Chapter 51 of 90
Share of the Spoils
"Don't worry about that," said Li Yuguo. "When the time comes, whoever sees it gets a share!"
The moment the words were out, the Poison Guards all around the clearing stirred. They glanced at one another over their gray masks, and their eyes shone. To a Poison Guard, an overlord beast was a treasure beyond counting—hide and bone and blood, enough to make a man rich for life. Alone, none of them would ever have dared to go near one. But now there were so many strong men standing in this clearing. A Martial King. The King of Thieves. A princess with the golden dragon in her blood.
Li Yuguo took the little foil card out of his sleeve, with its two remaining blue pills, and tossed it to the Poison Emperor.
"Here. But you've only just taken one. You have to wait at least half a year before the next. Otherwise the first one won't have finished dissolving in your body, and if you take another on top of it, it'll just be wasted."
"You don't need to teach this Emperor his business!" The Poison Emperor caught the card and snorted. He tucked it away inside his robe, very carefully, close to his heart.
"Before we set off for the mountain," he said, "my men and I will be living in Nalan City for a while. As for food and lodging—"
"I'll be responsible for all of it!" Li Yuguo laughed. "Hahaha!"
"Let's go!"
The Poison Emperor waved to the men behind him, and the whole column of green robes turned and moved off through the trees toward the city.
Li Yuguo watched them go, and could not stop smiling.
Three Strong Brothers. Three little blue pills from a foil card that had cost him a few taels on Alimama—and in exchange, he had a super-expert. One of the Ten Emperors, a freshly minted Martial King, signed on to be his hired muscle. If that was not the deal of the century, he did not know what was.
He laughed out loud.
And at that moment, Jun Xue woke up.
She stirred against his knee. Her eyelids fluttered. She rubbed her eyes with the back of one small hand, like a child waking in the morning, and blinked up at the green light coming through the trees—and then she saw Li Yuguo's face above her.
Her face crumpled.
"Master!"
She burst into tears. She threw her thin arms around him and buried her face in his robe and sobbed, great hiccuping sobs that shook her whole body.
"Woo… woohoo… I thought—I thought I'd never see you again! I thought they were going to—they kept saying they'd—"
"Shh. Shh. It's all right." He held her and patted her back. Her white hair was full of leaves. "You're all right. It's over. Nobody's going to hurt you. I came, didn't I? I said I'd be back before your bandages were dry."
She cried harder.
At the other side of the clearing, Nalan Meng watched them with narrowed eyes.
"Yuguo," she said. "Come here."
"Hey—Madam Wife!" He set Jun Xue down gently on the grass beside the King of Thieves, and came over grinning. "Is it because we've survived? Do you want to play at kissing with me now? Then I'll reluctantly accept…"
Nalan Meng took the long whip from her sleeve.
"This," said Li Yuguo seriously, at once, "is only to lighten the mood. The mood!"
"I'm asking you," said Nalan Meng coldly. "How do you know the Medicine Emperor?"
Li Yuguo glanced around. The Poison Guards had gone. The King of Thieves was busy picking leaves out of Jun Xue's hair. Nobody was close enough to hear.
He dropped his voice.
"It wasn't a miracle pill," he said. "It was just an ordinary passion pill. You saw—that guy wasn't good at that, was he? So I gave him one. I didn't expect it to accidentally blast open his meridians. That's all. As for the Medicine Emperor—I don't know him at all!"
Nalan Meng stared at him.
"You," she said, "are really bold. Aren't you afraid the Poison Emperor will see through your tricks?"
She was so angry at him that she laughed.
Li Yuguo beamed. "If the pill really works, then even if he gets suspicious, he'll never blame me. Besides—he's a Martial King now. That's my credit!"
"And you told him he can take the next one in half a year." Her eyes narrowed. "That's to buy time?"
"Bingo! My wife is so smart. So—are you more amazed by my incomparable wisdom, or are you going to scrub my back for me in the bath tonight? …Of course, just kidding!" He had seen her face darken.
She looked at him. At his ridiculous grin, and the leaves in his hair, and the faint red mark on his scalp where the mushroom had been. He had walked into the Poison Emperor's camp with nothing. He had talked his way out of it with a passion pill and a lie about the Medicine Emperor. He had saved all of them.
Nalan Meng burst out laughing.
She could not help it. It came out of her before she could stop it, bright and sudden, and lit up her whole face.
Li Yuguo caught it.
"Look," he said softly. "When our wife laughs, she looks like a fairy. Why does she always keep her face so straight?"
"Who asked you to take care of my face?" Nalan Meng's cheeks went red. She turned on her heel and stalked away through the trees.
When everything had been settled, they all went back to the City Lord's Mansion.
It was late afternoon by then. The Poison Emperor and his guards had been put up in the east wing of the best inn in the city, at Li Yuguo's expense, with a standing order for wine. Jun Xue had been fed, and bathed, and put to bed in her little room off the guest house with the King of Thieves sitting on a stool outside her door, sharpening something. And Li Yuguo had shut himself in his own room to plan—the mountain, the bandits, the overlord. And the dead. Uncle Zhong and the others. Their families. What he owed them, and how he would pay it.
In another room, Nalan Meng was getting ready for Heaven Lust.
She did not want to go.
Not tonight. Not after today. She had watched her husband stand in front of the Poison Emperor with a mushroom growing out of his head and talk him into the ground. She had watched him carry the white-haired girl out of the tent like something precious. She had laughed at him, and he had said she looked like a fairy. And somewhere in all of it, without her permission, something in her had begun to change. She was starting—just a little—to have feelings for her husband.
But she could not avoid the contract with Shi Dacheng. Feelings did not cancel debts.
The wound in her thigh was already gone. She had healed it with a pill from her own stores as soon as she got home, and there was nothing left of it now but a faint pink mark that would fade by morning. She would not have to worry about anyone seeing it.
She sat at her window, and waited for midnight.
That same night, the Poison King Bei Ya went to Heaven Lust with his subordinates.
He was going to celebrate.
His cock had come back to life. For the first time in years, it was strong and hard and his, and he wanted to use it. He wanted to be among women. And everyone in Nalan City knew that the best women were at Heaven Lust.
He had spent a great deal of money that afternoon. Fourteen VIP 3 tokens for his guards—red jade, three lotus flowers each. And for himself, a VIP 4. The highest tier the second floor offered. Shi Dacheng had sold them to him personally, in the private room, bowing and smiling and sweating, and had not asked a single question about why one of the Ten Emperors wanted them.
Now the fifteen of them walked down City Gate Avenue under the red lanterns, laughing, and every one of them was excited. They were thinking about the waitresses. The famous outfits. The beautiful women in their sexy, shameless clothes.
On the second floor of Heaven Lust, they had a table set up for them in the middle of the hall: one great round table, with a long cushioned bench curving all the way around it, so that fifteen men could sit at it side by side.
"Fifteen waitresses," said the Poison King, sitting down in the center of the bench. "One for each of us."
In the changing room, Nalan Meng slipped the gray ring onto her finger first, the way the rules required. She felt her Qi drain away out of her dantian like water out of a cracked jar. She was used to that by now. It still made her feel naked.
Then she opened the box with her number on it, and lifted out tonight's costume, and went still.
It was made of chains.
Fine silver chains, thin as thread, bright as frost, hundreds of them. She laid it out piece by piece on the cushions.
The top was two small iron plates, each no larger than a coin, polished to a mirror shine. They were meant to sit over the nipples—only the nipples—and from each of them ran a little cage of fine chains that wrapped around the whole breast, front and back and underneath, crossing and recrossing, so that the breast would sit inside it like fruit in a net and the plate would be held exactly in place at its tip.
At the bottom, a single chain went around the waist. And from it hung countless more—dozens and dozens of fine silver strands, dangling straight down to mid-thigh like the fringe of a curtain. A skirt made of chain. It would hide nothing at all. Every inch of her would show between the strands.
And under that, one more. A single chain, finer than the rest, running from the front of the waist-chain straight down the middle of the belly, down over the mound, down into the crack of the pussy, through between the legs, and up into the crack of the ass, to fasten again at the back of the waist. Over the mound, two more short chains branched off from it to either side and joined the waist-chain again, so that they framed the pussy in a little silver triangle.
She put it on.
The iron plates were cold. The chains were colder. They settled around her breasts and pulled snug, lifting them, pressing them together, and the little plates sat on her nipples like two coins on a pair of eyes. Every breath made them shift.
The waist-chain. The curtain of strands, swinging and chiming softly against her thighs.
And last, the center chain.
She drew it down between her legs and fastened it at the back, and felt it pull taut. It sank into her. Into the soft seam of her pussy, parting her lips, settling right along the slit; then back, along her perineum, and up between her cheeks, where it lay across the tight pucker of her asshole like a drawn wire.
She took one step, and the chain slid.
Her breath caught. The links were tiny and smooth, but they were links—each one a little bead of metal, and as the chain moved, each one rolled against her, one after another after another, a ripple of small cold pressures running along her most tender flesh.
Shameless, she thought. Every night they're more shameless.
She put on the mask. She felt the formation catch across her face. And she went out to the hall.
Fifteen waitresses arrived at the round table together.
They came in a line and stood before the bench, shoulder to shoulder, all in the same outfit of silver chain. All masked. All beautiful. The light of the red lanterns slid over them—over the netted breasts, the tiny glittering plates, the swaying curtains of chain at their hips, through which every one of their bodies showed plainly: the smooth bellies, the pale mounds, the little silver triangles framing each pussy, the bright thread of chain vanishing between each pair of lips.
Fifteen cocks were already hard. Fifteen bulges were tenting fifteen pairs of trousers along the bench.
By the rule of the house, and the rule of the Poison King's own men, he would choose first. Then the others, in order of rank.
The Poison King Bei Ya looked them over.
Every one of them was an astonishing beauty. They would have stood beside the noble daughters of the great families of the capital without shame. And no wonder. Of these fifteen, several were the daughters of rich houses who had fallen into ruin. Several were disciples of cultivation sects, sent down the mountain for some sin and never sent for again. Every one of them was here for the same reason—a debt, or a secret, or some piece of paper that Shi Dacheng kept in a locked drawer.
Like Nalan Meng.
She stood in the very middle of the line. In the same chains as the others, showing the same curves to the same men. To fifteen men who, that very morning, had stood in a clearing in the woods with poisoned swords and watched her fight their master. Who had watched her bleed.
She felt the shame of it burning in her chest.
The Poison King's eyes went along the line. And stopped.
On the woman in the middle.
Her curves were perfect. Out of fifteen beautiful women, hers were the most perfect of all. Her breasts hung heavy in their silver nets, enormous, snow-white, swelling out around the tiny iron plates; he could see the soft flesh pushing between the chains. Her waist was impossibly narrow. And below, through the hanging curtain of chain, her pussy showed plainly—a perfect, smooth, plump V, its lips parted around the bright thread of silver.
His fingers itched.
"The beautiful girl in the middle," he said. "Come here. Sit with me."
Fourteen men at the table were furious at once.
Every one of them had been eyeing the same waitress. Every one of them had been praying she would be the one to sit with him. And now their master had taken her. They could not say a word.
Nalan Meng walked slowly toward the Poison King.
The others watched her go. The curtain of chain at her back swayed from side to side as she walked, parting and closing, parting and closing, and through it, her bare white ass rolled with every step—round and full and jiggling, the thread of chain sunk deep between the cheeks.
She sat down beside the Poison King. After her, the others chose their waitresses one by one.
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