Yoshiwara's night was bright.
Countless lanterns, candles, and paper lamps crowded together, brightly illuminating the entire street.
Light spilled from the windows, casting overlapping, swaying shadows across the stone-paved road.
There was a distinctive scent in the air.
The cloying sweetness of cosmetics, the mellow richness of alcohol, the acrid bitterness of tobacco, and the smell of sweat mingled with desire, forming an air of decadence.
In a place like this, it was hardly strange for there to be many spirits.
Yan Si walked down the street.
He wore a simple white training outfit, a wooden sword resting on his shoulder, and walked at an unhurried pace.
All the surrounding buildings were enclosed by wooden railings. Behind them sat women—many women.
Some leaned against the railings, smoking. Their pipes were slender, their embers glowing and fading.
Some half-covered their faces with folding fans, revealing only a pair of eyes.
Some flirted with men standing outside the railings, their voices coquettish as their fingers playfully hooked into the men's collars.
But when their gazes fell on Yan Si, all their movements stopped.
The smokers forgot to exhale, the women with fans stopped waving them, and the flirtatious voices fell silent.
Every eye fixed on that white figure.
Clean.
Far too clean.
Countless men came and went through Yoshiwara every day.
The young and the old, the rich and the destitute, those dressed in silk and those dressed in hemp.
But every one of them carried the scent of this place—the scent of desire, money, and indulgence.
Yan Si did not.
He walked along the brightly lit street, through the fragrance of cosmetics and the air of decadence, yet it was as though he were walking through a bamboo grove at dawn.
His white clothes were clean, his gaze was clean, and