Chapter 50 (2/2)

“It is all right Mother, I am not cold.” Ruan Zhu sat by Madam Ruan’s side, feeling slightly gratified in her heart. Even though this nominal mother usually conducted herself in a biased manner, in the end she was still her own flesh and blood. She couldn’t receive the best but the treatment also wasn’t necessarily the worst.

Madam Ruan right away saw that the marriage was promising and was very happy that her daughter was accepting such a man as a concubine. It was rare for others to receive such a wealthy and noble man as those families would only send their sons over if they made some demands and benefited.

But that did not in the least imply that secondary husbands could freeload. He could live in the principal husband’s home but all of his food and drink expenses must come from his own family. If he didn’t bring that much with him, that was easy to deal with, he could just go out and earn it. Not only would he have to earn enough for his share, he would also have to earn enough for his children and his wife, otherwise they would not have enough to eat or enough to drink, and them being evicted onto the streets would not be considered a wrong.

The matter of Ruan Zhu accepting a secondary husband had been decided and the wedding was very simple. Ruan Zi Xu had wanted to use his influence to arrange it but was blocked by Lu Piao Xiang. The reason, that was only known to him, was that he was afraid someone would recognize him. Thus, the grand wedding ceremony did not come to be. There was only a meal shared by the families and some fireworks to commemorate the occasion.

Picking an auspicious day, Ruan Zhu followed Lu Piao Xiang in paying respect to the flower altar before entering the bridal room. Until her veil was lifted, she felt as if she was in a dream. So far, she had three husbands, but this was the first time in her life that she had worn bridal clothes and also her first time being a bride.

“What are you thinking of, Wife?” Lu Piao Xiang hugged her from the back. To him, the unclothed Ruan Zhu was the most beautiful and his eyes were filled with deep affection. Reaching out to undo the final restraint on her body, his hands stroked upwards.

“I currently cannot do that thing.” She hung her head, her face reddening.

“Relax, I just want to hold you closely and won’t hurt you.”

He placed her hand on his groin. Separated by a layer of silk, a very thin chain pressed painfully against her hand. It was actually a chastity belt.

He also raised his firm arm to show off a dark red dot. She touched it with her finger. Was it a birthmark? What did he show this to her for?

“This is the gecko cinnabar dot that I have particularly guarded for my partner for twenty one years.”

She looked at him in astonishment. He was a mister of a brothel in Lan Zhou. Leaving aside how he had been schemed into entering, he presumably must have terribly suffered to preserve his undefiled state, right?

“How were you framed into entering the red district and how did you manage to even remain intact?” He was the son of a wealthy and prosperous family. To be set up into entering that place, it must be an odd story, right?

“How should I say this, hmm?” Lu Piao Xiang’s eyes flashed as he deliberated for a moment before he slowly opened his mouth: “My older brother from another father is jealous of and resents me and is afraid that I will steal his spotlight. Because my mother’s principal husband does not have a blood-related son, it is inevitable that an heir will be chosen from among us bastards. Our family is also strange as the principal husband and wife are not like other families where men from different families can become secondary husbands. The old ancestors wanted to ensure the pure bloodline of the heirs so the wife could only pick secondary husbands from the brothers of the principal husband. En, it’s precisely a certain stupid woman that married somebody causing that man’s brothers to have to become that stupid woman’s concubines, numbering five in total and outsiders have no qualifications at all to enter. Saying it like that, you understand it now, right?”

Ruan Zhu nodded her head. Just like how she had married the Yun brothers at one time, she had married two brothers while Lu Piao Xiang’s mother had married five brothers.

“If only the principal husband had a son, then all would be well. It is that he doesn’t have one that things became complicated. The secondary husbands have multiple sons and in order to have even the tiniest bit of advantages, they’re willing to fight for the sake of their own interests until they become irreconcilable adversaries with no one willing to yield to the others. Among those, I, hmm, just so happen to be the one that excels the most and the one that has most entered the principal husband’s eyes. That one brother of mine became jealous of me. Perhaps at that time he was still small, hmm, and the way he did things was not as malicious as now, in the future. When I was seven years old, on some moonless night when the wind was strong, that older brother of mine colluded with several servant boys and fed me a sedative, trussed me up tightly and that night sent me to the pal……cough, sent me out the family gates and threw me into the mouth of an alley where a broker lived. I passed through numerous people before being sold to Lan Zhou’s biggest Mei Qing Lou.”

Ruan Zhu quietly listened. Even though Lu Piao Xiang said this all this lightly, her heart found it hard to take and the corners of her eyes became moist.

Lu Piao Xiang laughed and used a finger to wipe away her tears: “It’s already been so long that I can no longer remember it clearly.”

He faintly smiled but there was a trace of sadness in his eyes. The Heavens knew how terrified he had felt when he had been kidnapped. In the carriage, he had been stuck in a group of children that were on their way to being peddled and couldn’t even eat. Unable to endure the extreme hunger, he had no choice but to undo the deer leather belt around his waist and slowly chew on it.

During the first few years after he had been sold to Mei Qing Lou, he had been forced to learn all kinds of skills. If there was the slightest wrong, beatings; scoldings; withholding food, were all frequent events. One after the other, he tolerated all of these things. He had a gift for music since he was a child and the first time he played the guqin in front of others was when he was fourteen. Afterwards, his reputation quickly spread.

Fortunately, courtesans and prostitutes were different. Courtesans were not like prostitutes who sold their bodies; what courtesans sold was their skill. He had continuously retained his virgin status but if there was a patron that staked a thousand pieces of gold on one throw[b], the money-grubbing brothel keeper would, under those circumstances, also force courtesans to take the plunge and fish for gold.

It wasn’t like those situations did not exist but he cleverly avoided them all. All along, he stealthily mapped out an escape and spent a fortune to have someone bring back a secret martial arts book. He secretly practiced martial arts and the year he turned sixteen, he threw a sum of silver he had earned from playing the guqin at the brothel keeper and left Mei Qing Lou, never to return.

As he had been a courtesan, he shouldered the reputation of a courtesan even though he had left the brothel, but Lu Piao Xiang’s splendid reputation as the number one of Lan Zhou’s Four Great Misters spread.

He did not care for the world’s glory, splendor, wealth, and rank or the power of a monarch–all were not placed in his eyes. He simply wanted to be an unrestricted person without any responsibilities that could leave his footprints all over the world with a guqin under his hands.

The past was like a tide and incessantly flashed in his mind, but the person by his side was not well-behaved: “What are you doing?”

“I want to give you an unforgettable bridal night.”

She was undressing him and didn’t expect his outer appearance to be as refined as a lotus. His figure was extraordinarily sturdy and his six-pack was like solid bricks. His skin was smooth to the touch and its color was closer to white but nevertheless was of a healthy luster.

“Don’t be willful, your present body can’t.”

Under the touches of the pair of small, soft and smooth hands, a ** sort of limp feeling emerged in his body–very hard to bear but also very thrilling. The thing at his crotch was growing and was painfully restricted by the metal sheath. He had never experienced this sort of sensation before and his face was a rosy red.

She lowered her head and kissed his chest, not forgetting to fiddle with his two red plums. Using her lips to suck on one, her tongue playfully licked it……After a while, she spit it out and used two fingers to pinch it while she lowered her head again to lick the other one, sometimes nipping, sometimes using the tip of her tongue to tease him.

“En…….don’t be like this……hurts……I can’t take it.” He clenched his teeth and groaned as his body uncontrollably trembled. The metal sheath on his lower half wanted his life. His root that had continued to grow was being ruthlessly crushed and the pain went so far as to pierce through him.

“Give me the key.” She suddenly talked but her lips did not leave him. She trailed kisses down his chest. Finding a gap between the chains on his lower half, her tongue ventured forth and tasted the skin inside.

“Ohhhhh……”

He swiftly found a small and delicate key from inside his pocket and handed it over. She took it, inserted it into the keyhole and undid the metal restriction around his crotch, allowing the thing between his legs grow at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Lu Piao Xing was shocked. He hadn’t thought his little brother could grow to be this big. Being fondled by that pair of small hands that slowly tormented him, it unexpectedly grew a little more and in an instant, a blazing inferno ignited in his underbelly and set his entire body on fire. He painfully bent his body but the sensation of her skin was also incomparably satisfying. He couldn’t help but to straighten his buttocks and push them forward, making his shaft in her hands move in her direction. The more it throbbed, the more pain he felt, the more happy he felt, the more excited he felt–his entire body shivered with an unspeakable pleasure.

“Nnnn……” He cried out, his blazing eyes glued to her exquisite chest as her two full peaks shook along with her movements. He watched until his throat became dry and then extended his hands to hold them, lightly kneading. Countless currents flew from up top and throbbed in his body, arousing him further and rippling within him, just like how the notes when he played the guqin melodiously undulated inside him.

He thought he was going to die within those two small hands, but who would have imagined that what let him desire death and desire life would be her small mouth. The hot and moist sensation attacked him and his rationality ceased to exist. With wide eyes, he looked at that beautiful head of cloud-like hair underneath him. Unconsciously, his hands encircled her and he aimed at her open small mouth and slowly thrust forward.

He discovered his body was becoming hotter and hotter, scalding hot.

Her mouth gave him an enormous sense of fullness. No, she wasn’t only using her mouth. Her hands had also stretched behind his buttocks and were fondling between his legs. In a split second, the fire inside his body blazed even hotter and surged even higher.

His body had never been teased like this by another person. It turned out this sort of feeling was actually the joy of this secular world.

He hurriedly sucked in air as he was afraid he would suffocate and die, his body on the verge of collapse.

In his brain, countless lights gathered, their movements chaotic. Those lights gradually formed into a sphere. He stared with wide eyes when suddenly, the lights flared and become blindingly bright.

“Ahhh……!” He roared as the dense passion accumulating inside him for twenty-one years was finally released. His entire body violently twitched. He felt as if he was suddenly flying, and it was a fantastic sort of high.

Gigantic waves crashed down on him and he felt fierce pleasure. His body seemed to not be his own and his entire frame was soaked with sweat. Only until his reason had returned did he discover that his released enthusiasm was all over her face.

He wiped her clean with the towel that had long been prepared and placed on the side table.

“You silly little girl, you truly have the ability to torment someone to death.” He lightly smiled. His entire body was relaxed and the corners of his eyes curved from happiness born from the bottom of his heart. He lowly sighed: “So this kind of sensation could be this wonderful.”

“If you enjoyed it, I can do it again for you tomorrow morning. After all, I can’t let your wedding night be dry and tedious, right?”

Lu Piao Xiang picked her up and sat her down on top of his legs so that her back was against him. He hugged her and his hands temporarily rested on top of her chest: “You are so good to me, I will also send you the most beautiful gift.”

“What kind of gift?” Gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones were all good, but she didn’t particularly love them. If it was possible, she wanted Yun Shi Yi to return. She would not forget the words he spoke–No matter how many secondary husbands you have in the future, I request to forever be your number one.

“Yun Shi Yi has almost returned.”

“Ah!” She abruptly turned her head, her eyes wider than brass bells.

“I have said it before, I will not let anything happen to him. As long as you desire it, I will accomplish it for you.”

[a] 胡琴 Huqin is a family of Chinese two-stringed fiddles. The erhu belongs to this family.

[b] 一掷千金, idiom meaning to throw away money recklessly; extravagant