Night was deepening over the Royal Capital. The lights in countless homes had gone dark, but in a pleasure district in the south of the city, the night was only just beginning.

“Baron Rake, you said there’d be some fun tonight. Don’t tell me you brought me to a brothel.”

Baron Geli complained to Baron Rake beside him, waving away the prostitutes and madams who kept crowding around them.

Geli had a thing about cleanliness. This street was full of prostitutes calling, “Come on in, handsome!” and reeked of cheap face powder. If Rake hadn’t dragged him here, he never would’ve come.

“Relax, Baron Geli. When have I ever led you astray?”

Rake smiled at Geli, signaling that he didn’t need to worry and only had to follow him.

“If you pull one over on me tonight, I’ll tell your wife you came to the pleasure district!”

Rake merely smiled at Geli’s threat.

“Trust me. You won’t do that.”

Geli had no idea where Rake got his confidence, but he’d known him for a long time and knew he was usually good for his word. So he decided to trust him for now and followed along.

Rake led Geli this way and that before finally taking him into a brothel.

“So it is a brothel after all—and not even a nice one!”

Geli covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief, bothered by the smell inside the brothel.

You could tell how good a brothel was by the smell of its face powder. The more high-class the establishment, the more it was willing to spend on powder for its girls.

The powder in this brothel didn’t smell remotely high-class. If anything, it seemed cheap.

Several brothels they’d passed on the way here had been better than this one.

“Baron Geli, don’t be fooled by appearances. This place may look like a brothel, but in reality, it’s an auction house.”

“An auction house? Here, in the pleasure district?”

Geli frowned. He seemed to have guessed what was going on.

“Baron Rake, I take it the ‘goods’ for sale here are rather special.”

“Special is an understatement. If you really manage to buy one and take her home, you’ll never want to leave~”

Geli’s eyes shifted as he seemed to catch Rake’s meaning.

“Baron Rake, I’m suddenly rather curious. Please, lead the way.”

“Haha! Baron Geli, I knew we were kindred spirits.”

Baron Rake led Baron Geli past the prostitutes in the brothel and into a corner behind it.

There was a concealed door here. Beyond it lay a dim corridor.

“Whoa. You don’t find things like this in an ordinary brothel.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you. This place is more than just a brothel.”

The two men walked down the corridor, guided by the faint light of the candles on the walls.

At the end of the corridor stood a heavy-looking iron door. It had no handle, only a small window covered by an iron plate, and it didn’t look like it could be pushed open.

Thump~ Thump-thump-thump~ Thump.

Rake knocked in a specific rhythm. Before long, someone answered, but the door didn’t open. Only the small window slid open.

“Who’s there?”

“We’re here for the auction.”

“There’s no auction here!”

The little window snapped shut.

“Are you sure you’ve got the right place?”

Geli looked at Rake in confusion.

“Don’t worry. This is just part of the process.”

Thump~ Thump~ Thump~

He knocked on the iron door again. A little while later, the small window opened once more.

This time, before the person inside could say anything, Rake tossed two silver coins through the opening.

Strangely, the two sides didn’t exchange a single word, yet the lock on the iron door clicked open.

With a harsh screech of metal, the iron door finally swung open.

“Sure are a lot of hoops to jump through.”

Geli grumbled. Rake could only shrug.

“Can’t be helped. If we get caught doing this, we could lose our titles at best and our heads at worst. Of course we have to be careful.”

The two chatted as they stepped through the iron door.

Unlike the dim corridor, the room beyond the iron door was a fairly lavish hall.

A stage stood in the center of the hall, with rows of seats arranged in front of it.

Rake and Geli had arrived rather late. The seats were already full, and everyone was waiting for the auction to begin.

“That one’s a count—and there’s even a marquis!”

Geli was a little surprised. Nearly everyone in the hall wore a mask, but he could still make out a few faces.

The Empire had five noble ranks: duke, marquis, count, viscount, and baron.

There were even marquises here. This place had connections far more powerful than he’d imagined!

“Shh!”

Rake quickly stopped Geli and handed him a mask.

“Once you’re here, don’t go asking who anyone is. You don’t want to offend someone you can’t afford to offend!”

“Good point.”

They put on their masks, found two seats at random, and waited for the auction to begin.

“Ladies and gentlemen... Actually, I don’t suppose there are any ladies here.”

After a while, the auction finally began. The host onstage was using his gift of gab to warm up the crowd; before the bidding started, he wanted to get everyone in high spirits.

“I doubt any of you brought the lady of the house along, either.”

There was no denying the host was a good speaker.

A few short remarks were all it took to set the audience laughing. As a host, he was certainly up to the job.

“All right, enough chatter. I doubt any of you came here to listen to a grown man tell jokes.”

The host clapped his hands. The black curtain behind the stage began to rise.

“I’m sure you all know that we have only one ‘item’ tonight. But I promise you, this trip will be worth your while!”

As the curtain drew back, the audience finally got a clear look at tonight’s ‘item.’

A young woman was locked in a cage. Her long hair hung loose, and she wore nothing but ragged scraps of white cloth that barely covered her intimate parts.

Her exposed skin was enough to set imaginations racing, but what drew even more praise was the young woman’s beauty.

She had clear blue eyes and skin as pale as milk, with delicate, finely shaped features. She looked so frail that a strong breeze might knock her over.

The young woman sat in the cage with vacant eyes, as if she had accepted her fate. It lent her an air of sadness—but somehow, that only made people want to ravish her all the more.

She must look beautiful when she cried.

Gulp~

The audience was already full of barely suppressed gulps. Many couldn’t help imagining how wonderful it would feel to draw her into their arms.

“Ladies and gentlemen, behold tonight’s ‘item’: a young female slave!”

A few years ago, slaves had been commonplace. Landowners, merchants, and nobles alike kept at least a few.

But after Queen An Jieli took the throne, abolished slavery, and freed the workforce, slaves could no longer appear openly in public... at least not in the areas around the Royal Capital, where the Crown’s authority held absolute sway.

Though slavery no longer existed openly, the nobles weren’t exactly unable to accept it. They could hire people to work for them instead, and it didn’t cost much more. The only difference was that the people they hired weren’t their property.

But there was one thing many nobles couldn’t bear: having no female slaves.

Under the new laws, keeping slaves, capturing them, buying or selling them, and abusing them were all forbidden. Female slaves were no exception.

Nobles could no longer do whatever they pleased with female slaves. No matter how low the other person’s status, doing anything against their will was illegal.

Nobles could no longer use female slaves to indulge their perverse desires as they had before.

They couldn’t do it openly anymore, but some nobles simply couldn’t keep their desires in check. This auction house existed to satisfy those nobles.

Though this was a place where slaves were auctioned, most of the time the slaves for sale were women, brought in to serve the nobles of the Royal Capital.

Strict laws meant there weren’t many women available to auction. But scarcity made them all the more valuable, and the nobles were willing to pay even more.

“Mr. Host, I have a question. Is this young woman...?”

The noble in the audience didn’t finish his question, but everyone understood what he meant.

“Sir, and everyone else here, I can assure you: this young woman is a virgin!”

“What?!”

The announcement immediately sent a stir through the crowd.

The young woman was so beautiful—and she was still a virgin!

If that was true, her price could easily triple.

Most female slaves had already been trained by their sellers. It was hard for them to still be virgins. Even a beautiful slave like that would fetch at most a hundred and fifty gold coins. She couldn’t possibly sell for more.

But the young woman onstage was different. She was stunning, and she was still a virgin. For the nobles in the audience, that was an irresistible temptation.

The host was pleased by the audience’s reaction.

“I won’t waste any more time. The auction starts now! The opening bid is two hundred gold coins!”

“I bid two hundred and ten gold coins!”

The moment the host finished speaking, someone eagerly raised a bidding paddle. But even his haste wouldn’t be enough to win the female slave everyone was drooling over for a mere two hundred and ten gold coins.

“I bid two hundred and thirty gold coins!”

“Two hundred and fifty gold coins! Nobody else bid!”

“Hmph! The only fool here is you! I bid two hundred and eighty gold coins!”

Watching the nobles compete to bid, the host smiled knowingly. It looked like he was about to make a handsome profit once again.

The smooth-talking man onstage wasn’t just the auction’s host. He was also its organizer. His name was Li Ke.

So far, he’d organized more than a dozen auctions like this, building up quite a fortune and a wide network of connections.

“A few more big scores, and I’ll head back home and buy myself a government post. Then maybe I’ll get a noble title. I’ll be a noble, too.”

Li Ke had already planned out his future. Once he’d saved enough, he’d return to his hometown, secure himself a noble title, and enjoy a quiet life. He’d never get mixed up in this sort of business again.

But first, he needed to rake in a few more big scores.

“I bid four hundred and sixty gold coins!”

As Li Ke was thinking, the bids approached five hundred gold coins. That was an outrageous price, and he’d never sold a slave for so much before.

“Four hundred and sixty gold coins! Any other bids?”

Faced with the outrageous price of four hundred and sixty gold coins, the audience fell silent. It had already passed the limit they were willing to pay.

It wasn’t that no one could afford to bid higher. It was just that a female slave wasn’t worth paying any more for.

“Four hundred and sixty gold coins, going once! Four hundred and sixty, going twice! Are there really no higher bids?”

Li Ke looked around and saw that no one seemed willing to bid any higher.

“All right, then. Four hundred and sixty gold coins, going three—”

“Wait!”

Li Ke was just about to bring down his auctioneer’s gavel when someone stopped him.

He turned toward the voice and saw that the person who’d stopped him wasn’t one of the nobles. It was a silver-haired young woman standing by the entrance.

“I can offer you more...”

The silver-haired young woman’s voice was soft, but her pretty face was cold as ice.

“The price I’m offering is your lives!”