Su Yan put down his brush, lightly blowing on the ink to dry the page. He folded up the freshly completed Twelve Memorials of Impeachment against the Wei Clan, placed it on the corner of the desk, and rubbed at the ache still faintly lingering in his chest.
Xiaobei came in carrying a wooden tray and reminded him: “Master, it’s time to take your medicine.”
Just a single word apart from the common phrase ‘Husband, it’s time for your medicine.’ Su Yan’s lips twitched. “Sounds unlucky. Change the wording, will you?”
Though a bit puzzled, Su Xiaobei obediently rephrased: “Sir, best to drink it while it’s hot, for the effect.”
Satisfied, Master Su took the bowl, pinched his nose, downed it in one gulp, and at once popped a candied fruit into his mouth to chase away the bitterness.
“Xiaojing isn’t back yet?”
“Haven’t seen him. Still a child at heart—probably sneaked off to the marketplace again, wandering or buying treats.”
As he spoke, a voice came shouting from outside, getting closer: “Master! Master, I’ve found out—”
Xiaobei shook his head helplessly. “I thought he was getting more steady of late, but once he’s excited, still a flustered chicken!”
Su Yan chuckled. “He’s fourteen. You, on the other hand, are forty.”
Su Xiaobei gave a low hum, gathered up the empty bowl and tray, and left, as if to emphasize the difference between himself and that unreliable servant boy.
Su Yan smiled after his retreating back and called: “Put some sugar in the medicine tonight?”
Xiaobei didn’t answer, going off to prepare lunch instead.
Xiaojing burst into the study, went straight to Su Yan’s desk, wearing an odd expression—somewhere between shock, puzzlement, excitement, and mockery.
Panting, he blurted: “Master, I’ve found out—”
“Tell me later!” Su Yan cut him off, his heart giving a nervous jolt. He couldn’t help but let his mind jump wildly ahead—Could it be Shen Qi was a regular at Changchun Courtyard? Had some earth-shattering old romance with a male courtesan? No, impossible! Maybe Changchun Courtyard was one of his spy outposts, and those rumors were just slander from political enemies…
After circling through several rounds of mental preparation, Su Yan felt confident that whatever shocking revelation Xiaojing came out with, he could withstand it. Only then did he say: “Go on.”
Xiaojing leaned close, whispering into his ear: “Shen Tongzhi—Lord Shen—he’s… impotent!”
Su Yan: “…”
Xiaojing insisted: “Truly! That’s what the boys at Changchun Courtyard say in private. They claim Lord Shen looks cold and forbidding, like frost that scares off ghosts and gods—but secretly, he suffers from unspeakable infirmities and peculiar fetishes. Shows you can’t judge a man by appearances.”
…Impotent, my *ss! Su Yan felt both exasperated and amused. He’d expected some explosive intrigue, a dangerous secret wrapped in layers of conspiracy—and it turned out to be this ridiculous nonsense.
‘Unspeakable infirmities’! If Shen Qi really couldn’t perform, then what was it that left him wrung half to death each time? Phantom limbs? An air rod?
The corner of Su Yan’s mouth twitched twice. He covered his unnamable emotions with a dry cough. “So-called strange… ahem, fetishes—what exactly? Don’t tell me you’re paying for gossip from the most brainless of rent boys.”
Xiaojing replied: “It was firsthand! I bribed a boy with tea money, and he told me this as one of his most hair-raising stories. Said his deflowering—must’ve been last March—Lord Shen barged in with a blade, scared his paying client half to death.
“The boy thought he’d caught the eye of an Embroidered Uniform Guard commander, and was secretly delighted. But Lord Shen sat down by the window, his saber laid across his knees, menace radiating off him…”
—
Scene in Changchun Courtyard
Shen Qi, eyes cold, asked: “You. Are you still a virgin?”
The boy, secretly thrilled yet coy, replied: “Indeed, no one has ever touched me, Lord Commander…”
Shen Qi glanced aside, then asked the middle-aged patron: “And you—your experience?”
The man clutched his trousers, nearly in tears. “M-my lord, I’m new at this, truly my first time. I didn’t know soliciting was against the law. Ignorance is no crime, please, sir…”
Hearing him lie, the boy frowned. Wanting to play up his own honesty and innocence—to entice such a rare patron—he said earnestly: “What are you saying, Master Wang? Dada told me you love nothing more than deflowering youths. You’ve plucked many fresh blossoms here in Changchun Courtyard. Why claim this is your first?”
Shen Qi had been about to kick the trembling man out and replace him, but at these words, he changed his mind. He drew half the gleaming blade from its sheath and said coldly to the patron, who was still sputtering excuses: “No more nonsense. Get on with it. Now.”
“G-get on… with what?” The man was so frightened his mind blanked.
“Of course you’re going to be on him. Or do you think it will be the other way around?” Shen Qi’s gaze was icy. “If you make this boy feel good, I’ll spare your life. If he winces once, cries once—I’ll cut a line across your back. And if he bleeds a drop—I’ll send you to the eunuchs’ knife.”
The patron’s jaw nearly dropped to the floor.
The boy was ecstatic at first, thinking himself cherished. But then—something felt off. If Lord Shen really favored and protected him, why not kick out this hateful Master Wang and take him himself?
Shen Qi had no patience for their stupefied faces. He grabbed a bottle from the table and flung it over: “Can’t do it? Then drink this whole bottle!”
It was an aphrodisiac prepared by the brothel for each room—potent beyond belief. Normally, just a few drops were enough to last the night; to drink the entire bottle would all but burn a man alive. The customer’s face went ashen, and he stammered, “I can! I can!”
He pushed the boy down, trembling all over, but couldn’t rise to the occasion. Seeing Shen Qi draw his blade with a metallic hiss and shift as though about to get up, he was scared half to death and forced himself to gulp down half the bottle in one go—instantly, it worked.
The boy really was untouched, and with Shen Qi backing him, the moment he felt the slightest pain he raised his voice in a shrill cry. At every cry, the customer felt as if needles pierced his back—the gleam of that cold blade seemed to be scraping right along his spine. His whole body swung between the ice of fear and the fire of the drug, plunging him into a h*ll of ice and flames, wanting to faint over and over but never managing it.
Crushed by such pressure, he exhausted every ounce of strength to please a courtesan. And whenever the boy whimpered in pain, it cut deeper than his own father’s deathbed—it was an ordeal like none before, a veritable freak occurrence!
Fortunately, the terror of becoming an eunuch outweighed everything else, and though utterly spent, he managed at last to fulfill the task.
He lay on the floor gasping, while the boy, having recovered, put on a show of grief-stricken fragility to draw in his new patron. This man might have strange tastes, but he had both wealth and power—a rare golden turtle indeed.
Yet Shen Qi treated him as nothing, sheathed his blade back at his waist, and strode straight out of the room.
The boy suddenly noticed—he had watched the whole process, yet shown not the slightest reaction.
—
“What… reaction?” Su Xiaojing asked, half-understanding.
The boy laughed, teasing as he reached toward the lad’s crotch: “You’re about my age, don’t tell me you’ve never learned the ways of men?”
Su Xiaojing’s face turned scarlet; covering himself, he bolted from the brothel. Only after cooling down completely did he return to report to his master.
—
“Once this spread through Changchun Courtyard, all the courtesans found it baffling. After turning it over in their minds, they could only conclude one thing: ‘Lord Shen has a hidden ailment—impotence. He can only get his thrill by watching others.’”
Su Xiaojing thought for a moment, then added, “But the strange part is, Lord Shen never went back again.
“He was generous, though—even as a spectator, he still paid the fee for taking a virgin. The boys actually longed for him to return. Many even hoped to offer themselves as medicine to cure his affliction. So even though it’s been nearly a year, the story still gets brought up now and then. Some even joke that the courtesan who once received Lord Shen in Rouge Alley bragged to the skies—maybe, in truth, all she entertained was the sword sheath at his side that had grown a spirit!”
Su Yan was torn between laughter and exasperation. He rapped Su Xiaojing’s head with his brush: “I’m starting to regret sending you to dig up news in such a place—you’ve picked up nothing but bad habits!”
Su Xiaojing rubbed his head and grinned: “What are you saying, my lord, still treating me like a child? The stinky tofu seller’s son across the street is my age, and by year’s end he’s already marrying.”
Su Yan said, “So you want to marry too? Fine—give it two years, and I’ll find someone to arrange you a good match.”
Su Xiaojing objected on the spot: “I don’t want to marry—why feed more mouths for nothing? I just want to stay as your servant; that’s far easier than being head of a household.”
Su Yan treated it as childish talk, humored him with a few words, and sent him out of the room.
With the boys gone, Su Yan was left alone, mulling over his brother Shen’s supposed “impotence and voyeur’s kink.”
“…Impossible,” he muttered. “It makes no sense, no matter how I turn it over!”
—
That doubt rolled around in Su Yan’s chest until, under the sliver of the new moon above the rooftop, during their lingering parting moments, he let it slip as though offhand.
Though reality had bent him into yielding, his straight-man mindset still held. He asked like this: “Qilang, do you think voyeurism and… cuckold fetishes are normal?”
He then spent nearly a hundred words explaining, in terms people of the time might grasp, those two outlandish proclivities.
Shen Qi went from dumbstruck to green as wild grass, grinding his molars as he bit hard into Su Yan’s waist.
Su Yan stifled a cry, not daring to make a sound lest the garden’s master upstairs hear. Angry, he squeezed Shen Qi’s chest muscle: “What are you, a dog, biting everywhere again!”
Exposed, Shen Qi felt both awkward and annoyed. Thinking back to the scene, though, he couldn’t help finding it funny. He teased and toyed with the sulking Lord Su until he was trembling, then whispered in his ear: “At that time, I only feared that if I truly moved, I might hurt you.”
So he had gone to Changchun Courtyard to “observe” and gain second-hand experience?
…No. They had barely known each other a few days then, yet he was already set on “going all the way.” What a shameless, downright bandit’s mindset!
Su Yan panted: “So you really don’t have those two kinks, then? That’s a relief.”
Shen Qi wished for ears that had never heard such nonsense. With a threatening smack to Su Yan’s rear, he bared his teeth in a cold grin: “Whatever tricks my wife wants to play, her husband will go along. But one rule—only between you and me. Should anyone else intrude, I’ll deal with him—if not now, then someday!”
Su Yan looked up at the crescent moonline on the horizon, dazedly wondering: whose grudge was he nursing? Or was it all of them?
Soft-hearted as ever, Su Yan felt that the days ahead would not be easy.
