Floating World Bitten Peach

Xiu didn’t believe the zhaoguzhe, the caretaker of the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia—men’s pleasure house—in Nantung, and he was confused by what the zhaoguzhe was telling him. Since the winter the zhaoguzhe had been suffering under a constant cough, and he had become quite sour. Xiu thought that the old man must be teasing him. He had been training for the bitten peach culmination in the clouds and rain act and was to be auctioned off to the highest bidder at the spring festival, as was Bolin, another one of the jinan, the male pleasure house courtesans in training.

Xiu’s training and preparation had been exacting, and he had already pleasured with the kiss of the yang chu—a man’s member—act, with the release of the man’s seed, most of the important and famous men who would be bidding at the seed sowing ceremony to become the favored one to bite his peach and take him into his first clouds and rain. He had perfected and, for a price, would perform any act with a client but the client’s penetration of his channel and release of his seed. When that had been done, Xiu’s peach would irrevocably have been bitten and he would be fully taken into the Floating World and no longer marketable as a virgin.

But all contact with these jen—men—had been under the watchful eyes of the zhaoguzhe of the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia in Nantung to ensure that he remained pure of the clouds and rain and did not lose his chenchieh, his chastity, until the bitten peach ceremony. The zhaoguzhe had said Xiu had done admirably well since he had nearly given himself to the former baoan—house protector—several seasons before.

Xiu had learned well the wiles and enticements that had been taught him to please a patron without blemishing the peach, and the bidding and the bidders themselves were in a frenzy of anticipation.

But one night, weeks before the spring festival, the zhaoguzhe said Xiu’s time had come early—and that of Bolin as well—and Xiu and Bolin were roused before dawn the next day and bathed and shaved clean of everything but a silken skein of pigtailed hair at the back of their heads. They also were perfumed, powdered with the enticement powder, and—when what Xiu thought was just one of the zhaoguzhe’s cruel training exercises and teases turned to the horror of possibility—shown that they would be clothed in brocaded hanfu—robes—shimmering red for Xiu and deep blue for Bolin—that were being saved for their clouds and rains ceremonies.

That was when the zhaoguzhe told Xiu of the kueilo, the foreign ghosts, who were reported to be fierce sailing warriors from the far north and who had appeared off the mouth of the Yangtze River inside a monstrous chu’an—vessel—floating beneath a billowing cloud. At first, the zhaoguzhe had said, it was believed that this was the vessel of the pirate Ming Lei, who had been worrying coastal shipping in the region, but it was since said to be that of tall, large, and rough men from the north—from the land of Jin.

At first Xiu didn’t believe him or understand what this had to do with Bolin or him.

“This is far greater than the spring festival, Xiu,” the zhaoguzhe had said. “This spreads the renown of Nantung and the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia all the way to the feet of the Emperor of Jin.”

Xiu said that he neither knew nor cared about this faraway land or its ruler, but the zhaoguzhe slapped him for his pouting insolence and continued.

“The Duke of Shi has been put into a quandary, and he has come to me for a solution. This is an opportunity of generations. And you could not be more honored if your chenchieh could be renewed every spring for the highest bidder. In fact, with the favoring of the Duke of Shi, the bidding on you should go up now, even when you no longer are virginal, although I will have to do some fast training and preparation of another for the spring festival. Of course, if you become insolent with me, I could just give you to the Duke of Shi. He would be pleased to deflower you in ways you cannot imagine one man will do to another.”

Xiu shuddered at the thought of being given to the ruler of the prefecture, the Duke of Shi, as he was reputed to be a very cruel and demanding sexual predator. But when he opened his newly rouged lips to speak, the zhaoguzhe saw the expression on his face and slapped him again, sending clouds of white powder into the air and a flurry of house servants scurrying about to repair the damage to their hours of work on Xiu’s face. As luck had it, Xiu still was naked in the wake of the powdering. He would have had better luck if he already had been wound into his red brocade hanfu. The old zhaoguzhe would not have dared ruin those with the spray of white powder. As it was, he was wasting a fortune. The intoxicating, yang chu-hardening powder was a dear commodity.

“I have received overtures from the Jin men on the vessel that they have heard of the house and wish to taste the delights we have here. There was, of course, a veiled threat that if we didn’t entertain them with our best, they would burn the nanleshijia. When I reported this to the Duke of Shi and he, in turn, reported it to the King of Wu in Gusu, the king suggested that we entangle the intruders from Jin until he can decide what they are seeking by sailing this far south. I was directed to provide my best jinan to the kueilo. You and Bolin are my best morsels. The king has hinted that if you are successful, you may be bought at a high price for the nanleshijia of the court in Gusu. If you are not successful, I may turn you out into the streets of Nantung, where the fishermen of the town will know what to do with you.”

Xiu remained unimpressed. He often had been threatened with the randy fisherman of the town below the cliff on which the men’s pleasure house pavilions were perched. And Xiu thought the contact with the King of Wu sounded like fantasy. The house had invested too much in Xiu and Bolin, Xiu thought, for this to be a real threat. At the worst, he would be sold to some dried-up ancient with no seed, flatulence, and a limp yang chu—and that was likely to happen in the spring ceremony anyway.

“We are to provide delay,” the zhaoguzhe stubbornly reiterated to Xiu. “You and Bolin are to make the kueilo who appear for you to dally as long as possible. The Duke of Shi does not know if the vessel is a shangchu’an or a chunch’an, a merchant ship or a war ship. There have been rumors of these kueilo appearing at the fringes of the Central Kingdom, but never here. In either case, they must be made to turn away or go down to the depths of the sea. The Duke of Shi has sent queries to the King of Wu, but the situation is momentous; he must know as soon as the king decides if he can simply kill them or not.”

Xiu adopted his humblest look and kowtowed at the zhaoguzhe’s feet, searching for the seam where the zhaoguzhe’s teasing would collapse. “But I don’t understand, caretaker. Why are they coming here to Nantung? We are simply the pleasure resort for the prefecture of Yangzhou. What do we have to do with such momentous affairs?”

The zhaoguzhe patiently tried to explain, which began to make Xiu worry. He didn’t usually sustain his teasing this long—or back it up with an expensive costuming. Such reasonableness was not in keeping with the zhaoguzhe’s nature. “Panicked for delaying tactics, the emissary to the monster vessel from the Duke of Shi saw the eyes of the kueilo’s ch’uanchu, ship’s captain, light up at the offer of a respite of clouds and rain at the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia. When the kueilo captain said he was not interested in a bitten peach—a used jinan—the emissary, knowing of the bidding war on you and Bolin for the spring seed sowing ceremony, spoke of the purity and ripeness of you two. The kueilo captain was said to have become so interested that the interest showed on his body and the emissary was half afraid he himself would be seeded on the spot.”

Still Xiu did not believe the zhaoguzhe. Still he thought this was some sort of conditioning joke he was enduring. That it was all part of the ritual. What did the outer world have to do with their small pleasure house high on the cliffs over the bend in the Yangtze River?

But later that afternoon, as Xiu reclined on pillows on the veranda of the Vermilion Pavilion overlooking the sea, trying his best not to transfer any of the enticement powder to the red brocade of his ceremonial robes, he began to believe. He could not believe what he was seeing at first. A giant sea bird slowly appeared from around the eastern point of rocks and glided toward the harbor of the town of Nantung, guided in by a red barge of the Duke of Shi that Xiu recognized from the lord’s earlier visits to the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia. The kueilo sea bird was a towering, black-wood vessel driven by billowing clouds of white gossamer.

Xiu shuddered at the thoughts of the visits to the nanleshijia by the Duke of Shi, and of the screams of his jinan brothers behind closed doors during his visits, and of some of them being so ruined they had no longer been able to serve the house for any clients except for the rough villagers below the hill. The zhaoguzhe had always tried to hide the jinan in training who would be most profitable for the house when their bite of the peach came, but he wasn’t always able to fool the lord. Xiu certainly remembered how distressed the one he had loved, Niu, the house’s former baoan, had been when he had stopped here during his own escape from service to the lord. And Xiaodan, sweet little Xiaodan, who had been taken away to the lord’s castle and never heard from again.

Bolin was by Xiu’s side, in robes of darkest sapphire blue. He shrank from the sight of the giant, floating bird and began to breathe heavily. But Xiu, the more adventuresome of the two, was mesmerized by the sight. And aroused. Xiu had always been scolded for his fantasies and attraction to danger, but these were the same traits that had won him the premier position here, at the pinnacle of empowerment for a jinan. There was no more luxurious life or power over powerful men than the life of a clouds and rain master.

As Bolin’s nervousness grew with the far-off vision of inhumanly large figures in strange, black, close-fitting clothing roping down into the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia launch that had been sent out to their vessel to fetch them, Xiu’s interest and curiosity grew.

He now had to believe that the zhaoguzhe had not been teasing him.

For what seemed to be hours but was only a short time, the two could hear the kueilo being ceremoniously welcomed in the reception rooms below them. They heard the wheedling, smooth tones of the zhaoguzhe, covered by a raucous cacophony of hard, guttural sounds from the kueilo. It was obvious that neither understood the other, but as the voices of the foreign ghosts grew louder and their speech slurred, Xiu and Bolin understood that the zhaoguzhe had managed to place them under the spell of the house’s special wine, spiced to loosen nerves and cares and enervate the yang chu.

And then two of them were there in the entrance to the Vermilion Pavilion, one on each side of the zhaoguzhe, and with a semicircle of slack-jawed and murmuring tunic-clad house servants behind them.

They were both monstrous. The taller of the two, quite evidently the ch’uanchu—ship’s captain—was a hungmao, a red-haired devil. Xiu had read of such in the classics, but these two were monsters from beyond the pale. The obvious leader of the two, the ship’s captain, stood there, a full head taller than the zhaoguzhe. And such a head it was. Fully encircled with bright red, curly hair—on top and down the sides and under his chin and his nose. Broad shouldered and thin waisted, he was swathed in a clinging sweat-soaked, rough tunic and leggings and heavy fur-lined boots, which were not just exotic, but they also must be stifling in the heat of the nanleshijia’s subtropical province. Xiu could smell him from where he stood, a pace in front of the trembling Bolin. A meat eater. Underneath the hair and clothing, Xiu could see that the man was of palest hue, the source of the name that had been given to these recent interlopers on the world of the Central Kingdom—the world. That name was “ghost.”

The other man, not much taller than the zhaoguzhe, but much thicker, all hard muscle, in the body and similarly clothed to the other kueilo, stood beside and slightly back from the hungmao, another signal of who was the most important. This second foreign ghost had hair of the tawniest gold, not an auspicious color. Legends had reached the village of Nantung of other such golden-haired spear and shield-brandishing men visiting from the outside, across the deserts to the west, naked but for short skirts around their middles and sandals on their feet in times past. But all of the stories of them said that they had been famous for their cruelty and that they had been absorbed and destroyed as they deserved. This second kueilo standing before them, one step back from his ch’uanchu, exuded this sense of cruelty. He had a gold ring in one ear and a black patch over one eye, and a leering stare that bore right through Xiu and Bolin.

Bolin shrank behind Xiu, but Xiu looked up—indeed they were built so tall and broad that one had to look up—at the kueilo with disdain and with a haughtiness that Xiu had been taught drove some men wild with wanting. Xiu felt all tingly, ready for the challenge that the zhaoguzhe had claimed that the King of Wu had set for him—and that Xiu was more than half way to believing now that the strange, overpowering kueilo had been produced. Xiu had been shown drawings of kueilo like this before. They were all depicted as pelted with hair and with monstrous yang chus. Xiu wasn’t sure about the hair but he was enticed by extraordinarily large yang chus.

Both men smelled to high heaven. Before Xiu could stomach even pleasuring either one of them in a kiss of the yang chu act, he declared haughtily, they would have to be cleaned. And Xiu told the zhaoguzhe so in no uncertain terms. His eyes flashed, but he realized, Xiu was sure, that there were limits to what either Xiu or Bolin could do with an unwashed meat eater. Besides, as Xiu was soon to find out, the zhaoguzhe had already anticipated that need.

As soon as Xiu spoke, the eyes of both kueilo focused on him and both smiled that smile he had already seen a hundred times at the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia. They both wanted him. But it was the exotic pale blue eyes of the hungmao ch’uanchu that Xiu met with his, and both knew in an instant the pairings were settled.

If Xiu had known beforehand what would happen then, he would have acted differently. But the future, even the immediate future, was not for solitary Chungkuojen—Chinese man—like Xiu to know—this was knowledge reserved to the King of Wu or at least one no lower in the order than the Duke of Shi.

The zhaoguzhe motioned for Xiu and Bolin to rise and part. Xiu was waved toward the eastern chamber off the Vermilion Pavilion and Bolin toward the western chamber. The zhaoguzhe nudged the hungmao toward the east and the golden-haired kueilo toward the west, which they both immediately acknowledged and acceded to. The house servants split behind the zhaoguzhe, one half gliding toward the eastern chamber and the other half toward the western chamber.

Xiu heard Bolin mutter a cut-off exclamation as he and the golden-haired kueilo both reached the entrance to the western chamber. This was unheard of—for a clouds and rain master to say anything at this stage of the act—and Xiu’s head snapped around at the sound. The golden-haired kueilo had already laid hands on Bolin. When Bolin involuntarily shrank away from him, the golden-haired kueilo backhanded him across the cheek with such a mighty blow that Bolin was propelled through the entrance of the western chamber. The golden-haired kueilo turned and gave the house servants moving in his direction a menacing look that stopped them dead in their tracks, and they retreated, backing away from him and bowing low at the waist.

Xiu’s eyes went to the zhaoguzhe for reaction. Under normal circumstances, he would have used his martial arts skills to neutralize such a crass and out-of-control patron. But, though Xiu could see that zhaoguzhe’s jaw was set and his body tensed on the edge, he did nothing. The zhaoguzhe looked stricken and he held a hand to his chest like he was in pain. The look he gave to Xiu conveyed that there was nothing he could do—that what was unfolding here was being played on a larger stage than their nanleshijia. That’s when Xiu knew without a doubt that this was a reality. That all the zhaoguzhe had said about the directive from the King of Wu and the importance of delaying the kueilos’ return to the Kingdom of Jin was true. True and necessary. Important. Perhaps vital to maintaining civilization as the mere pawns in the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia knew it.

The sounds from the western chamber were rending. The tearing of cloth—which Xiu could see was tearing equally at the emotions of the zhaoguzhe, something Xiu could well understand, knowing the price of a spring ceremonial robe—the crude gruntings of the kueilo in immediate and full rut, and the cries of Bolin, cries that were unthinkable in the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia—except perhaps when the Duke of Shi visited. But the bones the lord was tossed were of much less valuable flesh than either Xiu or Bolin. To sacrifice the virginity of such as Xiu and Bolin was unprecedented.

Xiu and the zhaoguzhe stood there, looking at each other and then at the hungmao—the captain of the Jin vessel—standing between them and giving them a sneer of a smile and winks. They knew in no uncertain terms that the clouds and rain had already started in the western chamber and that Bolin’s chenchieh—his chastity—was as good as undone. The peach had not just been bitten. It was being gobbled up, with the sweet nectar of Bolin flowing down the golden-haired kueilo’s naked thighs—such was what the cries of the tender jinan were conveying from the western chamber. Xiu knew that any delay was now entirely his to provide, although the looks the hungmao gave him and the hands he was placing on Xiu’s curves within his ceremonial robe brought doubt into Xiu’s mind on what he alone could do.

At the doorway to the eastern chamber, Xiu turned and looked up into the pale blue eyes of the hungmao and tried to convey with every fiber of his being that foreign monster would have him but not in the way and at the pace that the golden-haired kueilo was having Bolin. He seemed to understand, and Xiu was heartened to get the impression that he took his pleasures—and gave the client his pleasure—at a much more easy pace than his compatriot did.

At the interior end of the eastern chamber was a bathing tub with steaming water in it. At the open end of the pavilion, overlooking the curve in the Yangtze River, was a pallet of red silk with mountains of red silk pillow cushions, the home of the clouds and rain, where Xiu was now resigned that he would become a bitten peach—that he was about to lose his chenchieh.

The hungmao stood in the center of the room, an amused look on his face, and his arms outstretched and legs in a wide stance, as the house servants slowly but methodically figured out how to unclothe him. The zhaoguzhe stood in the doorway from the Vermilion Pavilion, watching the hungmao being disrobed. Even though he was trembling from some infirmity, he would stand there and observe until the completion of the first clouds and rain. It was his duty to do so—to observe and record the time and place of Xiu’s loss of the chenchieh that the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia prized so highly. It would be marked in vermilion ink, the highest honor—at the pleasure of the Duke of Shi. Even higher than a link to the spring festival seed sowing ceremony would have been. It added stacks of hsienchien, cash, to Xiu’s worth for each subsequent clouds and rain assignation.

The visiting Jin kueilo monsters would become the talk of the kingdom—especially when rumors of their yang chu equipment—which Bolin now knew intimately and Xiu was about to—began to float around. Clients would flock to the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia to thrill in being where the giants from beyond the kingdom had been with their tree-trunk yang chus. “Aeiii,” the clients would be heard to say. “I felt I could walk upright in the channel that kueilo drilled.”

The zhaoguzhe obviously could not observe the moment for Bolin, which, from the sounds from the other chamber had already taken place and was moving into a second taking, but the zhaoguzhe was a modern jen of practicality. He would simply record what he hadn’t actually seen, and he knew that Xiu would not naysay him, even though it was his duty to do so; he knew that Xiu would not subject Bolin to that dishonor and loss of future status.

Xiu’s eyes were also on those of the hungmao. His eyes were focused on the peach he was about to bite. He wanted to see Xiu’s reaction to his nakedness. And, trained as Xiu was, he was already prepared to respond with embarrassment and awe. Xiu had been trained to do this for a eunuch or castrati, if faced with that in this situation and they had been given access to him by the zhaoguzhe. Xiu needed no training to fall back on, though. The hungmao was huge in ways Xiu had never seen in life before. There was a statue the height of three men in the entrance hall to the nanleshijia with an erect phallus to assure clients they were in a nanleshijia—and the jinan often joked about fucking themselves on this triple-sized appendage. But Xiu gasped without feigning now to see a yang chu in real life that rivaled it.

The hungmao’s body was well formed and hard and bulging in muscles, obviously from hard, honest work. He was covered in red, curly hair everywhere. And his yang chu was alarmingly heavy and long and thick—and standing proud in full erection as he gazed on the young man who soon would be writhing under him. Xiu gulped and his eyes went wide open and his jaw slack—all movements he had been trained in to please the jen he would be given to, but movements that came naturally under these circumstances. Xiu’s channel tightened at the thought that for the first time he would be doing more to entertain a client’s yang chu than fondling it and mouthing it—and that he would have to do it with what was standing up from the hungmao’s belly. Xiu involuntarily moaned. His reaction pleased the hungmao, which Xiu could readily see as the giant’s yang chu rose up even more in parallel with the matting on the floor and filled out impossibly larger.

The hungmao went into the bath with the help of the house servants. A couple of these carried off his clothing, undoubtedly to be double boiled, and the other house servants began scrubbing him in earnest. The past year’s spring festival clouds and rain master, Wangan, glided into the room with willowy stride and, after slowly shrugging out of all but his diaphanous inner robe, knelt beside the tub. His hands went into the soapy water, and Xiu watched the hungmao’s eyes slit and the pleasure fan out across his face as Wangan enclosed his hands around the hungmao’s yang chu and began to stroke.

It was Xiu’s time then—the beginning of the ceremony of the clouds and rain. He stood there, between the tub and the sea, between the hungmao and the pallet of his chenchieh farewell and untied the sash on his layers of hanfu and began to slowly unwind his red ceremonial robe and the deep purple under robe. Xiu took a long time doing this, and the hungmao’s eyes were glued to his form the entire time. From where he stood Xiu could hear the giant sighing from where he stood from the ministrations of Wangan’s delicate, expert hands and fingers on the kueilo’s yang chu. Almost as if not realizing what he was doing, the hungmao had one hand searching inside the folds of Wangan’s robes, where he obviously found what he was looking for and was stroking it. His other hand was lifted above his head and had snaked into the tunic of one of the house servants scrubbing at him and had exposed and was tweaking a nipple.

After a slow, orchestrated, long-practiced performance of revealing himself, Xiu stood there before him, less than half the kueilo’s size, the folds of the red and purple robes swirling around his feet. Xiu placed his hands on his hips and swayed ever so imperceptively from side to side. Delicately formed against the hard muscularity of the kueilo, Xiu was lithe and willowy, but he too was muscle hard from years of ever-higher-level tai chi practice. He was smooth-skinned in his nakedness, completely shaved for this ceremony. His were the pert little yang chu and ball sac that Chungkuojen so highly prized in their clouds and rain masters. Xiu worried briefly if this would please a kueilo as well, but the look the monster man cast on the ripe peach’s revealed body left no doubt that he did. As was wanted in a spring festival master, Xiu had the years of an adult but the body of a youth.

The hungmao gave Xiu a wicked smiled. He reached up and pulled a surprised Wangan into the tub with him and turned the now sputtering jinan onto his belly, with his arms over the side of the tub and his nipples, freed now from the transparent, soaked robe by the hungmao’s rough hands, resting on the lip of the tub. His eyes were wildly racing around the inside of the pavilion, trying to focus on something that would help him understand why he was in this position and where his saving help could come from. Did this kueilo have no sense whatsoever for the ceremonies of the clouds and rain?

The hungmao, crouching over the submerged hips of the jinan, never let his own gaze free that of Xiu, who stood there, frozen amid his symbolic blood-red pillows and pallet covering, trembling and trying not to show his fear and consternation, as Wangan let out a cry of violation and skewering as he never had experienced before. Xiu understood perfectly that this was a matter of foreplay between the hungmao and himself. The groaning and moaning that Wangan’s gaping mouth was producing and his wild-eyed looks of impossibly full and cruel possession—and even the roiling of the tub water signaling the power and rapidity of the hungmao’s thrusts—were all to demonstrate how the hungmao intended to possess and overpower Xiu himself. He was penetrating the hapless Wangan in long, strong thrusts of his yang chu.

The message was not lost on Xiu, and inside he was all turmoil mixed with anticipation, while on the outside he fought to maintain a haughty continence free from intimidation.

This was all just preliminary posturing by the kueilo, however. He was doing nothing but increasing his arousal and the length and thickness of his yang chu. He quickly lost all interest in Wangan and the house servant and, indeed, in his bath, although, happily he had been scrubbed sufficiently already. He rose up out of the tub, leaving the servants to help a whimpering Wangan rise and stumble out of the pavilion. The bit of appetizer the hungmao had indulged in and the effect of Xiu’s own disrobing had caused the hungmao’s yang chu to rise and fill out to put to shame the most virile of the stud stallions in the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia—the young men kept well away from the pavilions Xiu and Bolin lived in, the big-cocked young men who some clients came to visit for their own enhanced clouds and rain entertainments.

Xiu moved breathlessly to the hungmao, kneeling before him and gently enclosing the base of the giant’s yang chu in his small fists, one above the other, and still leaving more than Xiu thought his mouth could accommodate. In a rustle of naked feet and soft silk, Xiu sensed more than heard the last of the house servants evaporate beyond the bamboo screens.

For the next several minutes, as the hungmao sighed and growled, rocked back and forth on the pads of his gigantic feet, and breathed heavily and noisily, he moved Xiu’s head between his enormous paws while the jinan entertained him with everything he had learned in the art of the kiss and suck of the yang chu.

The hungmao was getting bigger and bigger and was pumping ever more rapidly with his yang chu inside the young jinan’s mouth. Xiu’s hands went to the giant’s heavy orbs. Xiu could hardly enclose them in his hands, they were so large and tightly balled. None that Xiu had handled before now were anything like this size. The kueilo was a monster of a man, and Xiu was wondering if he was typical of his people of the north, beyond civilization, or a monster among them as well, as Xiu felt his bulbous knob pressing against the back of his throat.

Xiu lightly squeezed on the orbs, wanting him to drain himself now, before the clouds and rain, to delay that. Every moment of delay was precious time. Xiu understood that now.

But, with a roar, the hungmao, pulled the small jinan up and off his throbbing yang chu. He turned his prey and pushed him down on all fours, and Xiu understood that he was going to be invaded and become a bitten peach right there and then, years of training and preparation erased in one thrust of the sword. And it was going to happen in the humiliating, crude position of the dog.

That could not be, though. The customs and rules of a kingdom of Wu nanleshijia were quite explicit. Xiu had to lose his chenchieh on the red pallet across the chamber and in the face-to-face position, with the heels of his feet rubbing the buttocks of the client. The zhaoguzhe quietly grunted from across the room, where he was watching and assessing the taking, obviously making the same point. If the protocol wasn’t followed, Xiu’s future worth as a courtesan jinan would be jeopardized. But Xiu didn’t need the zhaoguzhe to remind him of the ceremony requirements. Xiu had been studying these ceremonial requirements for four season cycles.

Xiu disengaged from the hungmao somehow and half crawled and half scuttled toward the red pallet. The hungmao misinterpreted, assuming most probably, that he had frightened Xiu too much and that the jinan was trying to escape. The renewed cries from the other chamber across the Vermilion Pavilion only added credence to this thought. Bolin was being plowed hard and rough, as he was loudly and plaintively complaining of—just like a stable boy, completely wiping away his dignity and social status. Xiu could only hope that only the zhaoguzhe and he remained to hear of his dishonoring—that the house servants were well beyond hearing. But Xiu knew that was a hopeless thought. All that comforted Xiu was knowing that any house servant heard gossiping about this night would lose his tongue—and maybe his yang chu as well—and that the servant would just need to be paid under the table to affirm that all of the ceremonial requirements were met.

Xiu’s perceived attempt to escape didn’t cool the giant sea captain down. It only increased his ardor. This is how he liked to take his captives in sea battles—the panicked young men scuttling ineffectually across the boards of his ship’s deck. No place to go. Their cries of anguish when he caught up with them and rode their bodies down to the decking. The piercing scream of his victory as he thrust inside their channels.

The hungmao reached Xiu and toppled him down on his belly in a cloud of white powder as the jinan reached the red silk pallet. Xiu did manage, however, to pull up onto the pallet on his hands and knees as the hungmao encased his hips between his strong knees. Technically, the customs were being satisfied—if only barely, as any client with the money to pay to bite the peach for the first time was refined enough to do so in full accordance with the proper rituals, which did not include brutality and wild taking—or the crude position of the dog. If wild taking was what the client wanted, he had to return another time as a patron.

Xiu heard the rustle of the zhaoguzhe’s robes as he decorously approached with a pot of scented clouds and rain ointment and calmed the hungmao long enough to convey that he was trying to aid the inevitable act. The hungmao held Xiu down on all fours with one arm wrapped around his chest as he crouched over the jinan and invaded his tight and virginal anus with lubricated fingers. At the same time, the zhaoguzhe worked ointment on the hungmao’s prodigious, throbbing yang chu.

Xiu had the sense then of being in the embrace of a silken-pelted bear as the zhaoguzhe faded back to the entrance of the chamber and the hungmao held the bulbous head of his yang chu to the jinan’s back entrance in an encasing, directing fist.

The hungmao panted hard as he worked himself inside Xiu, and the soon to be bitten and gobbled up peach panted even harder and suppressed his groans and moans as best he could as the giant forced the channel open with his yang chu and moved deep. The groaning and moaning was meant to be saved for later, when the patron was fully saddled and was stroking and needed to hear that he was the master of the Central Kingdom.

But Xiu could not help it. He cried out in pain and invasion, nothing like this having been part of what he had learned over the last four season cycles. Although, to rights, no one involved in his training could have been known that he was destined to lose his chenchieh to a monster horse-sized foreign ghost yang chu.

“I must not faint,” Xiu kept repeating to himself. “I must pleasure him with my body for as long as possible.” Xiu gritted his teeth and took the monster cock deeper inside his channel and clenched his entrance muscles as he had been taught and listened in triumph to the hungmao gasp in pleasure at that. And then, as the monster yang chu sank in and in and in, Xiu tried, through the wall of pain, to conjure up all of the exercises he had learned to control the muscles of his passage—to make them ripple around and across the kueilo’s yang chu, to make internal love to his manhood as he had been taught to do. The clouds, the important clouds before the rain—the beating of one cloud against the other, the friction that brought on the rain, with the greater the cloud beating, the greater the rain.

Once the rains had come, the peach will have been fully bitten.

The kueilo groaned and gasped in pleasure and his lips went to the hollow of Xiu’s neck, where they ingested the enticement powder. He murmured and sighed and moaned, and Xiu felt the powder working in the impossible reality that the throbbing yang chu grew even larger inside the compromised channel. His horse yang chu slid back and forth, shallow and then deep, to the surface and then diving down, down, down and holding as Xiu’s muscles contracted around him and worked on his yang chu.

Xiu could hear Bolin screaming out that he was being split asunder and that his insides were being flooded—again—from the other chamber, and Xiu began to wiggle his hips, no longer in as much pain as at the beginning. Something else was moving inside him now. Wanting. Actually wanting this clouds and rain. He was working the clouds—the touching and the sighing and the moaning and the movement under him and back against him as he thrust, meeting the giant thrust for thrust now. Listening to his ragged breathing. Giving him the best clouds he had ever received. Living up to the reputation of the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia.

Then the rains came. The hungmao cried out in ecstasy and the rains came. Deep inside Xiu’s channel. One, two, three gushings. The kueilo collapsed on top of Xiu, pushing him down on his belly on the red silk pallet, and Xiu heard the rustling of the zhaoguzhe’s robes as he left the pavilion, his official duties finished—back to his dark room and his vermilion ink and his triumphant collection of a favor from the Duke of Shi, a favor that could sustain the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia for generations to come.

As the zhaoguzhe wrote out his report, he took time to write it in flowery language and giving the swallowing of the peach its full, detailed description. He wasn’t just writing for the record. This story would be floated throughout the prefecture. The men’s house of pleasure would not lose in Xiu’s inability to qualify for the spring clouds and rain auction. The story of the thunderstorm with the giant foreign devil and the tree trunk of a yang chu Xiu’s channel had satisfied would disseminate like wild fire, and rich patrons would flock to the nanleshijia to follow the pathway the hungmao had reamed. And he would write of the uncivilized crudeness of the kueilo captain—biting the peach in the position of the dog. Such was unheard of in the civilized world. As he wrote, the sharp ache in his chest settled on zhaoguzhe. He did not feel that he had much time left, but he should have enough to pen this legend to parchment with the traditional vermillion ink.

Xiu heard Bolin crying out from the other chamber. He was screaming that his wrists had been tied and he was doubled over the rim of the unused tub and was being roughly entered again and again and again—in the position of the dog. Did these monsters know of any less crude manner of coupling? That the golden-haired kueilo smelled vile and cruelly bit and had a yang chu thicker than the pillars in the Vermilion Pavilion. That his rains were a flood. But there was nothing Xiu could do for Bolin now. Bolin had abandoned all sense of decorum and the best that anyone could do for him now was to forget what they had heard from him.

Xiu had to delay the departure of the vessel. And he knew it would not leave without its captain. Perhaps if he could detain him even for a night.

That was, of course, not permitted in the clouds and rain ceremony. Once the peach had been bitten, the ceremony was over. The jinan was to retire to his nanleshijia and engage in ritual cleansing ceremonies that could take up to a full phase of the moon. In the interim, unless the man who had bitten the peach wanted to pay to step forward as sole patron, the zhaoguzhe started to set up subscriptions for the new jinan’s services. After the cleansing period, the jinan was available to entertain all who wanted him and could pay for him in succession as long as he could maintain interest or his body could endure the entertainment.

But that initial clouds and rain? Just the one ritual.

The hungmao rolled off Xiu and lay on his back on the platform, still panting. Gathering all of the resolve and resources he could, Xiu sat up and moved his head over the hungmao’s heaving chest and started to lick his nipples and set his red chest hair aswirl. He must do what he could to delay the monster’s departure. Xiu’s hands danced over the kueilo’s torso and down to his yang chu, still huge but now in repose. Despite tradition, Xiu knew he needed to coax him into clouds and rain again. Xiu needed him to believe that only with this lover could he accomplish rapid recovery and multiple clouds and rain. He must want to stay with Xiu as long as possible. Xiu knew this was vital to the pride of any man, Chungkuojen or kueilo. All the same in the vanity realm. Entice three clouds and rain in an assignation, and the man is yours forever.

Xiu put an arm around the hungmao’s neck and lifted his mouth to his nipple. The kueilo sucked and licked Xiu’s nub while Xiu worked his other hand across his cheek. Xiu moved the hungmao’s mouth around the nipple, coaxing him to ingest more of the enticement powder, which he did. This had the desired effect, in consort with the jinan’s stroking, on his yang chu. The giant was regaining virility. Xiu stroked the slit in the head of the man’s yang chu with the tip of his finger, and the kueilo gasped and began to writhe in pleasure, his life’s fluid beginning to bubble up onto Xiu’s finger. The jinan felt him trembling at the knowledge that there would be a second clouds and rain so soon after the first. He already was nearly a captive of the bitten peach.

After Xiu heard the last gurgling cry from Bolin from across the Vermilion Pavilion, followed by an ominous silence, Bolin’s friend felt more than saw the presence of the golden-haired kueilo at the entrance to the eastern chamber. His ragged breathing could be clearly heard. Xiu knew he was watching the hungmao and Xiu deeply entering their second clouds and rain.

The hungmao was kneeling, sitting back on his calves and facing out toward the sunset over the bend in the Yangtze. He was holding his new conquest, like a small doll, in front of him, Xiu facing the river as well, his knees leveraging off the surface of the red-silk pallet, body arched out, and his anus sliding up and down on the hungmao’s rejuvenated yang chu. Yet another position of the dog. A more refined version now, though. Up and down, endlessly. Xiu no longer was in pain. He was enjoying the taking. He wondered if he would ever be swallowing a member this large again. Stretching for it. Perfecting the skills of internal muscle massage of a throbbing horse yang chu of impossible size and strength.

The hungmao was sighing and groaning contentedly.

A shadow fell on Xiu, and he no longer could see the river. What he saw now was a short, thick yang chu jutting out of a thick thatch of golden hair. Xiu almost gagged at the thickness and smelliness of the second kueilo’s yang chu as it was pushed between his lips. But this was no time for niceties. Xiu gave the golden hair a quite satisfactory kiss of the yang chu too. He was determined to keep the two here as long as possible. If Bolin had failed, Xiu could only try to succeed.

The golden-haired kueilo grabbed Xiu’s pigtail, forced his head back, and pushed hard down inside his mouth with his yang chu. The hungmao, between pants of his own spoke sharply at the golden one in that ugly guttural language of theirs, though, and the golden-haired kueilo released Xiu’s pigtail.

The virile hungmao was still sliding Xiu up and down on his yang chu when the golden one released his seed inside Xiu’s mouth. He brought his mouth down to Xiu’s and sucked his fluid from inside the jinan’s mouth in a lips-on-lips invasion that was almost never performed between men at the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia. But if it delayed their parting for even a moment, Xiu was determined to do it. Xiu returned his kiss and stifled his surprise and pain when the giant bit the jinan on the lip.

The golden one knelt down before Xiu and the jinan felt his fingers forcing their way inside his anus alongside the sliding yang chu of the hungmao. He was stroking his own yang chu back to thickness with his other hand, and for a brief moment Xiu panicked at the sure knowledge that he intended his yang chu to join that of the hungmao’s inside his channel.

But the hungmao spoke gruffly to the golden one, and he pulled his fingers from Xiu and stood and moved toward the door. Xiu knew from what he was saying that he was telling the hungmao it was time for them to return to the vessel in the lagoon.

Xiu tightened his internal muscles on the hungmao’s yang chu and captured his lips and gave him lip-to-lip attention for the first time in their session of clouds and rain. He reacted with surprise and pleasure, and then Xiu took his head and buried the giant’s lips into his shoulder, where there still was some enticement powder lingering. He was lost to Xiu then.

He and the golden-haired kueilo exchanged hurried and angry words. As they spoke, Xiu performed the fan movement of the clouds and rain. In one deft, lithe movement, he turned on the hungmao’s yang chu to where Xiu was facing him and, at the same time, pushed him down onto his back, with his muscle-bulging hairy legs now stretched out toward the river.

With the golden-haired kueilo still angrily talking and gesturing and the hungmao groaning loudly in ecstasy and his pale-blue eyes revolving wildly in their sockets, Xiu began to ride his yang chu hard, with revolving hips and rippling internal muscles. The golden one gave up in disgust and departed, while his captain writhed in deep lust under the jinan. The hungmao flooded Xiu’s channel with his essence again soon thereafter.

The hungmao drifted off to sleep hours later after the third clouds and rain, in which Xiu lay on his back, his hips raised by red silk pillows, his legs flared out wide, and the hungmao on his knees on the red pallet between his legs, looking out at the now-furled sails of his vessel riding quietly in the surface of the river and moving his hips and centering deep, plowing back and forth, in a more acceptable position than that of the dog, rhythmically and forever, while Xiu sighed and moaned for him, letting him know he was the most masterful jen in the Central Kingdom. Holding him enthralled with every trick Xiu had learned.

Xiu performed clouds and rain, each time in a different position and ever more intricately, although including the position of the dog when that pleased the kueilo, holding the hungmao’s total attention between replenishment meals supplied by a delighted zhaoguzhe, for the next three days and nights.

When the hungmao finally descended to his vessel, stiff legged and humming, on the fourth day, Xiu was at the edge of the veranda of the Vermilion Pavilion, only slightly happy to see him go. He had a yang chu such as Xiu would never again ride, a yang chu that the zhaoguzhe would have expertly measured in length and thickness in his mind and in his handling during the clouds and rain ointment application and would record on the official record of capability. But it wasn’t just the size of him that enhanced Xiu’s value to the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia; as Xiu’s clouds and rain became more inventive, the hungmao had become more and more gentle and lost to him. If the Duke of Shi had instructed that he be held here forever, Xiu could have managed that—and would have been content doing it.

Xiu could part from him with the knowledge that his fortune and legend was now made, not just in the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia, but also beyond the pleasure resort of Nantung—perhaps even beyond the entire prefecture of Yangzhou. Xiu could dream of being lionized to the King of Wu himself. Perhaps he could dream of serving the yang chu needs and desires of the Son of Heaven himself.

But as much as Xiu had come to enjoy the hungmao’s horse yang chu churning inside him, Xiu remained Chungkuojen to the very fiber of him. He sensed that these kueilo, these foreign ghosts, were devils to be avoided and kept away from the purity of the Central Kingdom. At least he could rest in the knowledge that his four days of delay had given the Duke of Shi the time he needed to devise plans to eradicate this threat—to ensure that no kueilo ghost ships would enter the mouth of the Yangtze River or the bays of any other city in the Central Kingdom ever again.

But these thoughts were quickly lost to Xiu. With the visit of the Jin kueilo, his whole life and environment had changed. When the kueilo was gone, Xiu found out that, although Bolin had survived his cruel clouds and rain experience, it was only barely and perhaps only for the present. Xiu found him on his cot, torn internally and nearly delirious. He didn’t have much time for concern for Bolin as he also had been informed that the zhaoguzhe had been found dead on his office floor shortly after Xiu had accomplished his feat of imprisoning the hungmao in clouds and rain for four days and nights. The call had already gone out to the kingdom for a new zhaoguzhe, as a nanleshijia could not function without one.

The most significant change in Xiu’s life, though, was that he no longer was in training to be a jinan; he was a bitten peach. And he was a famous jinan now. In the ensuing weeks, though, nothing in his life became regularized again. And, exoticly, he now was associated with what became known as the Kueilo Position, the position of the dog, which he would now frequently be called upon to perform as a symbol of his broader-world experience. He was belatedly being given his full-moon period of rest after his initial clouds and rain, but rich notables far and wide were eager to sign his schedule book—and to mount his hips and fuck him like a dog. Almost universally, the rich clients sought assurances that they covered him in this position better than the kueilo ship’s captain had, and Xiu always lied and said that they had.

For now, though, there was no zhaoguzhe at the Cut Sleeve Nanleshijia to give order to the further professional life of the brave Xiu.