Floating World Bitten Peach

"Tell me where we are going, Shun."

The servant, Shun, looked about him to make sure that no one who would report back to the

zhaoguzhe

—the manager—had followed them from the

nanleshijia

—the male pleasure house. They were at the first rest lookout point on Langshan Mountain—Wolf Hill—that rose at the edge of Nantung and was almost encircled by a snake-like bend of the Yangtze, a wide and muddy river at this point. Shun looked out over the picturesque port village of Nantung. The town was built around a series of lakes and was itself almost encircled within a lesser river, the Haohe, that wound around the town in what was called the "Emerald Necklace" and flowed into the Yangtze just below Langshan Mountain. It was raining in a drizzle and Shun could barely make out the village below him in the mist—or the upper reaches of the sacred mountain above him. Through a break in the mist farther down the mountain, through the finger of clouds drifting below where he stood, though, he could see the nanleshijia compound perched on a cliff below them and overlooking the roiling waters of the Yangtze.

"He was sent to the monks of the Dragon Temple at the summit of the mountain, baoan," Shun said. "I overheard the zhaoguzhe say Deming needed to be punished for betraying his training."

"The monks at the Dragon Temple!" Niu exclaimed. "They will ruin him and then take him into the temple as one of them, never to be seen by any of us again. This cannot be."

With that Niu turned toward the stone steps leading up into the mist of the mountain and began to run.

"Careful, baoan," Shun called after him, afraid that the love and want for the muscular protector of the house that had been in his heart for some time would betray him in the tone of his voice. But Niu did not have ears for the lowly nanleshijia school servant.

Nearly as soon as Niu disappeared into the mist, though, Shun heard a pained exclamation and the rustling of the fern fronds that bordered the upward stone pathway.

The strangled voice of the baoan called from out of the cloud. "Heavens be cursed, I . . . have fallen."

Shun, with no regard for his own safety now, ran up the stone steps and helped Niu to rise. It was baoan who was supposed to be the strength of the nanleshijia. That he seemed so helpless reflected to Shun how emotionally charged he was at losing the first taking of Deming that he had cultivated for so long.

"More carefully. We must walk more carefully on the slime-covered wet stones," Shun called into the mists. But Niu was not listening. He set off again, limping a bit this time. Shun reached out for the sleeve of the baoan's scarlet-red silk hanfu, but the protector skittered away from him, farther up the rising stone path, anxious to reach his destination, focused on his own goal.

Mere yards farther up the path, Niu almost slipped and went down on the moist, moss-covered stepping stones again. But the young servant, Shun, was there right behind him, placed a strong hand under the arm of the man he loved above all other men, and gently supported him while Niu, unthinking of his own safety, continued up the steep ascent.

"I have you, baoan," Shun murmured. "I shall not let you fall."

Lost in his burning need, Niu paid Shun no heed.

Of course Shun wouldn't let the baoan fall. That went without saying. In fact, most of what Shun did for Niu went without acknowledgment.

"Where . . . Where are you, Deming?" Niu cried out, looking frantically up the path, wanting to catch at least a last glimpse of the one he loved deeply—but of course wanting so much more. Langshan—Wolf Hill—and the monks of the Dragon Temple would have been snatching Deming from Niu soon enough. Niu could not prevent that. The assignment of Deming could not be altered. But Niu could reach him first and quench this fire in his belly for the flower of Deming before the monks did their worst. Niu had an obsession to be the first with any young man who aroused him. He had been first inside Shun, in Nantung's Nanleshijia school, but that had not registered in Niu's consciousness as it had in Shun's.

Once more, despite his sprained ankle, Niu surged ahead of Shun up the pathway. He was strongly built and powerful. No one in Nantung could match his strength—or his determination to make the summit of the mountain. It was a miracle that Shun was able to support him as he had been called to do more than once on this trek up the mountain—but his devotion had given him superhuman strength as well.

As Niu climbed toward the last resting terrace for the public, called the parting stones, where no one not invited to proceed by the priests of the Dragon Temple was permitted to pass, Shun called out to Niu, who surely must have had to stop before reaching there for a rest. But there was no answer. Niu had already gone ahead.

Shun began to shudder, his whole world coming down around him. He looked up the mountain, trying to pick out the accursed temple, but unable to do so through the tops of the pine trees and the swirling blanket of misty clouds sitting upon the summit of Langshan.

"Let them already have initiated Deming and taken him into the temple," Shun prayed—but silently, of course. It would be a tragedy for him for Niu to hear what was in Shun's heart.

Hearing a grunt of pain above, but near, propelled Shun up the mountain. He found Niu slumped on the stones, rubbing his chin. "Here, lean on me, baoan," the servant Shun whispered to him. "We can move faster if I take your weight upon me."

And without a word, Niu let Shun put a steadying arm under his and, using strength he should not have, lift him and thus move at a quicker and more steady pace up the ever-sharpening angle of ascent.

This was not what he wanted, Shun was agonizing as resolute and steady on the slippery stepping stones, he helped Niu up the stairs. Shun wanted Niu for himself. But the baoan only had eyes for the beautiful students in preparation to be jinan—male prostitutes—in the nanleshijia. Niu cared nothing for the young man with the scalded arm, the less-than-perfect man now that he had bitten his peach, had covered and been inside the school servant back in the nanleshijia school's robe closet. Shun would give his arm entirely if Niu would cast an aroused eye on him. Even though that was not happening, Shun would support Niu in anything he wanted to do.

Niu, supported on the imperfect arm of Shun, reached the last rise of the mountain and stopped at the small stone terrace, the parting stones, which was surrounded by stone benches, bordered by lacy-leafed maple trees sighing in the breeze floating up from the base of the Langshan. A stone path led up farther from here, straight up for a few feet and then taking a sharp turn to the right and disappearing behind closely planted pine trees. The mists of the early morning dipped down at this point to make a low ceiling to the small stone terrace. Beyond this point no one was sanctioned to go who was not initiated in—or about to be initiated into—the Dragon Temple.

Niu sank down on the stone bench. Shun crouched nearby, ready to lend any aid to his master that he was asked to provide. Niu sobbed openly, unashamedly, letting all of his grief pour out of him. He had not been able to reach Deming before he was taken up to the summit. It would be a miracle if Deming was still a pure peach.

As Niu grew silent, his desperation wrung out of him, he heard it. The sound of lilting music, not just the breeze playing through the leaves of the pines and the lacey-leafed maples, but a haunting tune on some sort of flute. It was coming from farther up the mountainside, beyond the upper, forbidden stone terrace.

Niu struggled to his feet and limped toward the pathway leading up from the stone terrace.

"What is it, baoan?" Shun asked in a low, throaty voice. "I hear music. Is that what you hear? Do you intend to mount the Langshan farther? We are not permitted . . . oh, here, give me your arm. If you wish to climb farther, I will support you. I'll help you wherever you want to go."

Niu gave no indication that he even heard Shun, but he leaned on the young man's arm quickly enough regardless and let the servant support him on the upward, steeper climb into the mists of the morning.

They had almost reached another, larger stone terrace near the summit, nearly fully shrouded in clumps of white, wispy clouds, when they distinctly heard the flute playing—and the low beat of a drum—and also heard the rustling and slapping of many sets of bare feet, scurrying across a parallel pathway around the near summit of the mountain that intersected with the upward path to this larger stone terrace.

Niu and Shun instinctively drew back and crouched down into the dewy patch of ferns within a thickly planted copse of pine, where they could see up to the stone terrace but, with luck, could not be seen. Legend had it that no one who journeyed beyond the parting stones who was not of the temple community or being initiated into it returned to the valley alive. So, intoxicated and driven Niu and loyal-to-the-death Shun had continued their upward journey filled with great fear and trembling.

As they crouched, Niu had to rub his eyes between looking three times to his right along the parallel path leading into the stone terrace. How could this possibly be? he asked himself. What was a brightly colored, undulating, long-tailed dragon doing up here near the summit of the Langshan.

It was wending its way, slithering along with the motion of a ship upon a stormy sea, through the forest of pines, never seen in whole but in bits and pieces between the closely set trees of the pine copse. The dragon was snorting, and its undulating progress was what was being accompanied by the low drum beat and the playing of the flute. The dragon was twisting and turning and advancing upon the stone terrace in rhythm to the drum and flute.

And there was the beat of feet, many bare feet, and the humming of men—an almost human dragon. A sight to behold, one that Niu thought no one from the valley below, or in the markets of Nantung, would believe should he live to tell of what he saw and heard.

And when the dragon entered into the stone terrace and made a quick turn to the right, up the path toward the summit of the Langshan Mountain, Niu realized what it was. Nothing more than one of the ceremonial dragons that wended the streets of Nantung marking the Chinese New Year. A long, shiny-cloth costume, in brilliant yellows and blues and greens and white, slung over the bodies of many men, undulating around and twisting and turning, as it did through the streets of Nantung, although here, in contrast to the Nantung street dragon, the men under the dragon cloth were naked—and in erection. Niu moaned at what this foretold.

The dragon weaved around the summit of the Langshan, and now up, up, up toward the Dragon Temple, where, as the mists above them began to be burned off by the late morning sun, Niu could see what was perched at the very apex of the mountain. The Dragon Temple. White marble columns rising from pavilion platforms to high-peaked roofs covered with fish-scale shaped golden, vermillion, and emerald-colored tiles that gleamed in the bright sunshine like scales, there at the top of the world above the clouds separating the world of the monks from the common river valley dwellers.

And there, suspended from chain links high above his head, his cheek pressed into a marble column at the edge of one of the pavilion platforms, the rich folds lapping at his feet of the scarlet silk robe Niu had secretly given him when they had pledged to each other despite the rules of the nanleshijia and Deming had assented to Niu's bite of his peach, albeit not yet accomplished, hung Niu's intended conquest and lover: Deming—naked and magnificent of body against the pristine backing of the mountaintop temple.

Shocked at the sight of his shackled erstwhile lover, Niu rose up onto his feet in the bed of ferns and opened his mouth to cry out to Deming. He was stopped, however, by the tug on his sleeve by the servant, Shun. Niu then remembered where he was and that it was death to be discovered there, and what he had started to call out to Deming stuck in his throat and came out as no more than a low gurgle.

Those of the dancing dragon did not hear Niu's cut-off exclamation or see him rise in the fern patch. They were turning their attention upward now, upward toward the new Dragon Temple initiate, the handsome, desirable Deming.

Niu collapsed back down into the bed of ferns and watched, in frustration and horror, as the undulating dragon, powered by a myriad of beefy, well-muscled, naked thighs and fully erect shafts wound and wove its way up the last flight of stone stairs to the base of the Dragon Temple monastery platforms, weaving its way, like an inevitable wave toward the ripe youth chained to the monastery pillar.

Niu let out a low, guttural moan as the dragon head reached Deming and reared up, revealing the naked body of the lead monk under the dragon covering. He embraced the shackled Deming from behind with one arm and wrapped the other around Deming's belly, pulling his hips back in presentation to a hard, thick, ready cock.

Niu nearly fainted back into Shun's arms with a sob, as he helplessly watched the first thrusting entrance of the initiation ceremony by the lead monk under the dancing dragon pelt between the thrust-back, plump buttocks cheeks of Deming, the one who Niu had been cultivating and saving for himself.

The first bite of the peach was taken.

The baoan shuddered when Deming lifted his head and howled up into the heavens as he was taken for the first time in his initiation into the Dragon Temple community.

Spent within a short time, the lead monk, his head and upper torso still inside the dragon head, shook that head from side to side in obvious approval and ecstasy, pulled his spent yang chu—cock—out of Deming, and wove around to the side of him to provide place for the second set of legs under the dragon cloak to approach and the dragon cloth lift to reveal yet another young, vigorous, ready monk, who mounted Deming like a dog for the second taking. There were no fewer than seven more sets of legs covered by the dancing dragon, pounding up and down on the platform terrace, shuffling noisily to the sound of the drum and flute, anxiously waiting for their turn in the initiation of the new monk convert.

Niu found that he had collapsed back into Shun's arms. He was sobbing and shivering as he watched his well-laid plans being devoured by the lustful dragon. Deming was screaming out over the heightened sound of the flute and drum, but he must have been drugged or very well convinced that this was the life he wanted, because his cries were ones of joy and passion and encouragement—a lust for male attention that he'd never revealed to Deming with the same intensity he now was showing. His body writhed against the pillar as, one after another, the monks under the dragon covering approached him from the rear, revealed their well-toned and wanting bodies under the dragon cloak, lifted his hips in strong hands, and set his pelvis down on their eager, engorged cocks. With a howl of victory, each succeeding monk thrust a hard yang chu inside Deming's now gaping, flowing hole, and fucked him to their utter satiation.

Shun was humming and rocking Niu like a baby, doing all he could to sooth and calm the man he'd worshipped for many months but who had never so much as taken a glance at him, who had only had eyes for Deming.

As Niu watched Deming being taken time and time again, lustily, by strong, young, vigorous monks, and writhing away under the undulating dancing dragon, Niu became aware that he himself was aroused. His yang chu, his cock, was hard and throbbing. And he became aware, as he lay there in Shun's lap, being rocked and listening to Shun's low, soothing humming, that Shun's yang chu was hard too.

For the first time since he had become a baoan in the nanleshijia, Niu became fully aware of the servant Shun to the point of uncontrollable arousal and want. He turned his face to Shun, took Shun's lips in his and kissed him deeply. In just the way he had imagined he would be doing with Deming.

Niu rolled to one side in the bed of ferns and scrabbled at his sash and opened his robe off of his body. Shun knelt in front of the baoan, his chosen master, took Niu's yang chu deep into his mouth, and made love to his cock, as Nui looked back up to the monastery platform. Deming was a mere rag doll now, exhausted and flopping around as yet another dragon-covered monk pumped his plump buttocks cheeks up and down on an angry-red, curved cock.

At length Niu could take no more, and he lifted Shun up and set him down in his lap, facing him, on his throbbing cock. Niu sighed and Shun groaned, as the warm, moist tightness of Shun descended slowly on Niu's throbbing yang chu. Niu sucked on Shun's hard nubs, while Shun used his strong calf and thigh muscles to ascend and descend on Niu's cock, sending the baoan into ever greater waves of paradise.

When the two were both spent, they turned their attention toward the monastery pavilions. Shun was still skewered in Niu's lap, both men enjoying the ebbing of Niu's manhood deep inside Shun, both savoring how they had moved as one and come as one, baoan and servant, but equal as lovers, if only temporarily.

The dancing dragon was gone now, and Deming was being unshackled by one of the monks, a hulking brute with a still-commanding cock jutting up and out of the center of him. The monk turned Deming, who just hung there, whimpering but with a big smile on his face, to his back against the pillar, lifted his torso with big beefy hands under his thighs, spread his legs and turned his pelvis up, and thrust his bulging cock up into him in a swift, deep piercing. Deming moaned and the monk grunted and groaned as he moved Deming's back up and down on the pillar by the power of his pistoning cock.

Both Niu and Shun felt life returning to the center of Niu at the observation of Deming's renewed taking, something that no longer bothered Niu in the least, and Shun turned in Niu's lap facing away from him and once more began rising and falling on Niu's rejuvenated yang chu, while Niu kissed him in the hollow of his neck, thumbed his hard nipples with one hand, and pumped on his young, hard cock with the other hand.

When all were finished this time, the monk left Deming in a heap on the silken scarlet hanfu—robe—Niu had provided him from what was now a long-ago and fading past.

"Do you want me to go and see if Deming wants to come back?" Shun asked in a low whisper. "Ask him whether he already has had enough of the world of the monks and wishes to leave?"

"No," Niu said, pulling himself away from Shun, donning his robe, and standing straight, once more taking command of his emotions and demeanor. "I wanted Deming only as a virgin. He is nothing to me now, and cannot return to the nanleshijia. Come. It's time for us to return there."

As Niu started limping back down the trail that descended Langshan, Shun, his channel aching from glorious use, struggled to keep within six paces of his chosen master. If desire for Deming could be thrust aside that easily, Shun wondered what use Niu would make of him now. Now that he'd had his desire fulfilled and been taken by the muscular brute, Shun wanted him all the more. But, while full of passion when they were fucking, Niu once more had erected a master-and-servant barrier between them. It was as if the taking had never happened.

Perhaps it is like that for Niu, thought Shun. But not for me. He will want me again someday, and then I will be in paradise again.