Inside the spacious bathroom.
The voluptuous beauty removed her makeup before the mirror and slipped out of her sumptuous silver court dress. She covered her eyes with a printed white silk ribbon and moved with delicate steps. Her last piece of smooth silk underwear fell away, and the white cloth strips steeped in her intimate fragrance unwound from her proud bosom. Freed of their restraint, her perfect, alluring body stepped into the steaming bath.
The refined floral essence evaporated into the warm mist, seeping gently into her body through the pores of her skin and scalp.
With her vision blurred by the printed white silk ribbon over her eyes, Tang Yuehua could not see her own snowy body. With her breasts bound in cloth, no indecorous trembling would betray her as she walked.
Her waterfall of black hair covered her snowy back and spread across the water. A wooden dipper and a silk bath towel were her two indispensable tools for washing herself.
She had never dared touch even her own tender, fair body too much.
To avoid being swallowed by endless emptiness, Tang Yuehua strictly observed her creed: look at nothing improper, listen to nothing improper, say nothing improper, and do nothing improper.
She had managed not to look or act improperly, but because she wrote novels and put her words on paper, she had yet to achieve the same with speaking and listening.
She demanded this of herself: always keep her body clean, purge her impure desires through writing every night, and preserve the purity of her spirit. Neither her body nor her spirit could be tainted by any worldly filth or evil. Even desire had to be purified within an absolutely perfect fantasy.
Only then could she find an anchor for herself in this glittering mortal world,