The Beauty Paper

Li Huowang’s scattered attention sharpened slightly at her words. “Oh? How do you figure? I’ve heard people say the Liang Kingdom is the richest place. Other places have famines, but the people there never go hungry.”

“Everyone says Liang is good, but people who haven’t been there don’t know—they don’t treat people like people there!”

Wu Yue finished, her voice trembling. She seemed to recall something terrible, covering her mouth as she started to gag.

“Hm?” Li Huowang frowned. This wasn’t what Bai Lingmiao had told him. In her stories, her hometown was a paradise without a single worry.

He shot a glance at Bai Lingmiao, who was sitting beside Chun Xiaoman. She had been holding a horn cup full of water with both hands, but she quickly set it down and came over.

Li Huowang took her hand and addressed the woman beside him. “Ma’am, could you be more specific?”

Wu Yue lowered her hand from her mouth and looked at Bai Lingmiao, who had drawn closer. Finally, she waved her hand dismissively. “I spoke out of turn. We shouldn’t talk about this during a meal—it’ll ruin your appetites. Benefactor, if you truly wish to know, ask me again tomorrow.”

With that, she turned and walked away, leaving the two of them baffled.

“Miao Miao, did you have a good life in Liang? Did anyone bully your family? What are the officials there like?” Li Huowang asked Bai Lingmiao.

He actually knew very little about the Liang Kingdom, the place where they were most likely to settle down in the future.

He only knew it was large, the strongest of the nations. Nothing beyond that.

If he was really going to spend the rest of his life with Bai Lingmiao there, he couldn’t stay so ignorant.

“It was a really good life! No one dared to bully me! I had a huge family. My grandfather was the village chief. All the aunties and uncles in the village were so kind to me, and the older cousins always let me have my way.”

“What Gouwa and Xiao Man said about people looking down on you for your looks? That never happened at our place!”

“Did you only stay in Niu Xin Shan? What about the rest of Liang? Have you ever been anywhere else?” Li Huowang rubbed his chin, asking again.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been anywhere else.” Bai Lingmiao’s answer made Li Huowang pay a bit more attention to what Baolu’s mother had just said.

He was genuinely curious about what she had been about to say.

Just then, he saw Sun Baolu in the distance, drunk and throwing up. He stood up, walked over, and led him back out of the tent.

He couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Li Huowang decided to ask Sun Baolu first. As her son, he should know something about his mother.

“Stop drinking. Sober up. I need to ask you something. It’s about your mother,” Li Huowang said to Sun Baolu, who was slumped groggily against a water bucket.

“Drink! More!” Sun Baolu grinned foolishly, jabbing his empty cup at Li Huowang’s chest.

“Tch.” Li Huowang reached behind him and grasped the hilt of his sword. He gave it a light pull. In an instant, the killing intent that erupted made Sun Baolu shudder involuntarily. The daze in his eyes was rapidly replaced by sheer terror.

Clang! Li Huowang shoved the barely-drawn blade back into its sheath. Then he snatched the empty cup from Sun Baolu’s hand, dipped it into the water bucket, and splashed the cold water directly in his face. “Sobered up yet?”

Sun Baolu gasped for air. Trembling, he wiped the water from his face, nodding frantically. “Yeah! I’m sober!”

“Your mother is from the Liang Kingdom? What has she told you about it?”

At this question, Sun Baolu’s expression grew strange. “Senior Brother Li, what’s wrong? We were having a good meal, why are you asking about this out of nowhere?”

There was no reason to hide it, so Li Huowang told him exactly what his mother had said and his own concerns.

“If the Liang Kingdom is as bad as your mother says, then the rest of us might need to consider finding somewhere else to settle.”

Sun Baolu, his face still flushed, looked up at the full moon in the sky. “Senior Brother Li… do I have to say?”

Li Huowang was getting annoyed. “Does your family have this many secrets? You can’t talk about this, you can’t talk about that. Anyone listening would think you’re the emperor’s bastard son.”

Hearing this, Sun Baolu gritted his teeth. “Fine! You saved my life and brought me home. Since you want to know, I’ll tell you. What do you think of my mother’s looks?”

“Hm?” Li Huowang didn’t understand where this was going. What did this have to do with what he had just asked?

“My mother is beautiful, isn’t she? Back when she was a maiden, she was even more beautiful than she is now. She could make the fish sink and the geese fall!”

“That’s not how a son should talk about his mother. You’d better watch your mouth in front of an outsider,” Li Huowang warned, thinking Sun Baolu was still drunk.

“Senior Brother Li, so tell me—if my mother was so beautiful, what do you think she did back in the Liang Kingdom?” Sun Baolu gave a bitter smile, looking at Li Huowang.

Li Huowang’s heart sank. He didn’t answer, waiting for the other man to speak.

“When my mother was just fourteen, they dressed her up all clean and pretty and hired her out to some manor to be a Beauty Paper.” Sun Baolu’s voice trembled as he said a word Li Huowang couldn’t understand.

“What’s a Beauty Paper?”

“They used my mother to wipe other people’s asses clean! That’s what a Beauty Paper is!!” Sun Baolu practically spat the words out through gritted teeth.

In that instant, Li Huowang was stunned. He suddenly understood why Wu Yue had started gagging when she talked about the Liang Kingdom, and why she said they didn’t treat people like people.

He had imagined her being a concubine or a prostitute—still a person, at least. But in the eyes of some people in the Liang Kingdom, the only use for a woman that beautiful was to wipe their asses.

“You think that’s disgusting? Wrong! That’s just the beginning! Ever heard of a Beauty Spittoon? Those Liang people have some real games!”

Sun Baolu walked away, leaving Li Huowang standing alone in the cold outside.

After hearing Sun Baolu’s story, he regretted it. Immediately, a natural revulsion for that place welled up inside him.

Compared to them, the abbess of Anci Nunnery seemed clean.

But as the disgust faded, a deep helplessness settled onto Li Huowang’s face.

He should have known. In this utterly insane world, there was no such thing as a paradise. It was just a matter of it being a little bad, or a little worse.

“What was the point of traveling a thousand li? I might as well have just taken over the Qingfeng Temple from the start.”

But that thought lasted only a moment. He still had to consider the others who needed to go home.

“Senior Brother Li? What’s wrong?” Bai Lingmiao stuck her head out of the tent, worried. She was afraid he was having an episode again.

“It’s nothing. I’m coming back in.”

The lively celebration inside the tent continued. But looking at the feast laid out before him, Li Huowang had completely lost his appetite.