4. Not Fragile

The first week in the brothel was spent following other “sisters” around learning how it all worked. Yanli thought with no small amount of amusement that it was very similar to a martial sect: she was a junior, learning from the seniors, and they were all bound to the rules (and whims) of the leader.

The main difference was that in place of loyalty, there was money.

Every single sister who worked at the Dragonfly Shoal owed money. They owed money to each other, to the seamstress who provided the gowns they wore, to the only doctor in town who would touch them, to the jeweler who deigned to sell his wares to whores, and, of course, to the madam. Only one sister was even close to paying out, and she was nearly forty years old. When Yanli delicately asked about their plans for “after,” none of them thought they would ever leave the place alive.

Yanli had always known how important money was, and been made aware that poverty existed despite so many righteous people exclaiming about how terribly unfortunate it was. She had never thought it could be weaponized the way Madam Lin used it, to create a form of slavery that would haunt every woman who "worked" for her until they died. So many of her mother's cryptic warnings made tragic sense, in retrospect.

Meng Shi gave Yanli the name “Jaiyi” and taught her how to wear blush so it adjusted the shape of her face a little, just in case any cultivators came in who might have known her in her past life. It shocked Yanli to find out that cultivators patronized brothels at all, but Meng Shi merely laughed at her.

“All men have needs, meimei, even those stoic Gusu Lan boys. Don’t trust a man who says he doesn’t.” She paused. “Except for my son, perhaps.”

“Do you think so little of his honor?” Yanli asked, horrified that a mother would think such a thing of her child.

Meng Shi shrugged and returned to fixing her hair with beautiful dangling pins. “I know his father.”

That closed the conversation for good.

Meng Yao told her that the madam would let her ease into her new life for a month, which was actually rather generous for a brothel. The Dragonfly Shoal had a very good reputation, though, and the madam would not let anyone near the clientele until they had been trained up. Yanli didn’t question it. Her letter had gone out the morning after she made her deal with Meng Shi, so she expected her brothers to come get her before her time was up.

“Isn’t young master Jiang only ten years old?” Meng Yao asked when he took the folded and sealed letter.

“He’s eleven. And he has Wei Ying with him.”

“The other eleven year old bastard?” Meng Yao said with disbelief.

“Harsh words, Meng Yao,” Yanli said in her most displeased voice.

He drew himself up to his full height, which was just a finger’s width taller than her, but he was still a boy and so broader, stronger. She held her ground.

“I assure you, Miss Jaiyi, that it takes one to know one.” He spun around and walked off. It was only then that Yanli remembered what Meng Shi had said about his father.

They were all bastards, all the way down. It would have been funny if not so tragic.

Fortunately, teaching Meng Yao turned out to be easy. He showed her the cultivation “manuals” he had been using, which his mother had bought for far too much money, but fortunately there had been enough legitimate advice in them for him to start forming a golden core. He displayed a truly astounding talent at recall as well, reciting pieces of what he had read over the years when she asked him questions about what worked to get him so far along. His mother was right about his innate talent.

“These are worse than useless, though,” she said as slashed through all the most egregious pages with a stick of charcoal. “Had you followed these instructions, here, it would have eventually dissipated your core through no fault of your own.”

He held a nervous hand over his lower dantian. “I did not think them so fragile.”

“Not fragile. Mine has been keeping me alive since I formed it. Before then, I was sick nearly all the time, my lungs and heart too weak from being born too early. Every moment I had with the strength and focus to practice, my mother—” She stopped, choking on the word. He just sat there, letting her recover, a bland and nonjudgmental expression on his face. “My mother pushed me to form a golden core, knowing that I probably would not live into adulthood without it. They are not fragile.” She closed the book and set it down before continuing.

“They are very particular, though. No two people circulate qi in the same way. Even twins rarely have the same energy signature. The real secret to cultivation is to find your own path on it. Every sect has their specific practices, but they are all built around helping the cultivator find and control their own unique power.”

He sat still for a moment, thinking. “In the way that two musicians can perform the same piece on the same instrument, but sound distinctly different.” He paused, clearly chasing the thought. “So, if you follow instructions that are specific to a person and not a path, then your core will unbalance itself, eventually ripping apart.”

He was so smart, she thought that it was a shame that he would not get a chance to know Wei Ying. “Yes, exactly! Since you have a core, let’s start with some basic meditation techniques for stability before you try to strengthen it further.” Before she could continue, he held up his hand to stop her.

“They are Jiang techniques, correct?”

“Of course.”

He let out a heavy breath. “What if I want to join a sect that is not the Yunmeng Jiang? Would being trained this way inhibit my chances to do so?”

She could almost see the shadow of his father looming over his shoulder. “No, it shouldn’t. Loyalty is prized, but people leave one sect for another sometimes, due to family reasons or marriage. You are very smart, so I think you could adapt quickly.”

He smiled at that, and for a moment he looked familiar, but she could not place it.

The second week at the brothel was a little more “hands on” in that she was called to help serve food and tea. The madam, impressed by her obviously high-born manners and etiquette, also tested her other abilities. She assumed Yanli could not read nor write, and Meng Shi had told Yanli to let her assume. No one paid more for literate whores, after all. (Yanli wondered how Meng Shi learned to read and write so well, but knew better than to ask.)

When asked to play the qin, Yanli faltered through no fault of her own, since she was simply months out of practice and it had never been her preferred instrument. She did better with the pipa. Where she really shone, though, was in storytelling and poetry. The madam had her reciting famous poems in the main room, keeping men entertained who were waiting for their paid company to be ready or who just enjoyed being fawned over by available sisters.

Meng Shi was right, plenty of cultivators visited the brothel. There were representatives from many different, mostly smaller, sects, but a couple of times senior disciples of Yunmeng Jiang walked through the door. Fortunately, Meng Yao would step in quickly and guide them to private rooms or more isolated seating so that they could not get a good view of Yanli. She recognized them, of course, and her heart twisted in grief at the thought of how the sect was just continuing as if nothing had happened, as if she and her brother and their mother had never existed at all. A seed of hatred settled deep inside her soul, as hard as she tried not to let her resentment fester. In a brothel, where lies were stock in trade, she could not lie to herself: she was furious.

But she could not show it, and so kept her repertoire to romantic poetry and stories of fated lovers and the beauty of nature, instead of the epics of war and tragedy that played out in her heart.

It was one such evening when Lao Wang fell through the door, blisteringly drunk and yelling for food, waving his cane around. Yanli froze in the middle of a verse, her jaw hanging open, as he careened through the room, chased by Sisi and Meihua who were trying to wrestle him into a chair or out a door. He was having none of it and kept bumping into tables as he made his way around, other customers yelling at him to go away. Yanli loudly tried to restart the poem, but by that time, Lao Wang had made it over to her and tripped dramatically into her arms. They both crashed to the ground, and in the next second, Sisi and Meihua were bodily dragging him back out the door amid shouts and threats of violence.

Meng Yao dashed in with several of the younger sisters and started cleaning up and soothing ruffled feathers. The madam stood at the top of the stairs and glared at everyone until some semblance of normalcy was restored, then motioned for Yanli to start reciting again.

No one noticed the folded paper Lao Wang had shoved into Yanli’s sash.