A Mountain Spirit’s Schemes - Chapter 1

Hours of effort had exhausted me so thoroughly that I failed to notice anyone approaching.

By the time I realized, the hunter was already in sight.

He had a thick beard and a build like an enormous pine tree.

For some reason, something stirred inside me.

His gaze, however, was anything but friendly.

He advanced on me, hurling insults and looking for a chance to take advantage of me.

I leaned against the pine tree. I meant to run, but my legs refused to move, as though someone had rooted them to the ground.

Something about the hunter’s presence awakened my spirit nature, and for a moment I struggled to control myself.

For the first time, my spores wanted to leave.

Only not badly enough.

Some clamored for release. The rest remained unmoved.

So the best breeding ground for spores wasn’t rotting pine needles at all. It was human greed.

I approached the hunter willingly, hoping intimacy with a human would at least let some spores out of my body.

He had intended to assault me, but changed his mind on discovering that I had never been with anyone. He said he might as well send me to serve the tyrant.

Before I could work out why he’d stopped, he scooped me up.

The hunter presented me to the tyrant.

Or, to be precise, to Lord Wang.

According to the hunter, Lord Wang was an imperial official touring the south. Ostensibly, he was inspecting the performance of local officials. His real purpose was to collect beauties for the tyrant.

The tyrant was the reigning emperor: capricious and utterly debauched.

Offering him beautiful women was therefore the surest path to promotion at court.

He was so vicious, however, that an ordinary beauty would simply be tortured to death.

Only a shameless slut like me, the hunter said, could satisfy his tastes.

For a hundred taels of gold, the hunter reluctantly parted with me and delivered me to the residence where Lord Wang was staying.

During his stay in Yangzhou, Lord Wang had already collected seven beauties.

I was the eighth.

As I stood draped in gauze under the scrutiny of Lord Wang and his men, their faces lit up with unprecedented delight.

I raised my head and surveyed the room.

The man in the long blue robe seemed to hold the most authority. He was young and mild of manner, yet something sinister lurked in his eyes, like a venomous snake lying in wait.

A fat official stood beside him. I knew that one: the local prefect, to whom the hunter had handed me over on reaching the city.

He was a lecher. He’d taken every opportunity to molest me on the way here.

My spores, however, had disapproved of him entirely. Not a stir.

Lord Wang was another matter.

Just looking at him set something moving in my lower belly.

While I stared, an older woman suddenly appeared.

Expressionless as a puppet, she took my bust, waist, and hip measurements with a measuring tape. Deep in her eyes, however, was contempt, as though I were something filthy and beneath her.

Her examination was rough and humiliating. She didn’t treat me like a person at all.

I was half a head taller than she was and kept looking past her at Lord Wang. The spores’ response to him distracted me, which only seemed to anger her further.

She called me shameless. Once she’d finished, she blocked my view and reported to Lord Wang.

“An exceptional beauty, my lord. Naturally alluring, with a fragrance of her own.”

Lord Wang smiled faintly.

Instead of housing me with the other beauties, he disguised me as an attendant and kept me with him day and night.

He wasn’t planning to enjoy me first. He feared someone might harm me.

Once word of my extraordinary allure got out, my life would be in danger.

His concern suited me perfectly.

However fine a specimen the emperor might be, even he couldn’t hold the tens of thousands of spores inside me.

I needed more places for them to grow.

Lord Wang was one of my choices.