The nighttime atmosphere at Linshui Pavilion was noisy by nature, as lanterns with eight-sided frames caught the summer wind, creating tassels of light and flame that danced through the night along with the plaintive songs of the courtesans by the water, lingering on and on, as if the prosperity of this world would never fade.
Yet even the finest songs must eventually cease, and even the most enchanting dances must stop.
Only, contrary to the magnificent finale everyone imagined, once the embroidered outer garments were stripped away, this place that had been praised to the heavens turned out to be nothing more than a giant, crude traveling stage, where human hearts were stuffed with rotten cotton and dressed in fine clothes to dance night after night.
Chapter 212