Chapter 1810 - Forcing Virtue Into Vice

"Whatever method you devise, implement it quickly without delay." Madam Han instructed with evident urgency. "The Australians conduct administrative work with remarkable swiftness and decisiveness. Besides, this comprehensive household registration matter absolutely cannot be delayed or evaded. If they discover there's an unregistered person concealed here on the premises, the regulatory fines imposed won't be trivial amounts!"

"Yes, this servant understands the urgency completely." Madam Yao hurried to acknowledge with proper deference.

Because she remained preoccupied with managing the valuable "pretty goods" currently confined in the back courtyard isolation facility, as soon as she formally withdrew from Madam Han's main house audience, she headed directly toward the rear courtyard compound.

Madam Yao's conspicuous diligence in this assignment stemmed partly from genuine gratitude—she had received substantial "patronage" and career advancement from Madam Han by being recruited away from a squalid lower-class brothel background. Securing employment in a premium first-class establishment like the prestigious Fangchun House as a senior client matron represented Madam Han bestowing significant professional recognition. The other motivating reason concerned her own future economic livelihood and job security.

This particular "pretty goods" captive had been delivered by the young wastrel Wang Dong less than a month previously. Though Wang Dong was still young in years, he qualified as an experienced old hand at romantic seduction and sexual exploitation. His father Wang Daniao was notoriously fond of women and sexual pursuits; the son proved no less enthusiastically degenerate. He had been consorting with commercial prostitutes from adolescence.

But though Wang Daniao possessed some modest income through his cartography work producing maps, he wasn't genuinely wealthy by elite standards. Combined with his expensive fondness for women and constant sexual expenditure, he simply didn't possess sufficient discretionary money to adequately fund his son's extensive brothel adventures and entertainment. So Wang Dong habitually hung around the pleasure quarters districts perpetually "free-riding on social visits and meals" as a charming parasite. He was superficially handsome, possessed competent skills in board games and chess, calligraphy and painting—no gentlemanly social accomplishment he couldn't manage adequately. The friends he cultivated were invariably fellow hangers-on and unproductive moochers, thoroughly unscrupulous corrupt types. Having mixed extensively in brothel culture for extended time, repeatedly prodded and encouraged by these degenerate associates, he had eventually taken up the lucrative criminal trade of seducing respectable women through romantic deception, then ruthlessly reselling them into sexual slavery.

The practice of seducing respectable women typically targeted young widows from middling or lower-class families possessing some education but limited worldly experience, or naively inexperienced young women from remote provincial areas. Employing sweet words and elaborate romantic deceptions to lure them into voluntary elopement, then selling them at an opportune moment for maximum profit—because such trafficked women were mostly of deliberately unclear origin with no legitimate go-between or marriage broker involved, ordinary respectable households absolutely didn't dare purchase them for fear of legal complications. Only brothel madams backed by powerful influential forces and corrupt official protection would even consider seriously inquiring.

This particular trade systematically ruined women's reputations and family honor, and easily attracted vengeful victims or their relatives seeking retribution. Without considerable backing protection, absolutely no one could safely pursue it. Wang Dong relied on his father's extensive connections throughout the yamen bureaucracy, so naturally operated without fear of consequences. After the Australians entered the city and established new authority, he had prudently disappeared for a cautious while before resurfacing recently—apparently his reappearance related to his fugitive father Wang Daniao's situation. Wang Dong had been detained and interrogated by the Australians for several tense days, but since he genuinely didn't know his father's current whereabouts either, and the Australian interrogators couldn't extract anything operationally useful from him, they eventually released him as not worth continued detention.

Since Wang Dong proved of no intelligence value to the Australians, he naturally didn't need to maintain hiding any longer. His family home had already been officially sealed by Australian authorities as confiscated property. With nowhere else to go, but observing that the brothel business was flourishing vigorously again under the new regime, he simply resumed his comfortable old parasitic trade—freeloading shamelessly at various pleasure houses as a charming social ornament. Carefree and entirely content with this dissolute existence. More than ten days previously, he had suddenly delivered a young woman to the Fangchun House, demanding fifty taels of silver as payment. Because this particular young woman was a widow by marital status yet still miraculously "intact"—a technical virgin despite her nominal married state—and came from a genuinely good respectable family background, possessed literacy and demonstrated some refined skill in literary arts, she represented what pleasure houses professionally termed "pretty goods" of exceptional market value. Under normal commercial circumstances, such a premium acquisition could easily command four or five hundred taels from wealthy patrons. After ritualized haggling, Madam Han settled the transaction at fifty taels. This category of woman possessing deliberately unclear origin—brothels invariably bargained with ruthless calculation.

As for the perspective of the abducted woman herself, once she discovered with dawning horror that the "wealthy relative's luxurious house" her supposedly devoted lover had enthusiastically brought her to was actually an unmistakable brothel establishment—well, the bitter saying applied perfectly: "scream until your throat tears bloody, no sympathetic person will come to rescue you."

Abducted trafficked women naturally raised desperate fusses initially—suicide attempts, violent struggling, scratching, biting, kicking—all depressingly common predictable reactions. For someone with Madam Yao's extensive professional experience, absolutely none of this mattered or posed challenges. Brothels had developed plenty of proven systematic ways to brutally "handle" such resistance.

In the establishment's back courtyard area stood a deliberately secluded compound with gates maintained always tightly shut. Madam Yao arrived at the heavy door and lightly knocked several times in a specific pattern. The door creaked open halfway, revealing a middle-aged servant woman who registered it was Madam Yao and immediately hurried to greet her with an obsequious ingratiating smile: "Madam Yao! Welcome!"

Madam Yao didn't bother responding to the servile greeting. She simply lifted her leg and stepped purposefully through the gate. Inside the gate lay a small cramped courtyard. Though physically confined in dimensions, this was the specific location where the establishment's working prostitutes turned visibly pale with genuine terror when threatened with being sent here. The three main rooms functioned as the "courtroom" for punishment. The east and west wing rooms served as the "detention cells." Any newly arrived prostitute had to be systematically "given a proper thrashing" here as mandatory initiation. Never mind genuinely decent respectable women utterly unwilling to fall into prostitution against their will—even pleasure-house girls born directly to the trade from childhood, provided they were sold outright to Madam Han's ownership, all new arrivals had to come here to "drink sesame oil" as ritual breaking.

This so-called "drinking sesame oil" torture meant forcing them to hold cooking oil in their mouth while stripped completely naked and bent over a punishment bench for systematic whipping—three hundred brutal strokes per standard session. Not a single drop of oil could fall from the mouth throughout; if it did, the entire count started over from the beginning. Even the psychologically fiercest women, after enduring two or three complete rounds of this sesame oil treatment, invariably had to bow their heads in broken submission.

New arrivals received beatings as initiation; but the establishment's "old hands" didn't escape punishment either. Those who broke house operational rules, those attracting too few paying clients and generating insufficient revenue, those foolishly contemplating "going straight" and leaving the profession... all would be brought here to "face the court" and receive corrective punishment—and naturally weren't permitted to scream audibly during beatings, lest they disturb the cultivated elegant mood of gentlemen clients enjoying themselves in the front entertainment areas.

Inside the punishment courtyard, not a single living soul visibly stirred. Only the mournful sound of sobbing—sometimes urgent and desperate, sometimes slow and resigned—echoed with eerie resonance. In the oppressive summer afternoon heat it sounded disturbing beyond adequate description.

Madam Yao wasn't remotely bothered by this atmosphere—such sounds represented her professional stock in trade. Nor did she bother looking at the servant woman following close behind her footsteps. She asked with professional detachment: "How's that particular woman's condition progressing?"

The servant woman hastily smiled with eager report: "She's become willing to eat rice porridge now without forcing. It's simply that she's been beaten so severely and systematically that she still can't sleep properly at night from the pain. Just this morning she actually asked me if she could possibly obtain some bruise-healing medicine for her injuries."

Madam Yao smiled with evident smug satisfaction at this progress report. So she was willing to eat porridge voluntarily—that meant she wanted to continue living rather than starving to death in defiance. Knowing her body hurt intensely and actively wanting medicine demonstrated she genuinely feared continued physical suffering. After all this patient water-grinding psychological erosion, the time had arrived to switch tactically to gentle compassionate methods. Of course, if she naively thought she could successfully stall for time and manipulate the situation, she'd promptly need another thorough taste of real suffering—this was absolutely no place for displaying clever resistance.

"Since she's demonstrably softened in resolve, no practical need to force her onto the painful brick-kneeling punishment every single day any longer. Food quality can be moderately improved as well. But at night she still must wear restraining chains without exception—to prevent her from successfully killing herself." Madam Yao instructed the servant woman with clinical precision.

They'd experienced such cases previously: desperate women feigning cooperative submission, then hanging themselves by improvised rope the very moment guards relaxed vigilance.

Death of a captive meant not merely official legal trouble requiring expensive payments to smooth over with corrupt authorities—the establishment would also suffer from feeling psychologically unlucky. Everyone actively working in this trade was especially superstitious about malevolent ghosts and vengeful spirits. On stormy, pitch-dark nights, there would frequently be reported "hauntings" manifesting, disturbing the entire brothel atmosphere. For the madam, apart from genuine psychological terror, monks and Taoist priests had to be expensively invited to perform elaborate purification rituals. Yet another significant expense drain.

The Fangchun House had experienced precisely such troubling supernatural incidents previously, so Madam Yao exercised particularly careful measured precautions regarding suicide prevention.

"Yes, this servant understands the protocols completely."

"Take me to see her current state directly."

The servant woman obediently led her to the east wing room door. Opening it carefully and fumbling with the heavy lock mechanism. The room wasn't large, remaining deliberately dim inside with minimal light penetration, containing only a few punishment benches and some scattered bricks distributed across the square-tiled floor. A wooden bucket positioned in the corner was soaking bamboo strips in water for increased flexibility when used for beating. In the room's center, two thick wooden pillars were studded with hand and foot shackles for restraining captives. One of them currently held a woman bound in place, still sobbing with hopeless constancy.

The confined room reeked powerfully with an unpleasant accumulated smell—human sweat, urine stench, and rotting leftover food scraps all mingled together in nauseating combination. But Madam Yao wasn't bothered in the slightest—such environments represented her professional workplace. She paused only momentarily to allow her eyes to adjust to the dim interior light. Then she sauntered over with casual authority.

Hearing someone enter her prison, the woman chained to the punishment pillar raised her head with evident alarm. She appeared pale and severely haggard, looking no more than seventeen or eighteen years in age. Ragged torn clothes, disheveled matted hair, yet her skin remained tender and her physical frame delicate—clearly revealing a previously well-raised, carefully pampered household upbringing. Especially notable were the pair of her small feet visible beneath her skirt hem, bound correctly according to technique and fashioned daintily—obviously the skilled handiwork of an experienced binding master.

Seeing it was Madam Yao entering, the woman's face immediately showed visceral fear—these recent days of relentless daily beating, daytime whips and bamboo canes, nighttime brick-kneeling torture with lit candles balanced precariously on her head, had systematically tormented her to the genuine point of living death. Seeing Madam Yao's approach felt like a terrified little demon suddenly encountering the King of Hell himself. She couldn't help but tremble all over like scattered chaff grain.

Madam Yao felt pleased satisfaction in her professional heart. She looked the captive woman up and down with critical assessment: "Miss He, these past days you've had time to think matters over carefully—yes or no? Have you reached the correct decision?"

This brutalized woman was none other than He Xiaoyue, who had daringly escaped from the oppressive Pure Virtue Hall facility during the earlier chaotic period. After following Liu San's refugee group back to occupied Guangzhou, she had been placed temporarily in a public charity hall for displaced women. He Xiaoyue, originally from a wealthy merchant family in another province, had been forced by her birth family into perpetual widowhood after her young fiancé died of illness, then sent by her hostile mother-in-law's family to the Pure Virtue Hall to preserve her virtue in enforced isolation. After enduring half a year in the Pure Virtue Hall's suffocating restrictions, she had finally escaped during the wartime confusion. But she couldn't psychologically endure the charity hall's dreary institutional boredom either. Finding opportunities to sneak outside for walks and taste freedom, one thing led to another—she caught the predatory eye of that degenerate good-for-nothing Wang Dong. A sheltered naive young lady, even if possessing somewhat spirited personality, knew absolutely nothing of the world's treachery and manipulative deceptions. Even with a bit of natural spunk, a few practiced coaxing words and romantic gestures and she was thoroughly seduced. Then—callously sold directly to the Fangchun House for profit.

At first upon arrival in the brothel she had struggled and resisted with desperate determination. But the brothel's proven systematic methods had also taught her that her bit of defiant spirit instantly transformed into pathetic wailing and begging under torture. Gradually, her iron resolve to preserve virtue had faded considerably; she now only wanted less immediate physical suffering, desperately buying time day by day hoping for impossible rescue.

Her heart overflowed with profound regret, needless to say. But circumstances had deteriorated to this point—never mind successful escape; even suicide couldn't be managed under constant watch. He Xiaoyue saw this fierce notorious "madam" enter and couldn't help feeling several degrees more psychologically timid.

"This servant greets you respectfully, Auntie," He Xiaoyue said softly with forced submission. "I humbly beg you for merciful compassion. Please let this servant send word outside to my family. This servant's family still possesses some accumulated silver savings. However much ransom you demand, they'll surely provide the amount to redeem this servant from bondage..."

"Ransom?" Madam Yao sneered with evident contempt. "You're still dreaming this pure delusional autumn dream! Let me inform you of reality: your seducer sold you to this establishment for three thousand taels of silver as the transaction price. Now you've been eating and drinking here continuously on the establishment's generous coin—this accumulated account hasn't even been properly settled with you yet! Bring out three or five thousand taels of silver in cash payment, and Mother Han might not even deign to glance in your direction!"

Three or five thousand taels of silver—even ordinary wealthy households couldn't easily produce such an astronomical sum without liquidating major assets. He Xiaoyue understood with sinking despair that this madam would never release her regardless of pleading. Her heart filled simultaneously with remorse and burning hatred. She begged softly with last desperate hope: "I humbly beg Mother for merciful compassion. I was originally a faithful widow keeping sacred faith with my deceased betrothed. Mother, if you could possibly spare me from this fate, I'm willing to serve as ox and horse laboring in the establishment for my entire remaining life."

"Oh, I would never have guessed you claimed to be a virtuous faithful widow," Madam Yao sneered with mocking cruelty. "If you're genuinely such a virtuous widow preserving sacred faith, how precisely did you end up willingly eloping with that worthless seducing bachelor?"

At this devastating question, He Xiaoyue lowered her head in shamed silence, only continuing to sob with hopeless despair. Madam Yao recognized clearly that her psychological defenses were slowly crumbling under accumulated pressure. She struck while the iron was hot to complete the breaking process.

(End of Chapter)