Dangerous Relationship Between Top Courtesans

Nothing strange happened after that. Zhao Zhi and Song Caitang walked to their room in complete silence. The atmosphere between them…

They both tried really hard, so it was fairly calm.

There was no courtesan singing, just one zither player stationed at the far end of the boat. She placed a plain zither on a table and played elegantly on it with her slim fingers. The sound of the zither was light and otherworldly, which really pulled at one’s heartstrings. The player was very quiet too. She only bowed when the two customers entered the room, then went back to playing the zither with her head bent. She had chosen to sit at the perfect spot.

The room had curtains that were made from thin layers of chiffon on all four sides, so the people inside were able to vaguely see the river, but it was not thin enough for anyone to look in. You could row further away if you wanted even more privacy.

Wine and snacks were already on the table.

“Have a seat.”

Zhao Zhi let Song Caitang choose a seat first. She chose to sit next to the window that had the widest view of the river, so that Zhao Zhi could have a seat that couldn’t really see the water.

That sat well with both of them.

Shortly after they settled down, the person sent by the pimp arrived.

This person was a man in his late thirties. His name was Fuliu.

A man in such a place…

Song Caitang and Zhao Zhi both had a slight flicker in their eyes.

A man who worked for such a place and listened to the instructions of the pimp in charge…

…had to be a pimp too, but unlike the one in charge who ran the brothel and dealt with talking to customers, this one was in charge of making sure the courtesans under him were taken care of and attended to the customers who wanted them.

Fuliu had a large head, small eyes and a moustache. He was a little ugly, but he was excellent at reading the situation. He bowed after coming in, and even though he knew Zhao Zhi was here to ask about the two dead courtesans, he didn’t get cold feet. “I heard from the boss that you wanted me to talk about Wenxiang and Yuetao?”

Zhao Zhi threw a piece of silver over. “Do you dare to?”

Actually, it was very normal for even the rich young men who didn’t patronize such places to be interested in the lives of courtesans. Two young women in their prime who were top courtesans suddenly died, so it all seemed very mysterious and it made sense to bring a young lady he was interested in to try and find out more to satisfy his curiosity…

Fuliu glanced at Song Caitang with a smile. He thought that this was all very normal.

He had been the one who trained the two courtesans. It was sad that they had both died, but this was a good chance to make money, so he wasn’t going to avoid the topic.

When he smiled, his eyes almost disappeared, “You’re asking the right person! I was the one who trained both Wenxiang and Yuetao!”

“Oh?” Zhao Zhi raised an eyebrow. “Both? When did both of them come here? I heard they weren’t on good terms.”

“They weren’t just on bad terms, they were both ambitious girls who wanted to be the top courtesan, so they had to find ways to bring the other girl down!”

Fuliu slapped his thigh, then began talking about the past.

“Wenxiang came 12 years ago, when she was seven. The boss bought her from a different city, and something happened in between, so the girl couldn’t come over immediately. The boss paid a local brothel to train her and she only came here after two or three years. I realized that she hadn’t been trained properly, so I took time to train her for two years before she slowly grew to become top courtesan material…”

“Yuetao came a year later than Wenxiang, 11 years ago, when she was four. But she didn’t spend time elsewhere and we watched her grow up.”

Song Caitang looked out of the window at the river. “In other words, they were four years apart.”

Fuliu responded, “Exactly! And that’s why they kept competing with one another.”

“Wenxiang was older than Yuetao, so she was definitely going to start getting customers a few years earlier. She was a scheming girl and willing to learn, so it didn’t take long for her to fight her way to the top of the brothel. So much so that the top courtesans then didn’t get much attention. And what was Yuetao doing at that time? She was so unmotivated and so timid. All my years of training had done nothing for her. She just kept crying like a child.”

Fuliu sounded sad as he went on, “But Yuetao was blessed with good genes. She was clearly going to grow up to become a beautiful girl, and with my training, her figure grew better and better, so it wasn’t surprising that she began to turn heads. I can understand why Wenxiang didn’t bother competing with the top courtesans at that time. Courtesans make the most money when they’re young, so once they’re too old, they would lose to the younger ones naturally. That’s also why she targeted Yuetao. If she could replace the older ones simply because she was younger, Yuetao could do the same to her too. Of course she didn’t like having Yuetao around.”

“Initially, she just pulled a few dirty tricks, like breaking Yuetao’s zither, cutting up Yuetao’s clothes and dance shoes, or slipping laxatives into Yuetao’s food so that she would miss important lessons…”

These were pretty cheap tricks, but they did the job.

Zhao Zhi asked, “And none of you stepped in to intervene?”

“Well…” Fuliu rubbed his hands together, “competition creates motivation, after all. We’re running a brothel because we want money and not because we want to be saints. Their willingness to become better and more popular is a good thing for us. We just need to keep a lookout and make sure nobody gets killed or disfigured or anything major like that.”

“It was really effective. Wenxiang worked especially hard during that time. She was willing to take on absolutely any sort of customer, was not arrogant, did not throw tantrums, and put more and more effort into her job… that’s how she became a top courtesan so quickly.”

Fuliu looked around, then added in a low voice, “Now that she’s dead, there are some things we can say. That whole thing about how her body naturally smells amazing is all made up. Wenxiang had made that her brand. She didn’t smell especially good naturally. She had worked hard at learning how to make perfumes, so she could smell good at all times. The most amazing part was how she was able to create different fragrances according to the personality of the customer. Her personalized fragrance ensured that any customer would have trouble keeping it in their pants!”

Zhao Zhi rubbed his nose and coughed loudly a few times.

Fuliu caught his drift and took a quick glance at Song Caitang before he smiled and waved his hand casually. “Of course, I know you’re not that type. You are a true gentleman! The people who work in this line can read others well, so I can tell with just one look!”

Song Caitang was not the most sensitive to how poorly the two men got along, but this jab was pretty obvious.

She tilted her head with a tiny smile on her lips as she stole a glance at Zhao Zhi.

Zhao Zhi sat up straight and rubbed his nose without looking at her. He stuck his chin out at Fuliu, “Go on.”

Fuliu smiled and continued, “Yuetao hit puberty young and got her period at just 11 years old, so the boss wanted her to start taking customers early and started publicizing her services. Wenxiang became especially agitated, so she talked a very rich customer into giving her a lot of money to make the boss agree to let her be the only courtesan on the list for another year…”

“But Yuetao was so pretty, the boss couldn’t keep her under wraps for long. She started accepting customers a year later, as agreed. Wenxiang started coming up with more tactics and kept snatching away Yuetao’s customers. Yuetao was a timid character and was newly listed, so she couldn’t compete with Wenxiang, who had been in the business for a while now. It even took nearly a year to sell Yuetao’s very first night… if customers liked Yuetao and gave her gifts, Wenxiang would destroy them and take the customers for herself. If she received gifts, she would bring them to Yuetao and show them off to her.”

“It’s not easy for a young girl to be bullied like that. Yuetao was very affected. Her confidence level fell so badly at one time, she wanted to kill herself. The boss had no choice but to rein Wenxiang in, then took several months to counsel Yuetao before she could get Yuetao to accept customers again.”

Song Caitang asked curiously, “So, things remained like that? Wenxiang continued to bully Yuetao and Yuetao continued being a victim?”

“Of course not!” Fuliu sniggered. “Time is a cruel reality, so everyone eventually matures. Yuetao was so pretty, had such a good figure and she was protected by the boss, so she became popular really quickly. As the saying goes, money makes its owner bold. In the same way, customers make the courtesans bold! Once Yuetao became popular, she gained confidence. And so, she began to understand how to get back at Wenxiang and bully Wenxiang too.

“Snatching customers, destroying the other person’s things, showing off the nice gifts she received – everything Wenxiang did to her, she did it back to Wenxiang! If the boss did not keep a tight watch over her and make sure she didn’t poison or disfigure Wenxiang, she would have totally done way worse things to Wenxiang. Killing her wouldn’t be out of the question either!”

When it came to how nasty the two girls were to each other, Fuliu had loads to say. He started telling them everything they did to each other over the past few years, regardless of how minor or major it was. This was a man who really loved gossip.

He finally concluded, “They couldn’t poison or kill each other, but they often made each other so angry, they fell sick!”

Fuliu was excited and willing to spill the tea, so Zhao Zhi felt it was the right time to ask the next question, “What about Mi Gaojie? Did they fight over him like that too?”

“OHO!” Fuliu gave Zhao Zhi a thumbs up. “Sir, you’re a really sharp one! Mi Gaojie is the grandson of the Mi family, and his grandmother has some connections to the empress, so we wouldn’t dare to disrespect him. I don’t know if it’s because he’s been overly adored at home, but… gosh, his taste in women…”

Zhao Zhi asked, “What sort of taste did he have?”

Fuliu rubbed his hands again, “He liked girls who were uh, more domineering, and it was best if she was good at using the whip… the girl who does this best is Wenxiang and Mi Gaojie heard about that, so he came and asked for her. Wenxiang was such a pretty girl with such a spicy personality, so of course he was enchanted.”

A whip…

Song Caitang pricked her ears up and looked at Zhao Zhi. Zhao Zhi was also looking her way.

The look in their eyes was identical.

There was a problem with Mi Gaojie, alright. He was either a sadist or a masochist.

Fuliu didn’t notice the change in the atmosphere and continued yapping away, “In most cases, Wenxiang wouldn’t turn a customer away immediately. But Yuetao happened to be free at that time and had no customers, so when she saw that they were flirting with one another, Yuetao wanted to make things difficult for Wenxiang out of habit.”

“After she successfully made things difficult the first time, she wanted to do it again and again, so it became a habit of her. Our two girls ended up fighting tooth and nail over Mi Gaojie.”

Fuliu had a really lecherous grin on his face at this point, “Mi Gaojie might seem to be really popular when I put it like that, but he was actually suffering inside!”

Song Caitang raised an eyebrow slightly, “Oh? Wouldn’t he be proud of the fact that two beautiful women are fighting over him? Why would he be suffering inside?”

“Well… he liked Wenxiang, but Yuetao took a fancy to him and kept making it difficult for him to get together with Wenxiang. Not only was his mood affected, but Wenxiang’s mood was also affected,” explained Fuliu. “He has a good reputation because of his family, but he’s not actually very rich. So, after a while, Wenxiang couldn’t care less about him and didn’t want to give him any attention.”

“Our top courtesans’ time is very precious. They earn money even when they blink. Who would bother entertaining someone who doesn’t have money?”

“Time and again, he tried so hard but got nowhere. He didn’t get to sleep with Wenxiang, and got harassed by Yuetao, whom he didn’t like. His heart was constantly yearning for someone he couldn’t get. Of course he was suffering inside.”

Zhao Zhi and Song Caitang exchanged glances as he asked an important question, “So… did Mi Gaojie and Yuetao argue very often?”

“Of course!” Fuliu rubbed his palms. “It didn’t matter where they were! They’d argue every time they saw each other! The more Mi Gaojie failed to sleep with Wenxiang, the angrier he got at Yuetao. Regardless of where they were, as long as he saw her, he would have nothing good to say to her, and he would use every vulgarity he knew on her. Truth be told, this guy is educated, but boy can he cuss! Those were some words that embarrassed even someone like myself!”

Mi Gaojie and Yuetao shared the same parents, so they were actual brother and sister…

The more Fuliu said, the worse Song Caitang felt.

Did the Mi family, Mi Xiaowen and Madam Wang ever imagine that their children would have come to a point where they saw each other as enemies? And worse still, it was over something so terrible.

Their son was cursing at their daughter, and used every vulgarity he knew…

In other words, it would involve the girl’s parents.

After all, the worst vulgarities in the Chinese language always involved the parents.

Did Mi Xiaowen know that he had been cursed countless times by his own son?

Did they know what sort of tragedy had occurred as a result of their wrongdoing in the past?

Zhao Zhi poured a cup of warm tea, placed it on the table and pushed it toward Song Caitang.

Song Caitang looked down at the cup, then picked it up and sipped it slowly.

The tea was cool enough to drink, and helped to warm the stomach, so that also helped to calm her emotions down for a while.

Zhao Zhi continued looking at Fuliu as though he hadn’t done any of that and asked, “What about Yuetao? What was her reaction to all of this? Was she upset? Did Mi Gaojie ever regret doing that and tried to be nicer to her?”

That was the most important part.

Did Yuetao… know that Mi Gaojie was her older brother?

Was Mi Gaojie behaving like that for real, or was he doing it on purpose?

“Well, that…” Fuliu paused to think very seriously about these questions for a long time before giving a reply.