Before long, the girl came over. She was still wearing the same outfit from earlier, but she had removed the hat from her head. Seen up close, the girl’s skin was smooth and luminous, her red lips soft and moist, her eyes dancing with expressive life — a textbook beauty.

She seemed unaccustomed to this sort of setting and looked somewhat flustered seeing the Commander and the others. It was the floor manager standing beside her who made the introduction: “Ruoxi, come quickly. Let me introduce you — this honored guest is the Prince Your Highness, this is the Commander, the Young Marshal, and the Second Young Master.”

The girl named Ruoxi gave a bow to the assembled company, then looked at the floor manager as though asking why she had been brought here.

The floor manager smiled and said, “Ruoxi, have a few drinks and keep the Prince and Commander company.”

Jinren immediately pointed to the empty seat beside him and smiled. “Miss Ruoxi, please, sit.”

What none of them expected was that this girl would simply refuse Jinren’s invitation outright. Jinren — who was accustomed to sitting in exalted heights, never contradicted — immediately changed expression.

But they were on Xin Kingdom soil, so naturally he could not make a scene.

The floor manager was equally startled and quickly gave Ruoxi a meaningful look: “It’s only a few drinks to keep the Prince company. I’ll have someone else cover the remaining performances.”

“Mr. Xie only asked me to come here to sing. He did not ask me to keep anyone company with drinks.” The girl had a stubborn streak in her and gave not the slightest face to anyone present.

When she mentioned the name Mr. Xie, it caught Shi Ting’s attention, because he guessed this Mr. Xie must be Xie Yan.

And this ballroom was one of Xie Yan’s establishments.

Shi Ting looked the girl up and down for a moment or two, but said nothing.

“Ruoxi, don’t be ungrateful.” The floor manager lowered his voice in admonishment. “These people are powerful and influential — do you want to get yourself expelled from Shun Cheng?”

“I only sing.” Ruoxi’s answer remained the same. “That’s what Mr. Xie promised me.”

“Even if Mr. Xie himself were here, he’d have no power over these people.” The floor manager kept blinking at her, stopping just short of getting down on his knees to beg.

“Alright, alright.” Jinren said magnanimously, “If Miss Ruoxi is unwilling, we cannot force anyone. It’s only that I found Miss Ruoxi’s singing rather extraordinary and simply wished to ask a few curious questions.”

Ruoxi said, “If I drink this cup of wine, can I go back and sing?”

Faced with her complete disregard of him, Jinren felt the awkwardness of having his face slapped — when had he ever endured such cold treatment, and from a mere little singer at that?

“I’ll drink it myself.” Ruoxi stepped forward, picked up a glass from the table, and the wine bottle beside it, poured herself a full cup, and then without a moment’s hesitation, drank it all in one swallow. When she finished, she set the glass down on the table with a click. “The wine is drunk. I need to go prepare for the next song. Excuse me, everyone.”

With those words, she turned and walked away without looking back, leaving the entire room staring after her in stunned silence.

“I am so sorry, truly sorry.” By now the floor manager was already breaking out in a cold sweat, bowing repeatedly. “Ruoxi is on her very first day here, and she got into a bit of an incident just now — please, gentlemen, be magnanimous and don’t stoop to the level of a little singer.”

At this point the Commander finally spoke. “Alright — go on then.”

The floor manager kept nodding and bowing, his face drenched in cold sweat, as he took his leave.

“I’m truly sorry that Your Highness’s evening has been disrupted.” The Commander said apologetically. “Young girls these days — they’ve absorbed a certain influence from foreign cultures and their tempers have grown increasingly headstrong. Your Highness need not take it to heart.”

Jinren said, “I won’t stoop to quarrel with a girl. It’s only that this is the Commander’s territory, and yet these people don’t seem to give the Commander any face at all.”

The Commander could hardly fail to catch the displeasure in Jinren’s tone, yet he only smiled.

After that, Ruoxi came out and sang another song — this time, not in the Gaoli tongue. But the song she sang was also one none of the audience had ever heard before. Its style and melody were entirely out of place with the music of this establishment, yet at the same time effortlessly natural and lingering in the mind long after it ended.

Shi Guang turned to look at Jinren sitting beside him, and saw his narrow eyes half-closed, as though deep in thought.

After the banquet ended, Zuo Liang — who had not shown his face in a long while — appeared at Shi Guang’s side. Shi Guang murmured a few words to him, and Zuo Liang withdrew.

Shi Ting watched all of this with cold eyes. He had of course already seen through what Shi Guang intended — that girl named Ruoxi was likely about to meet with misfortune.

Ruoxi was in the dressing room removing her makeup when the floor manager came looking for her again. The moment he saw her, he launched into a torrent of rebuke: “Don’t think that because Mr. Xie is the one who recommended you here, I won’t dare to fire you. The people you offended today are the Commander and the Di Kingdom’s prince — one casual flick of their fingers could crush you to nothing.”

Ruoxi kept her eyes on the mirror as she removed her earrings, utterly unmoved. “I only wanted to sing and earn my wages honestly. Mr. Xie said that when I came here, all I needed to do was sing — everything else I needn’t concern myself with.”

“Stop calling Mr. Xie’s name every other sentence. Do you think after offending them like this, Mr. Xie will forgive you? Even Mr. Xie himself, in front of those people, would have to nod and bow and fawn over them.”

“I came to sing, not to smile and entertain men. If you find me displeasing, fire me then.” Shen Ruoxi set the earrings she held in her hand on the dressing table, and watched the floor manager through the mirror. “I’d sooner starve to death than accompany any man.”

“Ha — what integrity.” The floor manager sneered. “The girls who come to sing at a dance hall — how many of them are pure and untouched? Every last one survives by selling song and smiles side by side. Even if you don’t want to, men of power and influence have no end of ways to force your compliance. Besides — it was only because of Mr. Xie that you got to come here as a newcomer, right? So are you going to tell me you never climbed into Mr. Xie’s bed?”

Shen Ruoxi shot abruptly to her feet, glaring furiously at the floor manager. “What are you talking about?”

“You want to set up a virtuous front while living otherwise? When you were crawling into Mr. Xie’s bed, where was all this purity and nobility of yours? What are you performing for me now?”

“Fine.” Shen Ruoxi swallowed the anger surging in her chest. “I quit then — that alright with you?”

She stripped off the performance costume, changed back into her own clothes. “I won’t serve people I can’t stomach — I quit.”

“You…” The floor manager stood there for a moment, dumbstruck — he hadn’t expected her to be this unyielding.

Actually, from the way she had treated the Commander and the others, he should have known: this was a woman who would not bend for any salary.

He watched as she swept past him and walked away without a backward glance. First came the anger, then a creeping unease — after all, she had been sent by Mr. Xie. If she just left like this, how was he to explain it to Mr. Xie? And if Mr. Xie lost his temper, it was a fury he could not afford to bear.

By the time the floor manager chased outside after her, there wasn’t a shadow of her to be seen.

“That little wench — runs fast enough.”

Shen Ruoxi left the dance hall with nothing to her name. She felt as though she had returned to the way things were before.

She had thought that singing in the dance hall would let her earn a wage, but on the very first day she ran into something like this. She had earned nothing, and now she didn’t even have money for a meal.

“I’ll just find another job.” Shen Ruoxi gave herself a private pep talk, though she knew perfectly well how difficult getting a job was — and she had no other skills besides singing.

Shen Ruoxi stood at the side of the road, looking out at the bustling street before her — dazzling lights and lively entertainments as far as the eye could see.

And in this vast city, she had not a single corner she could call home.

She turned to head back to her little alley, where her companion was waiting for her — but she would disappoint them: she was coming back empty-handed.

At the very moment Shen Ruoxi turned, a cold gust swept up behind her without warning. Before she could even look back, the back of her neck received a heavy blow, and she hadn’t even processed what was happening before she sank into a deep, heavy darkness.

“Your Highness, this is a gift our Second Young Master sends you.”

“Your Highness, please enjoy it to your heart’s content.”

In the darkness, whose voices were these — and how grating they sounded in her ears.

Shen Ruoxi struggled to bring herself back to consciousness, but the heavy darkness pressed down on her, her eyelids feeling as though they weighed a thousand pounds.

Not until a wave of cold was splashed across her face did she shudder awake.

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was an unfamiliar face — yet a face she had just seen in the dance hall: the prince who always wore a faint smile that never reached his eyes.

From the very first moment she laid eyes on this man, she had disliked him. Though he had not lost his temper, he gave off a deeply dangerous and sinister feeling.

Shen Ruoxi’s head was splitting with pain, and before she could even fully gather her wits, someone had already grabbed her by the hair. The sharp pain from her scalp made her nearly cry out — but she bit down and endured it.

Jinren grabbed her hair and forced her head up, taking clear pleasure in watching her grimace in pain. “I haven’t encountered a woman like you in a very long time — defiance in the very marrow of your bones. And I particularly enjoy conquering women like this, then watching them kneel at my feet and lick my toes, submitting to me like a dog.”

Shen Ruoxi endured the pain radiating from her scalp and gave a cold laugh. “You’ve got some kind of impotence problem, haven’t you? Otherwise why would you need to find your sense of self-worth through something like this? You feel accomplished conquering women, do you? Your mother was a woman too — you ought to call women ‘Mother.’ Without women, you’d still just be a little tadpole.”

Jinren was stunned. In their Di Kingdom, male supremacy and female inferiority was the natural order of things — and even now in Xin Kingdom, women’s social standing was lower than men’s. But the words coming out of this woman’s mouth left him utterly astonished and, at the same time, enraged.

“Ha — not only are you defiant in nature, but your mouth is defiant too.” Jinren grabbed Ruoxi by the hair and yanked viciously several times. “Since you’re so stubborn, let me see just how long you can hold out.”

Ruoxi’s hands and feet were both bound, leaving her no way to resist Jinren’s assault. His grip was powerful — these few yanks made her feel as though her scalp was being torn from her skull. The pain made tears spill from her eyes involuntarily, but she gritted her teeth and refused to make a sound.

Just as she was on the verge of losing control, Jinren suddenly released her.

Freed from his grasp, Shen Ruoxi was like someone who had just been given a breath of fresh air — she collapsed onto the floor, gasping desperately.

But she had barely drawn one breath when Jinren’s footsteps drew close again.