Li Fei knelt at an angle beside the bathing pool, where petals floated and steam curled upward, dressed all in pure white.
The twin lines of her collarbones cut deep hollows, yet carried a weightless grace, like a white swan lifting its wings to fly. Her slender, jade-carved shoulders swayed with the movement of her pale arms as her fingertips brushed the water, now and then scooping up a petal. A white cord was tied lightly at her waist in a girlish bow that bobbed with a playful little sway.
She held that lovely, indolent sidelong pose, her gaze soft and languorous beneath ink-black hair that fell quietly past her shoulders, her long legs crossed slantwise at her side, white stockings drawing out clean, even lines.
Unhurried, Li Fei ladled water from the pool and poured it evenly over the bamboo mat. Bright droplets rolled off in every direction, breathing up a haze of steam that carried away the last trace of coolness in the bamboo mat.
The Empress sat quietly in the pool, her expression blurred by the mist.
Yet that heart of hers, still as an ancient well, was rippling now, ring upon ring.
"Oh dear."
Li Fei let out a soft cry of dismay; she had tipped a ladleful of water over herself, soaking her clothes and the ends of her hair in an instant.
Fortunately, one small ladleful vanished soon enough, leaving only a few beads of water pooled in the dip of her collarbones. Li Fei stuck out her tongue like a little girl who had knocked over the milk at the dinner table.
She gave a bashful smile, reached out to test the mat's warmth, and only after confirming it ran slightly above body temperature did she wave and call out,
"All ready, Your Ladyship."
"Mm."
Su Wen answered with all the composure she could muster.
But the moment she turned her head, that graceful back filled her vision.
The lovely, glistening wings of the shoulder blades flickered in and out of sight among the damp strands of hair, as if about to take flight. The boneless softness of that waistline set the mind swaying. And most arresting of all was that childbearing-hipped peach, which shifted along the smooth tiles yet somehow seemed to press down squarely on the Empress's heart.
Su Wen caught her breath — and then that nation-ruining physician glanced back at her, eyes shining like light on water.
The Empress jerked her gaze away as though shocked by lightning.
Why is it that every garment these physicians of the immortal realm wear is so… indecent?
Forcing that heart-stopping image from her mind, Su Wen rose from the pool amid a rush of water and walked, trailing puddles across the floor, toward the sweetly smiling physician.
But the tiles were slick, she had deliberately averted her eyes, and with her thoughts in such turmoil, how was she to keep her balance?
The instant her center of gravity gave out, heat rushed to Su Wen's face — and what she feared was not the pain about to come, but the thought of humiliating herself in front of a physician she had only just met.
Fortunately, what caught her was not hard stone, but an embrace of fine, warm, yielding softness.
"Careful, Your Ladyship. The floor's slippery."
The words came gently, and with them the scent of tea lingering at the tip of her nose. Su Wen's face burned hotter still.
"Thank you."
Her voice had gone slightly hoarse. She pulled free of Li Fei's arms with all the dignity of someone plugging her ears while stealing a bell, walked straight to the bamboo mat, and stood with her arms folded across her chest, her translucent white feet curling faintly — hesitant.
She had been waited on by handmaidens since childhood, bathing included. There was nothing in this to be shy about.
But this time was different.
The Empress, ever steady and self-possessed, felt a fluster she had never known in her life.
"Lie face down first," Li Fei told her with a smile in her voice.
"I think… perhaps we had better not."
Su Wen lowered her lashes and actually turned to go.
"Your Ladyship, you are the Empress of a realm. All the people under heaven worry for your health. How can you hide an illness for fear of the cure?"
Li Fei caught her lightly by the wrist. "Besides, His Majesty went to no small trouble to find you a physician. Surely you wouldn't want all that goodwill wasted?"
As she spoke, Li Fei pressed close, soothing her with the soft, springy benevolence of a healer's heart.
"There's no need to be nervous, Your Ladyship. I'm a professional. I've treated female patients by the thousand. My mind holds nothing but the patient's wellbeing — no other thoughts at all. You may set your heart at ease. There's nothing to be shy about."
At 168 centimeters, Li Fei counted as tall, perfectly proportioned, and generously endowed. Yet the Empress was taller and grander still.
This first beauty of the Great Song carried herself with upright dignity, stately and noble, her features cool and severe — and yet she possessed a figure a succubus would envy, a bosom to rival Lady Gnaea's, and a height near enough to Teacher Melodia's: 175 at the least.
Standing beside her, even Miss Top Courtesan — that indecently built creature with the air of a domineering older sister — looked somewhat petite.
"Then… very well."
Su Wen's voice trembled a little. She drew a deep breath to settle emotions that were uneasy and, for reasons she could not name, faintly expectant, then slowly sat down on the mat and lay forward, her long, rounded legs pressed tightly together, as though that alone could gather in her splendor and hide her beauty away.
But no sooner had she lain down than a weight settled over her — the physician had simply straddled her back, and the plump, pearl-smooth press of her flattened Su Wen's defenses in an instant.
"Relax. Don't tense up."
Seeing that sleek back drawn taut and arching upward, Miss Top Courtesan smiled and bent to murmur in her ear.
"I am… not tensing."
The Empress's answer was thin as a mosquito's hum, but the fine, tender flesh stayed rigid all the same, like a white serpent unwilling to lie beneath another, ready at any moment to throw off the young beast on its back.
"Oh? Is that so."
Li Fei gave the dimple of her lower back a light poke, letting the pad of her finger meet porcelain-pale skin, savoring how warm and smooth it was.
"Nn…"
The Empress's whole body shuddered. Half a sound escaped between her teeth before she choked it back by force.
Her jade fingers clenched, her face went crimson, and behind the veil of her hair her eyes looked ready to spill over.
"What do you think you are doing, girl?"
"Helping you relax, Your Ladyship. If you stay this tense, it's going to hurt," Li Fei said sweetly.
"I have just recalled an urgent matter. This treatment can wait for another day."
Even as she spoke, Su Wen braced her pale palms against the mat and tried once more to flee.
Smack!
Li Fei's hand came down on the Empress without the slightest ceremony, leaving a print on that noble, flawless skin.
"Your Ladyship, healing the sick and saving the dying is the sworn duty of my kind. Your illness has sunk into the marrow. How could I sit by and do nothing?"
The blow was neither light nor heavy, but it left Su Wen stunned.
Not even the Song Emperor would dare treat her with such disrespect!
"You — insolence!"
Once she recovered herself, a thin edge of anger had entered her voice. "Since when is anyone permitted to coerce another into accepting treatment?"
"A child finds the medicine too bitter and would rather spit it out and let the sickness worsen."
Li Fei looked down at the Empress and pressed her case. "When the physician pries open his mouth and pours the medicine in — is that not simply as it should be?"
"I — I am no child," Su Wen said, flushed with fury and shame.
With her heart in such disarray, she forgot her bearing entirely, twisting at the waist to shove off the physician clamped over her lower back.
But Li Fei was leaning forward.
Su Wen's hand swept up and struck something larger than her own palm — and was promptly bounced away.
The Empress went still again and lay obediently back down, feeling rather guilty.
"A physician's heart is a parent's heart. Man or woman, old or young, fat or thin, beautiful or plain — to me there's no difference."
Far from taking offense, Li Fei answered the affront with all the forbearance proper to a healer, softening her tone and speaking with grave sincerity. "Your Ladyship, why not give me a chance…"
"Five minutes. Just five minutes. If you feel it's done nothing for you, I promise to leave and never trouble you again. How does that sound?"
If it were only five minutes…
Su Wen's lashes quivered, and she said in a voice barely audible,
"Very well, then."
With an excuse to talk herself into it, anticipation won out over unease.
The Empress bit her lower lip and let the strength drain slowly out of her body until she lay like spilled water, even her tightly closed legs going slack.
"I'll make sure Your Ladyship is satisfied."
Like someone about to attempt the hardest stage in a rhythm game, Li Fei danced her ten slender, nimble fingers back and forth to warm them up.
Then she poured the oil Lady Zhihua had prepared for her into her palms, spread it evenly, and — following the technique she remembered from Lady Zhihua's hands — laid her palms gently against the Empress's back.
"Nnh…"
Warm, soft palms sheathed in slippery oil settled over her skin, and the tingling that shot through her was beyond anything she had known. A small sound escaped the Empress despite herself, and the body she had only just relaxed shivered anew, drawing taut in a single line from her legs down to her toes.
Desire, after all, is like a volcano. The molten rock inside the mountain never cools; it only gathers, waiting for the moment it roars free and stains the sky red.
And for all these years the Empress had kept herself in check, upright and unblemished, never daring the slightest transgression — latterly she would not even let her palace maids attend her bath, for fear of erring and bringing shame upon the imperial house.
Clearly, within that lonely, proud, exquisitely wrought mountain, scalding magma was roaring in silence: it would either erupt in silence or die in silence.
And now Su Wen's Daoist heart had lost its guard, and the magma, unwilling to die, had long since begun to stir. Which was why a mere touch from Li Fei set her heart lurching and her scalp prickling.
But an instant later the Empress came to her senses, and her eyes filled with alarm.
A simple touch was already this unbearable. If those hands began to move, then surely…
So it seems I too must become one who breaks her word…
To avoid losing control, the Empress gritted her teeth, meaning to cut the five-minute bargain short by force.
But Li Fei gave her no further chance to speak.
Those jade-smooth palms began to dance. Pushing, rubbing, flicking, pressing, kneading, rocking, pinching, rolling, pointing — the different techniques poured out like the melody of Flight of the Bumblebee spilling from a piano, heavy and light, fast and slow, shifting at will.
All the while the oil rolled and surged across her skin with a wet, squelching rhythm, and before long it turned from clear and glistening to a cloudy milk-white, bubbles rising amid the flying spray of moisture.
The tingling spread from her back into every limb and vein, and a comfort she had never once tasted in this life came like a storm surge, rising from her tailbone and sweeping up to flood her mind and echo inside her skull.
"You — nnh, mm… stop… mm…"
The words of betrayal she had meant to speak broke apart in an instant. The steady, elegant, stately Empress was a small boat pitching on a vast wild sea, ready to capsize at any moment.
Years of breeding kept her silver teeth clenched, forbidding herself any sound so wanton.
"Kimochi ii?"
Li — Orange Pleasure Parlor's Number One Girl, Bubble Bath Therapist — Fei, laboring away at her service, still remembered to tilt her head and ask after the customer's experience in a coquettish lilt.
Thanks to the powerful simultaneous-interpretation function of the [Erudition Earring], the words of Li Fei's homeland came through to the Empress perfectly.
Su Wen's toes curled and snapped straight; her legs twitched and twisted; she pressed her forehead hard into the bamboo mat and for a moment could not speak at all.
Several seconds passed before she managed, between deep unsteady breaths, to answer in a chilly tone,
"It is not — not comfortable. Stop this at… nnh."
"Harder, you say? No problem."
Evidently the [Erudition Earring] had malfunctioned; the translation came through wrong, and Li Fei, having thoroughly misread her client's request, complied with delight.
Under that harder, more focused treatment, red streaks bloomed across the Empress's skin, and through the trembling of her hair came gasps that sounded like weeping and like laughter both.
"There's no need to hold back, Your Ladyship. If you want to cry out, just cry out…" Li Fei coaxed, all thoughtful temptation.
"Be — be silent."
Su Wen bit stubbornly into her lower lip, damming every sound in her throat.
"Is the pressure all right now? Isn't it much better than before?" Li Fei pressed on tirelessly, apparently deaf to the Empress's frostiness.
"It is not — not the slightest bit pleasant. Do not — do not waste your efforts," Su Wen answered in an icy, imperial tone, in broken pieces.
"Hm? That can't be right. There are still four minutes left — I'll work hard to satisfy Your Ladyship!"
Cheering herself on, Li Fei let the focus of her work travel down from the shoulders and neck, her hands leaping over ribs and shoulder blades, pressing lightly and rolling slowly, brushing and picking again, driving the oil into churning, murky waves.
"Th-there — not there…"
The Empress's voice had lost its shape entirely, while the tingling that battered her nerves rose in wave after wave, fiercer each time.
It's — it's going to —
All at once Su Wen, bitterly enduring the pleasure and refusing to let out a sound, realized with horror that it was coming!
It really was coming!
That — never, absolutely never!
She clenched her fists with all her strength and dug her toes straight down, and when she found it useless, a look of grim resolve surfaced in her clouding eyes.
At this moment, with her personal honor, the purity of the imperial house, and the very rites and morals of the Great Song hanging in the balance, Su Wen resolved to force herself into the Meditation State and hold the line!
It was, of course, appallingly dangerous. Her Meditation Method had strayed from the proper path to begin with, and the Daoist heart born of her peerless beauty had crumbled at a single touch before this immortal woman. To force the meditation now might well drive her into qi deviation and end her life.
But death was a small matter. Losing her virtue was a great one!
If an Empress of all people were caught in such a [dis]gracefully leaking spectacle, not only would the Su Clan's name be dragged through the mud — the imperial house, and indeed the whole Song Kingdom, would be stripped of face and turned into a laughingstock!
Watching her sealed defenses about to give way, Su Wen at last made up her mind to stake her life on it.
Let you be as bewitching as you please — once I enter meditative stillness, you are no different from a rouged skeleton, and you cannot disturb my mind!
Biting her lip in silence, Su Wen recited the Meditation Mantra she could have chanted backwards in her sleep, and visualized the woman in the mirror.
She succeeded. In the space of an instant, the Empress's consciousness shifted into another world altogether.
But before she could breathe a sigh of relief, her heart clenched tight again.
In the past, the self within the mirror had been like a bodhisattva — holy, exalted, seated cross-legged at the center of a lotus dais.
Beneath the suppressing weight of that bodhisattva's unmatched beauty, all those women vying to outshine one another could only bow their heads, prostrate themselves at her skirts, and lower their eyes, unable to raise so much as a ripple.
But now the flawless, gleaming surface of the mirror had shattered apart, webbed all over with cracks.
In the scene those broken shards reflected, the familiar figure in the mirror still sat with eyes closed, her white dress whiter than snow, serene and pure.
Yet Su Wen saw clearly that a vivid, black-haired woman had also appeared in the mirror, quietly, right behind the figure on the dais.
She wore a sweet, radiant smile, her eyes bright with glancing light — and yet the clothes on her body were lewd things that flouted every rule of womanly conduct, baring a supple, bewitching form. Beads of water slid down snow-tender skin, glinting with points of light.
The woman seemed to sense Su Wen's presence. She blew her a kiss, then, smiling charmingly, set those long legs sheathed tight in white silk in motion and walked, step by step, toward the figure in the mirror.
"No, don't —"
Su Wen stretched out her hand, wanting to cry out, but no sound came.
The white stockings, soaked through, were nearly transparent, wrapping those delicate jade-carved feet; and when her toes touched down there was not the faintest sound, only two trails of wet footprints left behind.
Su Wen could only watch, helpless, as the utterly unsuspecting figure in the mirror was closed upon, inch by silent inch, by that woman who left fragrance in every step.
At last the woman pressed herself flush against the defenseless figure's back, licked her lips at Su Wen with a hint of triumph, and bent slowly down.
The black hair of the two beauties tangled together and could never be parted again.
The scene grew unfit to look upon — and yet the Empress, who had guarded her body like jade for so many years, seemed under a spell and could not tear her eyes away.
Crack, crack, crack… shatter!
The mirror broke apart completely into glittering fragments, and in each shard lay some scene of delicious, utterly disordered mischief, exactly like the mess Su Wen's Daoist heart had become.
The Meditation State could not hold any longer. Her skin began to shiver once more.
In that moment Su Wen's heart plunged to the bottom of a valley. She understood: she had pulled her last lifeline into the water herself.
And as that piercingly clear scent of tea kept flowing into her nose, her heartbeat became a train accelerating through the dark, racing toward boundless blackness until it destroyed itself.
"Feeling any better now, Your Ladyship?"
That suggestive voice reached her ear again.
"How — how much longer."
The Empress's tall, voluptuous body rocked and swayed with Li Fei's movements, and her weak, hoarse voice shook past all control.
"Three minutes."
The woman on her back delivered that despair-inducing answer in a sweet voice. A look of desolate sorrow crossed Su Wen's face — and then, quickly, hardened into resolve.
Su Wen understood what she was: Empress and mother to the realm, revered by all the people, the model for every woman under heaven.
Which meant her purity stood not only for the dignity of the entire imperial house, but for the chastity of the whole Great Song. She would defend it to the death and let no one lay a finger on it.
Three minutes, no more. Though it were a mountain of knives or a sea of fire, I, Su Wen, can endure to the end!
And so the Empress, tears shining at the corners of her eyes, like a proud, iron-spined knight who is trussed hand and foot by succubi and still refuses to yield, guarded her last stubbornness in a voice warped with trembling:
"Ngh… this is nothing but a waste of time. Finish your treatment quickly and withdraw."
"Oh? Is that so."
Li Fei's lips curled up in pleasure, her dark eyes gazing down at the gasping, flush-faced Empress.
Miss Tail could restrain herself no longer either; she flicked the fabric aside and wriggled out on her own, swaying merrily behind her.
Catching that lift in Li Fei's voice, Su Wen felt an inexplicable stab of dread — but an arrow loosed from the bow does not return, and having already taken so hard a stance, she had no grounds to walk it back.
Having settled on bluffing to the bitter end, Su Wen said coldly,
"What is it? Must I say it a second time?"
"No, no need."
Li Fei smiled her lovely smile. "Your Ladyship, I'm going to increase the pressure now. Are you ready?"
"Nnh…"
Regret had barely surfaced in Su Wen's heart before she lost the power to speak at all.
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