of the century! Even if they mobilized the entire security force garrisoned back at the capital estate, the collective vanguard probably wouldn’t survive a single combo from this monster!
Watching their delusional employer actively continue to provoke the anomaly, an absolute, hollow despair washed over the hired muscle.
Fortunately, Lu Yunxi wasn’t feeling particularly bloodthirsty. She had already executed the physical correction she desired; she simply ordered them bound and locked away to finalize the lesson.
When the release order was finally authorized, the pack of wealthy elites and their battered guards scrambled out of the Wanghua Tower, their faces black and blue, howling in agony as they limped down the avenue.
“Sister Qing’er, are you entirely certain it is wise to release them?” one of the hostesses asked, her brow knit with deep anxiety.
Lu Yunxi offered a calm nod. “They will absolutely return.”
As Lu Yunxi had accurately projected, the humiliated faction didn’t retreat to the capital. They booked an extended suite at the primary inn down the street in Taohua City.
Over the following week, suspicious individuals periodically loitered outside the Wanghua Tower’s front gates, covertly mapping the operational flow and conducting surveillance.
She feigned complete ignorance, patiently checking off the final logistical tasks required to streamline the Wanghua Tower’s internal management. The hostesses had completely mastered their respective martial and pharmaceutical curriculums; the corporate structure was functioning flawlessly. Every lingering operational issue was fully resolved within a few days.
Even if she abruptly dropped off the server now, the Wanghua Tower would continue to thrive without her.
A few days after she finalized the administrative handover, Lu Yunxi was taking a casual evening stroll down a quiet residential lane when a peculiar, highly potent floral fragrance suddenly drifted into her airspace.
Finally! she thought with intense satisfaction.
Feigning unconsciousness, she allowed her eyes to flutter shut and let her physical vessel collapse onto the cobblestones.
After a prolonged, cautious silence, a scout crept out from the shadows to verify her breathing parameters. Confirming she was out cold, several masked operatives hoisted her over their shoulders and hauled her toward an undisclosed extraction point.
Throughout the transit, they paused every few minutes to meticulously monitor her vitals, clearly terrified she might snap awake.
Lu Yunxi couldn’t help but let her lips twitch.
To create the optimal, isolated opening for the squinty-eyed young master’s extraction team, she had spent the entire week deliberately wandering into the most desolate, high-risk sectors of the map. She had trekked through dense forests and waded into isolated blossom fields, yet the operatives had stubbornly refused to follow the standard abduction playbook, repeatedly missing their windows.
She had just been preparing to abandon the bait strategy when they finally executed the ambush.
Feeling the rhythmic sway of a heavy transport carriage rapidly carrying her away from the borders of Taohua City, she simply relaxed her muscles and genuinely drifted off to sleep.
Meanwhile…
Back at the Wanghua Tower.
“Emergency! Miss Qing’er has vanished off the grid!” a young maid shrieked, sprinting into the main pavilion with a look of absolute panic.
“Do not lose your nerve. It is highly probable that the aristocratic faction who initiated the siege last week executed a covert abduction.”
“How can I not lose my nerve?! What if Sister Qing’er suffers structural damage?!”
“Are you truly incapable of reading the tactical layout? Think back to the exhaustive operational briefings she conducted earlier this week… She deliberately exposed her tracking data to draw the elite faction’s aggro entirely onto herself. She ensured the retaliation wouldn’t splash back onto the Wanghua Tower.”
A profound, stunned silence fell over the gathered hostesses. Several of them subconsciously lifted their sleeves, hiding the tears suddenly welling in their eyes.
The extraction carriage maintained a blistering, high-speed pace down the provincial highways.
To guarantee absolute containment, the squinty-eyed young master’s operatives rigorously adhered to a strict chemical protocol, pressing a handkerchief soaked in heavy tranquilizers over Lu Yunxi’s nose every single hour of the journey.
The cloying, synthetic stench of the narcotics was so nauseating that Lu Yunxi was practically fighting the urge to vomit!
These operatives were drenching the fabric like absolute maniacs, clamping the chemical rag over her airways with such desperate force that one might assume the narcotics were free! They were absolutely paranoid about her regaining consciousness.
She was thoroughly speechless.
However, this suffocating transit cycle would soon reach its terminus.
Once the carriage cleared the border checkpoint of the next major state capital, she planned to cleanly detach from the convoy.
According to her geographic mapping, the terrain beyond the upcoming capital devolved into a highly treacherous, isolated wilderness defined by steep ravines and dense swarms of lethal beasts, vipers, and toxic insects. It was the absolute perfect environment to stage an undetected escape. Even if she completely vanished from the carriage, the operatives would logically assume she had wandered off and been consumed by the local wildlife.
However, before she could fully render the architectural blueprint for her escape, the thick leather curtain concealing the cabin was violently thrown open.
A blinding shaft of intense sunlight pierced the gloom.
Even with her eyelids firmly shut, Lu Yunxi could distinctly register the sharp kinetic heat of the sunbeams against her face.
“Wake up, you miserable wench!” The squinty-eyed youth barked, his brow furrowed with deep irritation as he glared at her unresponsive form. “Cease this pathetic acting! We’ve been on the road for ages; your chemical debuffs should have cleared hours ago!”
Several of the elite guards flanking the carriage hurriedly stepped forward to clarify the logistics. “Young Master, to guarantee a flawless extraction to the capital estate so you may properly discipline the target, we have maintained a continuous, high-dose narcotic cycle. I suspect her cognitive functions are entirely suppressed at the moment.”
“Ah, is that so… Excellent execution. If our chemical reserves are running low, ensure you restock at the next supply hub. And maintain absolute security until she is deposited directly into my personal quarters.” The youth paused, his narrow eyes flashing with a predatory, appreciative gleam as he reached out to roughly pinch her chin. “I intend to assign her the absolute lowest tier of concubinage. If she desires to elevate her status parameters, she will have to beg on her knees…”
Lost in whatever twisted, degrading fantasy his processor was rendering, a dark, oily smirk stretched across his face.
“Understood. Your brilliance is unmatched, Young Master.”
The guards offered submissive bows, silently waiting for the youth to drop the curtain and depart before rotating out to take their scheduled rest shifts.
Seizing the momentary lapse in supervision, Lu Yunxi cracked an eye open and quickly pulled up her system interface.
Her experience bar, which had been frozen in absolute stasis for over a month, had suddenly jolted upward by a visible margin! The spike correlated perfectly with the exact moment the squinty-eyed youth declared he was taking her to his capital estate.
She stared at the data, thoroughly perplexed.
She lacked the diagnostic data to determine what exact variable had triggered the experience gain.
But regardless of the specific trigger, progress was progress.
She instantly aborted her wilderness escape protocol. She resolved to ride the convoy straight to the capital and monitor her experience yields to see if the progression continued.
Time dilated. In the blink of an eye, two full weeks evaporated.
Lu Yunxi was successfully transported into the heavily fortified capital city, smuggled directly into the squinty-eyed youth’s ancestral compound: the Mo Mansion.
Night fell over the capital.
Deep within the sprawling Mo Mansion, inside an isolated courtyard tucked away in the extreme northwest corner of the estate.
A detail of four maids and elderly matrons were stationed outside the locked door. They sat around casually cracking melon seeds between their teeth, engaged in a non-stop loop of idle gossip. Occasionally, they would shoot a disdainful, impatient glare at the cobwebs gathering in the corners of the porch.
“Has that wretched woman inside finally woken up? It’s been an eternity. Why hasn’t the narcotic cleared her system yet?” one of the elderly matrons grumbled, jutting her chin toward the locked room as she interrogated the two younger maids assigned to the shift.
One of the maids instantly bristled, her posture turning defensive. “Auntie, the Young Madam gave us strict, explicit orders. The exact millisecond that woman regains consciousness, we are to report directly to her quarters! Do not even think about monopolizing the messenger bounty for yourself!”
The moment the warning was issued, the atmosphere on the porch turned violently hostile. The two maids and the two matrons glared at one another, their body language shifting as if they were prepared to initiate a full-blown physical brawl over the potential silver reward.
Concealed deep within the dark interior of the room, Lu Yunxi’s eye twitched with sheer exasperation.
These four NPCs stationed outside her door engaged in this exact, deafening argument every single day. It was giving her a migraine.
Unfortunately, the courtyard she had been dumped into was severely isolated from the primary estate layout; absolutely no one lived in the adjacent sectors, and zero maintenance staff had been assigned to up-keep the grounds.
She had intercepted intel indicating that this specific security detail had been deployed by the “Young Madam” of the Mo household—the official, primary wife of the squinty-eyed young master. If this placement wasn’t a deliberate, calculated move to permanently bury her in a forgotten corner of the estate, she would eat her own shoes.
Recognizing that the guards were far too focused on their internal squabbling to actually breach the room, she didn’t even bother deploying a chemical knockout powder. She let them endlessly chatter at the threshold while she executed a stealth recon to map the architectural layout of the compound.
The Mo Mansion was an absolutely colossal piece of real estate, encompassing dozens of interconnected, independent courtyards. The vanguard of the estate housed the primary administrative and reception halls, where the patriarchs conducted their political and commercial affairs. Directly behind that sector lay the expansive library and study complexes. Further back, separated by a highly reinforced structural gate, lay the true residential labyrinth of the inner courts.
The inner courtyards occupied a staggering percentage of the total acreage. In addition to the grand, central pavilion reserved exclusively for the Mo family matriarch, the independent estates belonging to the primary wives—including the squinty-eyed youth’s mother and his official spouse—were exceptionally vast and opulent. The remaining network of smaller, interconnected courtyards was allocated to house the sheer volume of concubines.
While the administrative front yards were engineered with a stoic, elegant simplicity that projected standard aristocratic humility, the residential inner courts were an explosion of diverse, extravagant architectural styles. Some pavilions were draped in lavish, gilded luxury, while others maintained a refined, poetic elegance, each sector tailored to project a distinct aesthetic flavor.
Yet, analyzing the demographic data, a glaring anomaly stood out: despite housing a literal army of women, the Mo lineage possessed only a single, solitary male heir—Young Master Mo. Furthermore, despite maintaining a massive harem of primary wives and concubines, Young Master Mo hadn’t managed to produce a single biological child.
Having successfully mapped the estate’s parameters, Lu Yunxi slipped back into her designated room and initiated her “awakening” sequence.
“Water… cough… hack!” Catching the sound of the guards casually cracking seeds outside, she forced out two incredibly loud, ragged coughs, finally penetrating their idle chatter.
The heavy doors banged open as the four guards rushed into the room, their faces lighting up with unbridled, euphoric joy upon seeing her shift on the bed.
Completely ignoring her requests for water, the entire detail instantly spun on their heels and sprinted out of the courtyard like their lives depended on it.
Lu Yunxi’s eye twitched once more.
If she lacked the contextual data, an observer would assume these four NPCs shared an incredibly deep, profound emotional bond with her! The sheer ecstasy on their faces when she woke up was Oscar-worthy.
She could only wonder what astronomical bounty the Young Madam had promised them for the intel…
Lu Yunxi swung her legs out of bed. She was only halfway through conceptualizing her next tactical move when a sudden, deafening shriek shattered the night air—originating directly from the Young Madam’s residential sector.
Mildly surprised, her curiosity flared. Engaging her Qinggong, she launched herself silently onto the rooftop tiles, only to discover that the entire Mo Mansion had been thrown into a state of chaotic, buzzing activity.
Down in the Young Madam’s lavish courtyard.
The four maids and matrons who had been assigned to guard Lu Yunxi were currently kneeling on the cobblestones, weeping hysterically. The senior matrons attached to the Young Madam’s personal staff were violently hauling them upright, tearing at their clothes and ripping their hair until the four guards looked like absolute lunatics.
“What in the name of the heavens is this ungodly racket?! How dare you orchestrate a riot in the dead of night?!”
Young Master Mo had been forcibly extracted from a concubine’s bed due to the escalating noise. He stormed onto the patio, his face a mask of ashen, humiliated rage, his signature narrow eyes squinted into terrifyingly tiny slits.
One could easily calculate exactly how profoundly furious he was!
The senior maids restraining the weeping guards hastily plastered submissive smiles onto their faces, bowing deeply. “Young Master, forgive the intrusion! These lowly, brainless wretches possessed the audacity to storm the courtyard in the middle of the night, howling like banshees and disrupting the Young Madam’s crucial rest. We shall drag them to the disciplinary sector immediately!”
Chapter 160: Good Intentions
Seeing that they were about to be physically dragged away, the four matrons and maids panicked, shouting frantically in defense:
“Master, we are innocent! It was the Young Madam who explicitly commanded us! She ordered that the absolute first thing we do upon that woman’s awakening was to report directly to her!”
“Master, please, have mercy! We won’t ever do it again! We swear we’ll never disturb the Young Madam’s rest with reports in the middle of the night again!”
“…”
In their absolute terror, their pupils dilated as they roared their excuses, projecting their voices so loudly that every single servant and concubine hiding in the shadows around the courtyard could hear their defense crystal clear.
The senior matrons attempting to haul them away felt their expressions violently twist. Surged with a mixture of intense panic and fury, they scrambled to slap their hands over the screaming guards’ mouths.
If those words were allowed to circulate, the entire household would brand the Young Madam as a demanding, neurotic tyrant! Who would ever willingly serve under her command after that?!
“Silence, you treacherous little wenches! How dare you deliberately attempt to drag the Young Madam’s spotless reputation through the mud at an hour like this?!” one of the senior matrons snarled. Her eyes flared with ruthless intent. Without a second thought, she ripped off her own soiled socks and brutally jammed them into the screaming guards’ mouths to gag them.
The concubine who had slinked out of the bedchamber alongside Young Master Mo suddenly offered a sweet, poisoned smile. “Oh, Master, please do not strain your health with anger. These unruly servants must be fabricating lies! The Young Madam has been feeling quite unwell lately, which is likely why she failed to properly discipline her staff. Otherwise, she certainly would have stepped out to greet you by now, wouldn’t she?”
The senior matron’s heart violently skipped a beat. She shot the concubine a venomous, hateful glare before frantically turning back to Young Master Mo. “Master, the concubine speaks the truth! The Young Madam has indeed fallen ill, which is the sole reason she hasn’t emerged to offer her respects…”
Young Master Mo merely let out a cold, mocking sneer. “Unwell?! What exactly could possibly be wrong with her?! Wasn’t she perfectly fine this morning, hosting a lavish tea party with her socialite friends?!”
He was fully aware his wife hailed from a deeply entrenched, affluent lineage, but her arrogance had grown entirely out of hand! Ever since their wedding day, she had greeted him with nothing but a cold, deadpan expression, bringing absolute misery into his household.
If she harbored such profound disdain for him, why had she agreed to the marriage arrangement in the first place?
Even if he had only staged this theatrical marriage to solidify his parameters to deal with Qing’er, he was still profoundly irritated by his wife’s attitude.
As the diverse cast of characters in the Mo Mansion processed the drama, Lu Yunxi remained comfortably crouched on the rooftop, observing the chaos with immense interest, exactly as if she were watching a premium theatrical drama unfold.
However, she noted a peculiar demographic quirk: while the Mo Mansion possessed a staggering volume of concubines—so many she couldn’t even mentally index them all—there was a stark, complete absence of children running around the estate.
Given the sheer size of the household, she found it deeply confusing.
Lu Yunxi concentrated on her acoustic parameters for a few minutes, eventually catching a hushed conversation filtering up from the primary bedchamber below.
“Where exactly is the woman the young master smuggled into the estate?” an icy, commanding voice asked.
“Young Madam, please, there is no need to stress your humors over some random stray he dragged in from the gutters. You are well aware that the young master never anchors his attention to a single plaything for long,” an elderly, earnest voice advised.
“Do not mistake my intentions, Nanny. I am fully aware of his vile nature. It is simply…” The woman addressed as the Young Madam let out a sharp sneer. “…that I absolutely refuse to tolerate this specific insult! He is free to squander his seed on whatever loose women he desires, but I shall be the one to select and assign his concubines. For him to bypass my authority and smuggle a stray into the estate from parts unknown… Nanny, find a way to discretely inject our operatives into her detail.”
“Young Madam, are you intending to execute a direct intervention against the girl? But it appears the young master hasn’t even bothered to visit her quarters,” the old nanny cautioned, her brow furrowing. “If you orchestrate a move against her, you risk soiling your own hands for nothing.”
“I comprehend your logic, Nanny, but I simply cannot let this slide. I hold the binding indentures for every other concubine in this mansion; their lives rest entirely in my palm, which is why I permit them to stay. But this stray anomaly is entirely off the grid… She cannot be allowed to remain under my roof!” The Young Madam shook her head decisively. “But do not fret, Nanny. If only to accumulate karmic blessings for the heirs I shall one day bear, I will not order her execution.”
Lu Yunxi continued to eavesdrop for another ten minutes, but having failed to intercept the specific tactical blueprint of the extraction, she simply shrugged, dropped back into her room, and comfortably returned to sleep.
She slept soundly through the night. The operatives dispatched by the Young Madam didn’t execute their breach until the crack of dawn.
Just as Lu Yunxi was blinking her eyes open, her consciousness still wading through the dregs of sleep, a horribly familiar cloth was suddenly clamped firmly over her nose and mouth.
The pungent, synthetic chemical stench and the rough texture of the fabric immediately triggered her memory files, snapping her completely awake.
I am honestly impressed by how rapidly the Young Madam mobilized her assets! But I am infinitely more astounded by the fact that after monologuing about her grand strategy for half the night, her ultimate master plan was just to drug me unconscious… Really? That’s it?!
Feeling her physical vessel being hoisted into the air, Lu Yunxi let out a silent, internal sigh.
The operational playbooks of these local NPCs were incredibly repetitive, recycling the exact same two kidnapping mechanics ad nauseam. It was getting horribly boring.
The operatives carrying her marched through the estate for several minutes before finally dumping her onto a hard surface and binding her wrists and ankles with heavy rope.
As the heavy wooden door creaked shut and the lock clicked into place, the muffled sounds of soft, terrified sobbing drifted through the gloom.
Lu Yunxi slowly fluttered her eyes open.
Her visual parameters rendered a dark, dingy woodshed. Scanning the structural layout, she realized it looked almost identical to the storage yard directly adjacent to the isolated sector she had originally been dumped in.
The courtyard she had previously occupied sat in the extreme northwest corner of the estate, bordered by two massive external walls facing the public street. The adjoining eastern courtyard functioned entirely as an industrial storage hub for lumber, coal, and miscellaneous sundries.
Given her complete geographic mapping of the Mo Mansion, she calculated an eighty percent probability that she had merely been shifted one courtyard over. The transit time had been incredibly brief, proving she hadn’t been moved far. Furthermore, the estate’s primary kitchen operated on a 24-hour cycle and was perpetually swarming with staff; an extraction team wouldn’t risk stashing a hostage anywhere near that high-traffic zone. This desolate storage sector was the perfect blind spot.
She shifted her gaze toward the source of the weeping, noting two young girls huddled in the corner, and felt a wave of mild confusion.
“Excuse me, but who might you two be? And where exactly are we?” Lu Yunxi asked, sitting up straight and plastering a look of profound, innocent bewilderment onto her face.
Hearing her voice, the two sobbing girls gradually stifled their tears.
“You… you truly don’t know where we are?” the girl dressed in a faded blue tunic asked, looking at her with wide, curious eyes.
“I really don’t. One moment I was casually browsing the marketplace stalls… and the next, I wake up in this shed,” Lu Yunxi replied, her expression a perfect mask of confusion.
The two girls instantly shot her looks of profound, empathetic pity.
“We are currently locked inside the Mo Mansion. You… well, the reality is, the three of us are likely waiting to be sold to the human traffickers.”
Hearing those horribly familiar words, Lu Yunxi almost froze in a deadpan silence.
Her eye twitched. She was just about to snap her ropes and break out of the shed when the girl sitting adjacent to her burst into a fresh wave of hysterical weeping.
“I was legally purchased by Young Master Mo from the market! But the exact day I was drafted into the household, the Young Madam ordered her guards to drag me into this woodshed, declaring she intended to liquidate my contract…” The girl in blue was so overwhelmed by her tragic fate that she buried her face in her knees, sobbing uncontrollably.
Seeing her break down, the second girl, dressed in a faded pink tunic, felt her own despair flare and began to weep as well. “I was originally purchased as a baseline domestic servant for the Mo Mansion! My only assigned duty was to tend the kitchen fires. Who could have foreseen that while I was simply walking back from the latrines one afternoon, I would accidentally bump into the young master in the corridor… The Young Madam instantly ordered me to be sold to the slavers. I really didn’t do anything wrong…”
The more the two girls shared their backstories, the more devastated they became. But the more Lu Yunxi listened to their data, the more thoroughly bewildered she grew.
The Young Madam had explicitly monologued that while she was willing to tolerate the presence of the other officially indentured concubines, she absolutely refused to permit an unregistered stray like Lu Yunxi to remain in the estate. Lu Yunxi had initially operated under the assumption that she was the primary, exclusive target of the Young Madam’s jealousy.
She absolutely had not anticipated a crowded waiting room!
What is going on here? Does the Young Madam simply harbor a zero-tolerance policy for anyone who crosses her path?
Lu Yunxi let out a soft, mocking chuckle.
She was just preparing to stand up and dismantle the shed when the distinct sound of heavy footsteps echoed outside the walls.
The heavy wooden door was yanked open, and a third, terrified young girl was violently hurled into the room before the lock snapped shut again.
Lu Yunxi: ???
In a matter of seconds, the entire shed descended into a chaotic chorus of overlapping weeping.
A few days later.
A heavy, unmarked transport carriage rumbled along a jagged, desolate mountain path, heading toward parts unknown.
Lu Yunxi sat comfortably amongst a tightly packed cluster of girls. Because her captors had systematically fed her heavy doses of a muscle-softening narcotic, they hadn’t bothered to bind her wrists or ankles with rope.
However, the relentless, ambient weeping echoing throughout the cabin made it mathematically impossible for her to catch a moment of rest.
Her brow twitched with annoyance.
When that third girl had been thrown into the shed, Lu Yunxi had initially logged the event as a random, isolated coincidence. But as the days progressed, she quickly realized the Young Madam operated an incredibly high-volume, automated pipeline.
Barely two days after she was dumped in the storage sector, three additional maids were thrown into the cell. Then, the entire collective was simultaneously gassed unconscious and loaded into this exact carriage.
Within the crowded cabin, Lu Yunxi was technically the only hostage who was completely “oblivious” to the internal politics of the Mo Mansion. Every other girl possessed a firm understanding of exactly why the Young Madam had marked them for liquidation.
Consequently, the entire collective harbored a deep, profound sympathy for Lu Yunxi, viewing her as an innocent civilian who had been dragged into a horrific nightmare without knowing a single thing. They believed her fate was the most tragic of all.
They didn’t just internalize their sympathy; they actively demonstrated it through their actions.
“Feeding time!” an elderly, hardened matron barked as the carriage ground to a halt. She roughly yanked the leather curtain aside.
She retrieved a sack of stale, dry hardtack biscuits, violently snapping them into crude fragments. She tossed a single, meager shard to each girl, then turned her back to consume her own premium rations, entirely unconcerned with their survival parameters.
Instead of greedily devouring their portions, the little girls carefully snapped a small fragment off their own biscuits and silently pressed the pieces into Lu Yunxi’s hands, before gingerly nibbling on their remaining crumbs.
Lu Yunxi: “…”
She genuinely appreciated the warm, uncorrupted kindness these girls were projecting, but she really, really did not want to eat this… Her facial expression contorted into a deeply strained, subtle grimace.
Ultimately, she accepted the fragments.
Every single meal this matron distributed had been heavily laced with the potent muscle-softening narcotic. Furthermore, the trafficking syndicate clearly lacked a precision alchemist; their dosage calculations were wildly erratic, frequently flooding the food with lethal concentrations of the drug. If these young girls continued to ingest the spiked rations, their baseline physical parameters would permanently degrade, leaving them crippled from the toxic accumulation.
The little girls, blinded by their non-stop crying and the sheer exhaustion of the journey, naturally assumed their severe physical weakness was simply a byproduct of fatigue. They didn’t harbor a single shred of suspicion regarding the food supply.
Lu Yunxi, however, possessed vastly superior diagnostics. As a Grandmaster who had systematically mastered the pharmaceutical arts, if she couldn’t detect a crude chemical poisoning operation, she might as well permanently log off the server and return to a starter village to farm sweet potatoes.
