So the outcome that followed wasn’t hard to guess—Shi Yun was sent to the Jiaoyun Pavilion. The son of the eastern neighbor, terrified that Shi Yun might expose him as the one who gave her the fish, tossed and turned day and night. No amount of threats eased his mind, fearing she might foolishly turn him in. Then it struck him—where had Shi Yun’s mother come from? In a flash of inspiration, he hatched a plan and promptly dumped her into the Jiaoyun Pavilion.
Girls who ended up in such pleasure quarters rarely ever left. At first, he’d thought that even though Shi Yun was young, she was still a girl and could fetch some money. But the owner took one look at the little girl, who barely reached her waist, and realized she’d be nothing but a mouth to feed for years. She flat-out refused.
The young man tossed Shi Yun inside and bolted. The madam cursed a few times but couldn’t bear to let the child starve at her doorstep. She grudgingly kept her, planning to sell her for a good price once she grew up.
Meanwhile, the eastern neighbor’s husband and wife were quarreling over their son’s rash decision to bring home a burden. The wife fumed,
“You spoil that boy of yours rotten! What possessed him to bring back an extra mouth to feed?”
The husband replied, “He meant well. The western neighbors wouldn’t take her—we couldn’t just let her starve on our doorstep.”
Just as the wife was about to argue further, their son returned. She glared at him, ready to scold, but he spoke first:
“I’ve already sent the little girl away.”
The wife asked suspiciously, “Where did you send her?”
Beaming with pride, the young man said,
“To the same place her mother stayed, of course. She’s bound to turn out just like her mother—a fitting end.”
The wife hesitated, unsure how to respond, but the husband gave a thumbs-up and praised,
“That’s my boy! Killing two birds with one stone! It makes our family look righteous, and we don’t have to feed her anymore!”
As for what happened afterward, it unfolded just like that. While at the Jiaoyun Pavilion, Shi Yun’s mother had a close confidante. No one remembered her real name—she was simply called Hongyun. Before escaping, Shi Yun’s mother confided her plans only to Hongyun, who merely smiled, neither discouraging nor encouraging her.
Somehow, news traveled all the way to Hongyun at the Jiaoyun Pavilion. She learned that her friend had given birth to a daughter named Xiao Hui—an ill-fated name, as if the one who chose it had suffered greatly.
Hongyun was still unsure whether to rejoice for her friend when she received one piece of tragic news after another: first, her friend’s passing, then the sudden deaths of her entire family.
She grieved for a time. But later, she discovered that her old friend’s daughter had, by some twist of fate, ended up at the Jiaoyun Pavilion. For a moment, she didn’t know what to feel.
The owner, always eager to squeeze every bit of profit, saw that Shi Yun, once cleaned up, was a delicate and pretty girl. He decided to put her to work in the main hall.
Hongyun, who happened to be drinking tea in the inner room, nearly choked on her water.
“This little thing, with her short arms and legs, will only slow things down in the hall and annoy the guests.”
The owner argued, “She’ll just run errands and deliver things—she won’t be serving guests. The customers have never seen someone so young—it’ll be a novelty.”
Even if she wasn’t serving guests, which patron in the main hall had clean hands?
One of the girls exclaimed in shock,
“How old is this child? She’s far too young! How can she possibly work in the hall?”
The boss, seeing how easily everyone spoke up, all so righteously condemning her, grew displeased:
“She eats my food, uses my things, lives under my roof—how can she do no work and just freeload? I’m not her birth mother.”
Fortunately, Hongyun knew how to talk. She set down her teacup, walked over to the boss, and said softly,
“She doesn’t necessarily have to work in the front. Didn’t the kitchen master say a couple of days ago that he needed someone to tend the fire? Let her go there instead. I reckon this little lass has probably done plenty of work and should be quite strong. We can leave the front hall duties for when she’s older. By then, she’ll be clean and can fetch a good price.”
The boss weighed the idea and felt it made sense. Even though Shi Yun was not yet ten, if she showed her face too often in the front hall, who would believe she was still a pure girl? In the future, she certainly wouldn’t command a good price.
To be fair, Shi Yun felt her days doing odd jobs at Jiaoyun Tower were quite good. At least she had food to eat after working, and Hongyun would slip over every now and then to give her some fruit or pastries. Occasionally, during festivals, she even got new clothes—a life she hadn’t dared dream of since her mother passed away. She felt quite content.
But Hongyun didn’t seem very happy. Watching Shi Yun grow day by day, she grew increasingly worried. At that age, Shi Yun couldn’t possibly understand what growing up meant for her. She only asked,
“Is it scarier than being beaten?”
Hongyun smiled bitterly.
“Scarier. You’ll get sick, and it’ll hurt more than being beaten.”
Shi Yun blinked and said,
“I can work.”
Hongyun patted her head and sighed.
“It’s not about whether you can work or not. Ah, unless you’re very capable and can run away.”
Later, as Shi Yun grew older, she came to understand. When Shi Yun was twelve, she took a big gamble, leaving a triangular nail tainted with a heat toxin behind a private room door. Clearly, she won the bet. Heaven finally favored her once. Shi Yun rose to prominence overnight and was taken to the cultivation world—a place everyone yearned for.
Originally, things should have ended there. Shi Yun was meticulous and capable, and she could have lived a peaceful life in the Taiwu Mountain Sect. But if those events had truly become fleeting clouds, completely vanishing into the passage of time, today’s situation wouldn’t have arisen.
As the candlelight flickered, Shen Chunyi interjected, asking in a tone that was almost a statement:
“That young man who sent you to Jiaoyun Tower—was his surname Zhao?”
Shi Yun paused, then smiled.
“Yes.”
Somehow, encountering an old acquaintance in a distant land was listed among life’s four great joys. But for Shi Yun, this was hardly something worth celebrating.
Shi Yun was also a favored disciple under the tutelage of Dongfang Zhen. People’s expectations of perfection were always perfect, so whether out of hope or other hidden meanings, Shi Yun’s origins were often a topic of discussion.
Compared to Shen Chunyi and Tong Che, two fellow disciples who started with nothing but a broken bowl and relied on charity, it seemed even more unbearable for a senior sister from the clear pond and pure waters to have such an embarrassing background from a pleasure house.
Even if Shi Yun herself didn’t care, others certainly did. It was like an ink stain on white paper, a flaw in a flawless jade—something people couldn’t help but want to pick at whenever they remembered. On Mount Taiwu, discussing such matters was strictly forbidden. Thus, regarding Shi Yun’s origins, it was merely an intolerable speck in the eye—a feeling that someone so serene and composed should not have a tainted background.
But once off Mount Taiwu, it became a topic of gossip. People seemed to think that someone as pure and dignified as Shi Yun having such a scandalous past added a certain unsavory charm to her. As the gossip spread, the fact that Shi Yun was once called Shi Yun also “accidentally” leaked out.
Unfortunately, this news reached the ears of that Zhao the Second. The Zhao family originally had two sons in this generation, commonly referred to by neighbors as Zhao the Eldest and Zhao the Second. The eldest son died young due to illness, leaving Zhao the Second as the only child, and his doting upbringing went without saying.
As a child, Zhao the Second was praised even for urinating farther than others, and if not, he was still praised. As he grew older, he took to stealing chickens and catching fish. Every time he brought something home, he was lavished with praise, with his parents exclaiming,
“Our son has truly grown up, already bringing things home for the family.”
Finally, under the constant praise of his parents day and night, Zhao the Second became skilled only in stealing chickens and catching fish, while remaining incapable of anything else—unwilling to do manual labor and unwilling to farm.
The Zhao family ancestors were from a scholarly lineage, but scholarly lineages could be divided into wealthy scholarly families and poor scholarly families. The wealthy ones, of course, needed no explanation. As for those who studied for over a decade but achieved nothing, unwilling to roll up their sleeves and farm, barely clinging to the title of a scholarly family to avoid appearing too pitiful—these were called poor scholarly families.
On the surface, people flattered such individuals as learned, but behind their backs, they were generally called “bookworms who lost their wits.”
The Zhao family’s situation at the time fell somewhere between the two. In theory, with proper management, they could have been considered modestly well-off. But under Zhao the Second’s relentless squandering, they eventually became the latter.
However, Zhao the Second was incredibly lucky. One day, after returning from various brothels and pleasure houses, he heard some astonishing news.
“Who did you say?” Zhao the Second mumbled, a toothpick he had just used still dangling from his mouth, reluctant to discard it.
“Those people on the mountain who think they’re better than everyone else? Came from a brothel?”
“Exactly!” The man slapped his thigh, thrilled to finally find someone who understood. It felt like meeting a kindred spirit.
“Her name is ‘Shi Yun’—doesn’t it sound grand and noble? Who would have guessed she used to be called Shi Yun!”
Zhao the Second spat out the toothpick. “Shi Yun?”
The man slapped his thigh again. “That’s right! Hard to believe, isn’t it? She came from our Jiaoyun Pavilion. I always thought those people looked so refined and dignified, but behind the scenes, they’re all in cahoots, who knows what kind of debauchery they’re up to.”
Zhao the Second suddenly burst into laughter, said nothing more to the man, and walked away.
A few days later, a disciple delivered a visiting card, saying someone from the foot of the mountain requested an audience. For a medical cultivator of Shi Yun’s level, appointments had to be scheduled in advance. Without looking up, she said,
“Follow the order. Whose life isn’t precious?”
But the disciple didn’t withdraw his hand. Instead, he hesitated and stammered,
“Senior Sister, perhaps you should take a look at this card. The outer envelope says…”
The disciple hesitated, unsure whether to continue. For a moment, Shi Yun felt a sense of foreboding. Sure enough, as she took the letter and looked at it, the names on the envelope were all too familiar, and even the handwriting seemed to carry a malicious mockery:
To Shi Yun, with respect.
From Zhao Er.
Zhao Er was, of course, not his full name, and no one would use such a casual, street-level nickname on a formal letter. But Shi Yun only knew him by this name, so she understood that Zhao Er had written it this way deliberately, just for her eyes.
It was meant to tell her that some things, even if they were in the past, did not simply disappear.
He had written only two sentences. The first was: “Surely, the esteemed immortal master would not want others to know that, at such a young age, you were capable of killing your entire family.”
Shi Yun had considered arguing—confronting him, for instance, by saying, “That fish was given to me by you. If this gets out, you won’t escape blame either.”
But Zhao Er had clearly anticipated this, which was why his second sentence read:
“I am but a humble man, impoverished and with nowhere left to turn. I hope an old friend might lend a helping hand.”
On the surface, this was a plea for aid, but in reality, it was also saying: “I have nothing to lose. My family is already ruined, and things can’t get any worse. I wouldn’t mind dragging someone as pure and flawless as you, an immortal, down with me.”