Chapter 77 of 90
The Barbarian Lord’s Two Slaves
Ximen Lang came into the city hall with Yun Xianchen a step behind him and the dust of the road still on his boots.
He saw the City Lord sitting in the great chair on the dais, and bowed to her, properly, as a senior disciple of the True Yuan Sect should bow to the Lord of a city.
And then his eyes dropped, and stopped.
He could not help it. Nobody could have helped it. Her robe was cut so deep that half of each breast swelled bare above the silk, white and full and soft, the nipples only just hidden. He stared at them for a long, frank moment. Then he caught himself—he was not a boy—and dragged his eyes back up, and took the chair beside Li Yuguo's near the foot of the dais.
He leaned over and spoke in Li Yuguo's ear, low and amused.
"Oh-ho. Looks like someone's been enjoying those beautiful melons." He laughed softly. "Congratulations, brother."
Li Yuguo smiled. He did not answer.
He was looking past Ximen Lang, at Yun Xianchen.
She was standing just inside the door in her white disciple's robe with her sword at her hip, cool and composed, the ice fairy of the True Yuan Sect. And he was remembering her in two triangles and a thread on the second floor of Heaven Lust, sitting on a fat merchant's thigh with her breast in his hand.
He smiled at her.
She saw it. She saw exactly what kind of smile it was. And for one second the ice cracked—her face went pink from collar to hairline—and she turned her head sharply away and looked at the wall.
They talked about the barbarians.
"Those bastards are obsessed with women and wine," said Ximen Lang. "That's all they've ever cared about. So why are they kidnapping people now?" He frowned. "If it were only women, I'd understand it. But they're taking men too. Strong men. What are they up to?"
"Whatever it is," said one of the officers, "we can't just break in and ask them. Their village is in the wild mountains. Cliffs on three sides, forest on the fourth. One road in, and they watch it day and night."
"Then we need a way inside their den," said Ximen Lang. "Quietly."
Guan Yunfan had been silent the whole time, leaning against a pillar behind Li Yuguo's chair. Now he spoke.
"I know a man," he said. "He deals with the barbarians. Supplies them with slaves." His single eye was flat. "If we go in through him, we might find out what they're doing."
The hall went quiet.
"And who goes?" said Li Yutang.
"Not anyone weak," said Guan Yunfan. "Whoever goes in there goes in as a slave. In chains. With their cultivation hidden. If they're found out, they won't get a second chance."
The discussion went on for a long time. At last, it was settled.
Nalan Meng would go. Yun Xianchen. Ximen Lang. Li Yutang. Five men from the City Lord's guard, and five disciples of the True Yuan Sect. Fourteen people in all. They would go in through the slave trader, and find out what they could—the layout of the fortress, the guards, the weak points—and send a signal when they were ready.
Li Yuguo and Guan Yunfan would wait outside the forest with the rest of the force. When the signal came, they would attack.
Li Yuguo did not argue. He had a writer's instinct for where a story wanted to go, and he could feel this one pulling hard. He looked at his wife's face, cool and set and determined on the dais, and thought: She'd go whether I let her or not.
Guan Yunfan went to see the dealer that afternoon, with a bag of silver. The dealer took the silver.
The next morning, the fourteen of them gathered in a yard behind a warehouse near the north gate, in slaves' clothes. For the men, it was an ordinary rough robe and trousers of undyed hemp. For the women, it was a single piece of the same cloth—a shapeless shift that hung from the shoulders to the middle of the thigh, belted with a cord.
It was meant to hide them. It did not hide much. On Nalan Meng and Yun Xianchen, the rough hemp lay over their breasts and hips like a sack over two ripe melons, and every man in the yard looked at them and then looked away.
"Signal us as soon as you're ready," said Li Yuguo. "Don't wait. Don't be brave."
The dealer locked iron cuffs around their wrists and ran a chain between them. Then he gave each of them a plain iron ring. They put the rings on, and felt their Qi sink down and go quiet—not sealed, only hidden, banked like coals under ash. To any eye that looked at them, they were ordinary, strong-bodied commoners.
He loaded them into a cart, and drove north toward the mountains.
It took two days to reach the fortress.
The barbarians' village sat in a high bowl of the wild mountains, behind a wall of whole pine trunks sharpened at the tops. Two men stood at the gate. They were enormous—tall and thick and bare-armed, in leather that still had the fur on it—and both of them were Advanced Martial Teachers, Nalan Meng judged, feeling at their Qi through the hidden ring. One step below her. One step below Li Yutang.
The dealer climbed down from the cart and spoke to them. Slaves. Fresh goods. A gift for the lord.
The guards looked into the cart, and their eyes went to the two women and stayed there. Then they opened the gate.
Inside, the village was big. Bigger than any of them had expected. Long timber halls with roofs of turf. Smoke from a hundred fires. Pens of goats and horses. And people everywhere—men and women both, all in rough leather and raw hides, all tall, all strong. Even the children looked like they could wrestle a calf.
The dealer led them through it to the biggest hall of all, at the center. The lord's hall.
As they walked in, the guards at the door stared at Nalan Meng and Yun Xianchen.
At the far end of the hall, on a great chair made of antlers and bear skins, sat a man.
He was huge. Even sitting, he was taller than most men standing. His shoulders were as broad as a doorway. His hair was long and black and greased, and a scar ran from his left temple down through his eyebrow, across his cheek, to the corner of his mouth, so that one side of his face seemed to sneer even when he did not.
His name was Luo Jin. He was the lord of the barbarians.
Two women stood on either side of his chair. Beautiful women—one fair, one dark. And they were wearing nothing at all.
"Lord." The dealer bowed low. "I've brought you some fine goods this time." He swept a hand toward the line of chained slaves.
Luo Jin looked at them with a bored face.
He looked at the men first. His eyes went along the row, weighing them like oxen. A few strong ones. Good for work. He grunted.
Then his eyes reached the two women at the end of the line.
And they lit up.
The rough hemp shifts could not hide it. Nothing could have hidden it. The faces. The bodies under the cloth. He leaned forward in his chair.
"Bring those two girls here," he said.
The dealer went to them. He was frightened. He knew who they were. If the lord did something to them—if—it would be on his head. But it had been their choice. He took hold of the chain between their wrists and led them up the hall to the antler chair.
Luo Jin stood up.
He was seven feet tall. He came down off the dais toward them, and his shadow fell over both of them at once. They stood very still. They were frightened. They did not move.
He reached out with both hands.
He took Nalan Meng's breast in his right hand and Yun Xianchen's in his left, through the hemp, and squeezed. Two handfuls of soft meat. He weighed them. He kneaded them, like a farmer feeling fruit at market.
"Wow," he said. "Dealer. You've brought me the real thing this time. Just look at these girls."
Behind them, in the line of slaves, Ximen Lang and Li Yutang were standing with their fists clenched in their chains.
This barbarian had his hands on both pairs of the most beautiful breasts either of them had ever seen. At once. Alone.
"Let's have a closer look," said Luo Jin.
He took the necks of both their shifts in his fists, and pulled.
Neither of them had been expecting it. The rough hemp tore down the front with one long ripping sound. It fell away from their shoulders, down their arms, to the floor.
Their breasts burst out bouncing into the smoky air.
They were completely naked. Standing in the middle of the barbarians' hall in front of a hundred men. And every barbarian in the hall cheered.
Luo Jin took their breasts in his hands again. Bare now. And squeezed. His palms were rough as bark and hot as a smith's. He kneaded them slowly. He pinched their nipples. He looked from one face to the other, grinning his crooked scarred grin.
Ximen Lang stood in the line and stared.
Yun Xianchen was his betrothed. His intended wife. And he had never once seen her breasts—not in all the years their families had been arranging this marriage. Now a stranger was squeezing them. Bare. In front of him.
And at the same time—he was ashamed of it, and could not stop it—he was glad to see Nalan Meng's. He had stared at them in the meeting hall, under that robe. Now they were right there. Completely exposed.
The city guards and the True Yuan disciples were staring too. Every one of them had a hard cock under his hemp. Their City Lord. Their Senior Sister. Being handled by a barbarian. And they could not look away from their beautiful bodies.
"Put collars on them," said Luo Jin, and made a sign to the two naked women beside his chair.
They brought collars. Thick leather, with iron rings, and chains. They buckled them around Nalan Meng's throat and Yun Xianchen's. Luo Jin took both chains in one fist.
"Down," he said. "On all fours. Like animals."
They obeyed.
They bent, and went down onto their hands and knees on the floor of the hall.
Their beautiful round asses stuck out behind them. With their thighs pressed together beneath them, their asses looked even bigger. And between their cheeks, from behind, their small assholes and pink pussies showed.
Only the barbarian lord could see that. He was standing behind them.
In front of them, Ximen Lang and Li Yutang and all the others could see their breasts—hanging down beneath them, swaying. Their nipples were erect from the humiliation.
Luo Jin sat back down in his antler chair. He stretched out his leg, and set his bare right foot on Nalan Meng's ass. As if it were a footstool.
Then he looked over the other slaves. He looked at their frustrated faces, the twelve of them standing in their chains.
"Put them in the prison until morning," he said. "Then send them to work. In the mine."
The mine?
Ximen Lang went cold. He did not remember the barbarians having any mine. He had read every report the sect had on these mountains, and there was no mine in any of them.
But it explained the men. That's why they've been taking strong men.
He decided to follow the plan. He walked after the guard with Li Yutang and the others, toward the door of the hall.
At the door, he looked back.
Nalan Meng and Yun Xianchen were still on all fours on the floor of the hall, naked, shamelessly. And the lord's foot was still on Nalan Meng's soft ass.
He had known something like this might happen. They all had. He turned slowly back, and walked out.
Nalan Meng and Yun Xianchen were left in a hall full of barbarians. Naked. Their faces red with shame.
Luo Jin kept his heavy foot on Nalan Meng's ass, as if he had forgotten it was there. He went on with his business. Men came and went. They brought him disputes, and grain counts, and news from the passes. He listened, and grunted, and gave orders. And every man who came up to the chair looked down at the two naked women kneeling in front of it.
And Nalan Meng and Yun Xianchen were getting wet.
Their pussies were leaking. They could feel it. Neither of them understood why. Neither of them knew that it was written on them in a window that only one man in the world could see—Immoral—and that he was two days' ride away, waiting at the edge of a forest.
It was the first time Yun Xianchen had ever been humiliated like this. Openly. Before so many.
After a while, the business was done. Luo Jin stood up, took their chains, and walked toward the door.
They had no choice. They followed him, on all fours, like dogs.
As they crawled, their asses swayed up and down. Their breasts swung beneath them. Every barbarian they passed watched them from behind, with his cock hard.
Outside the hall, the village was busy. When the lord came out, the people stopped and bowed to him. Then they stared at the two new girls behind him. They all knew their lord was the kind of man who played with a great many women. But this time, it looked like he had hit the jackpot. Not one heavenly beauty. Two.
Nalan Meng and Yun Xianchen did not lift their faces. They kept their eyes on the ground and crawled after him. Their pussies were wet from the shame.
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