Succubi weren’t a race of people. That was just a myth, but they did love to fuck a lot.

‘Dual cultivation,’ as some would call it, was their main thing. Except, instead of sticking to one partner, they would get freaky with as many people as they could find.

They were, technically, demonic path cultivators. Demonic path cultivators were defined as those who take from others, and succubi did take from others, but most of them were harmless unless you were talking about the siren variants. And most realms had their share of succubi, even the holy realms in the heavens of the multiverse had their own variation of the idea.

The definition was partial bullshit of course. The ‘taking from’ part only applied if you were taking something good away from a person. Monks would tell you that succubi took the ‘pride’ or ‘virtue’ from a man or woman, and the succubi would argue that they took the lust and yearnings that held people down.

It was one of the most controversial things in the multiverse, whoring.

But I had no qualms with it. It seemed to me that nothing was taken as much as given, and two consenting adults could do whatever they pleased, minding a few circumstances.

“You like men?” Madam Rose asked.

“Not more than I like women,” I replied.

“Impotent?” She asked.

“Apathetic,” I answered.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“How unfortunate. And here I was hoping a good night’s rest and woman’s warmth would help smooth our talks.”

“Madam,” Lee interrupted.

“I’m joking Lee, and he doesn’t mind the jokes, do you Bill Ter Ance.”

I winced at her pronunciation.

“Just Bill is fine. And no I don’t, but I’d like to know what all this is about.”

“You haven’t told him?”

“I didn’t have the time. I found him just after I left Madam. I assumed you’d want to tell him yourself,” Lee replied.

There was one of those small silences of understanding before Madam Rose nodded and walked back to her chair. With a wave of her hand, two small earthen stumps grew out of the floor.

“Well, have a seat then Bill. This will be quite an earful.”

I sat down and Lee followed suit. The earth morphed beneath me, extending to back support and crawling up my back like a sentient cushion.

“It all started about five centuries ago…”

********

Whoring wasn’t something Li Fang had wanted to do.

It wasn’t stable, and contrary to her client’s beliefs, it wasn’t pleasant either. She had started young, just sixteen at first and while there were other options open to her, none of them could feed two growing orphans half as well as she would like. It was a job she had turned to in necessity, not passion.

Her younger brother Gai Fang and another estranged orphan they had befriended Liu Yong all lived together in a small room down in the Beggar’s District. All things considered, it wasn’t an awful place to be.

Strong Fist City laid at the base of the Monk’s Mountain, originally functioning as a resource point for the Bloody Fist Sect, but blossoming into its own full-grown city within the past few decades. Most of the shops and resources revolved around the needs of the Sect, as did any other city.

People, like cultivators, used spirit stones for trade. The small dull shiny rocks weighed twice as much as they should have and had a sheen, almost metallic texture to them. Mortals never got a charged spirit stone, of course, only the spent-up remains of the Sects, but they could still tell a stone’s grade by its color and shine.

Li Fang walked quickly, gathering her cloak around her and hiding the bag at her waist.

There wasn’t much criminal activity around here, if any. The monks saw to that. But whoring was still illegal within the city, or anywhere the monks could enforce that rule.

Spirit stones were uniform in nature, each shaped exactly like the other. They were like large eggs, smooth and oval on the outside and rainbow-colored on the inside.

But one spirit stone was too much to be spent alone. She’d have to take them to the cutters, who would then cut the spirit stones into ten silvers, taking one of the butt ends as payment.

Li Fang clutched her cloak as a group of monks came by. Cultivators. The Monks of the Bloody Fist Sect kept a pretty tight watch around here. They’d beaten away the criminals and slavers in the area, but they’d also cut down brothels and gambling dens. Even a few social clubs had been burnt down to the ground after being accused of vulgarity.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Li Fang quickened her pace. They had driven out all the elves and dwarves in the area, and even the leaflings were forced from their territory. And the neighboring land was ruled by the Hollow Echo Sect, an even worse group of tyrants.

The majority of the fairy folk had taken to living in the forests or fleeing downward, past the Hollow Echo and towards the Hidden Viper. Li Fang herself wished to make that journey, but that would be a treacherous thing for a mortal. Even with a mount, crossing through the Echo’s region would be disastrous for her.

Li Fang sighed, finally seeing her home around the corner. She walked swiftly and grabbed the door, yet before she could even knock, the door pushed open and two children leaped into her arms.

“Li Fang! Li Fang! What took you so long Li Fang?” Gai Fang squealed.

“We haven’t seen you since sunrise Li Fang!” Liu Yong stated.

She smiled.

Li Fang hated it when they jumped upon her like that. Her job was dirty and tasking and even though she cleaned up before she left work for this specific reason, they should still be cautious and wait for her to change into something new.

But they didn’t care, they loved her and would jump into her arms every time she came home, and she loved that.

Li Fang laughed and turned, twisting the two children around for as long as her arms would let her. And the two children screamed in her arms and laughed. Then she slipped and fell with the two of them piled on top of her.

They laughed again, all three of them not bothering to get up and just content with each other at the moment.

“You did take a long time though,” Lui Yong asked. “Was something wrong?”

“No,” Li Fang answered. “Nothing was wrong, I just had a tough customer is all.”

“Was he mean?” Lui Yong asked.

“He thought he was,” Li Fang answered. “But I Li Fang, brought him down to his knees and made him beg for mercy!”

Lui Yong snorted in laughter. The children didn’t know what she did. She couldn’t risk them telling anyone of their friends about it. The brothel doubled as an acupuncture shop and that’s what she told her neighbors when inquired, and that was what the children believed.

“I want to be a merchant when I grow up,” Lui Yong stated. “So you can quit working and we can all become filthy rich!”

“I want to be a dwarf!” Gai Fang replied. “So I can drink all day!”

“Gai Fang, have some ambition!” Lui Yong replied.

“You have enough ambition for the both of us Lui, I want to be fat and drink!”

“You’ve never had a drop of alcohol in your life!”

“I don’t care! It must taste good if that’s what the dwarves do all day!”

Li Fang chuckled.

“Dwarves don’t just sit around and drink alcohol all day Gai, they work much more than they drink. They only drink on special occasions, actually.”

“Really?” Gai Fang asked. “Then why do I always see them going into the pub?”

“It’s probably a different group of dwarves each night Gai.”

Gai nodded. “They do always have those beards on them. I wonder why their wives don’t make them shave.”

Li Fang didn’t have the heart to tell the boy that even female dwarves had beards.

“All dwarves have beards,” Lui Yong answered.

“What? Even the women?”

“Even the children.”

“THE CHILDREN?”

“That’s what Pyer told me. He says humans look like tall and hairless dwarves to them. He says we look scary and strange.”

“What? He’s a dwarf! He’s the short and creepy one!”

Li Fang laughed at the sight, her stress and worries eroding under the absurdness.

“I’m going to the stone cutter,” She told them.

“Aww, but you just got home!” Gai Fang replied.

“Well, I need to get some silvers and go to the market to get dinner. Unless you want to eat rice and potato stew tonight?”

“Can we come with you?” Gai Fang asked.

“If you can get dressed quickly enough-”

The boy didn’t wait for her to finish and instantly went to the closet, rummaging through tunics and making a mess in his haste. Lui Yong was no better, crawling over his mess to quickly make her own.

Li Fang smiled. Children were a chore in many ways but a blessing where it counted. She had taken care of Lui and Gai ever since she was ten, and while the burden was hard, it was rewarding.

She watched as they argued about the weather and what the proper clothes would be for this time of year. Li Fang remembered when they had no choice in clothing, wearing the same coat and pants at all times of the year. She remembered their hunger in the streets and worrying about having shelter for the night.

But now that was no more.

“Alright, alright,” Li Fang interrupted. “I’m leaving in two minutes so if you’re not dressed by then both of you will have to stay home.”

The children looked at each other rushed to either side of the room and pulled on their proper clothing.

Li Fang smiled, heading off to her room to do the same.

They were all out the door five minutes later, each child holding onto either side of her hand and walking along with Li Fang. The stone cutter that she went to was a normal man, a half-dwarf she suspected. He was the cutter that everyone in the brothel went to.

The man was known not to ask questions, but he did take both buds of the spirit stones in return.

But she had no choice in the matter. A whole spirit stone, even drained of qi and at the first rank, was still far too much wealth to be used in any one purchase. Her rent was only three and a half stones and all their other needs brought their monthly expenses to four and a half.

So to spend her money wisely, she, like most other mortals, went to a stone cutter. A man who would cut your stones to fifths, tenths, and even twentieths in some cases. The cut pieces were silvers and much easier to use in the market than whole stones could ever be.

She had about four tenth-silvers remaining right now, and about five stones in her purse. She’d save three stones for rent, and the other two would come to one and sixth tenth-silvers, which should last them all quite a while.

The rest of what she had would be given to the Moneykeepers. They were the most reliable bank within the empire after all, if not throughout the continent.

They made their way through the town, navigating around groups of monks and merchants. The city was a few decades old, young by cultivator standards, but it was starting to bloom. The Bloody Fist Sect had started to distribute more spirit stones in return for material goods, mainly iron and strong clay from what Li Fang had heard.

She didn’t know why they bought these things, but it hardly mattered in the long run. The only ways to get spirit stones were to mine deep beneath the ground or to have cultivators make it, and the Bloody Fist Sect seemed to have chosen the latter method.

They had pushed out an absurd amount of spirit stones lately, producing more than a thousand first-rank spirit stones a day. She caught a lot of gossip in her line of work, and some of the merchants who’d visited her often mumbled about how ragged the Bloody Fist Sect’s disciples must have been, laboring their qi into these spirit stones all day.

But strangely enough, Li Fang didn’t think that was the case either, because as unvirtuous as she was, she’d still find a monk or two in her clientele list. They wore disguises to be sure, but the tan marks of kasaya were hard to hide in bed. She’d found more of them recently. In the brothels, the streets, the back alleys, they were loitering on almost every block.

As a matter of fact, it seemed like the disciples were being displaced from the mines, though she didn’t know why. And it was none of her business anyway. She should keep her head down and not wander. That was the best way to live, she knew.