Reunited After Long Separation, One Man Missing; Cultivating with Mercury (4.4k Words)

There was a Wind-Moon Bridge in Guling Town, a place for seeking pleasure and amusement.

Within it, brothels, whorehouses, duck houses, even ram houses, stood in a motley jumble too numerous to count.

Though it was called a bridge, it was in truth twenty-four streets and alleys. Water ran through them, hence the other name, "Twenty-Four Bridges of Wind and Moon." The alley mouths were narrow and twisted like duck intestines, joint after joint, while the houses within overlapped like a forest.

Walking through them felt like entering a maze. Unless one was a regular customer or had a pimp to guide them, one would surely be dazzled and unable to find the way out.

In a place like this, famed courtesans, crooked prostitutes, respectable women, and common whores all mingled together.

Those with names and reputations hid themselves from view; one had to seek out secluded secrets to reach them. The nameless, gaudily painted ones were numerous. Every evening, they bathed, perfumed, and burned incense until the scent stabbed the nose. Filthy water flowed through the ditches, and between the houses, fumes rose as if from cooking smoke.

The prostitutes and duck boys would also emerge from the alley mouths, perching at street corners and lane entrances like crows and sparrows, before teahouses and taverns. This was called "standing guard."

Yin Xiaojian had come from Scorched-Tail Hall, walking at a brisk pace.

He looked over the teahouses, taverns, alley mouths, and banks, where a hundred gauze lanterns hung. Countless prostitutes flickered in and out of sight among them. The ugly ones wore gauze veils, the big-footed ones wore skirts, and the scarred ones plastered on powder.

Under lantern light and moonlight, no one showed their true colors. Coupled with the saying that one patch of white hid a hundred