Chapter 313: Provocative

Richard hesitated. Noticing Frederick’s silence, he asked again, “General Hawthorne, should we send someone to follow them? Just in case, Ms. Prescott…” He vividly recalled the first time he approached Crimson Lane. It was shortly after he and Frederick returned from the battlefield, and a small riot had erupted in Kingstown. He rushed to handle the situation alone since Frederick had opted to stay behind. The unrest wasn’t particularly severe, so he thought it would be a routine assignment—nothing he hadn’t dealt with before.

The chaos was quelled quickly, and it didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary. Throughout his military career, he had faced numerous riots and conflicts, each more intense than the last. Yet, this particular incident haunted Richard more than any other. Before arriving, he had expected just another typical disturbance.

What Richard found instead was a horrific scene: thirty bodies, all women, lying lifeless in the street. Some were young, while others were older; the youngest couldn’t have been more than ten, and the oldest was around sixty. They were all grotesquely mutilated, their bodies a gruesome testament to violence. The two oldest women still had some tattered clothing, but it barely covered them.

The sight of their deaths was chilling—some bore expressions of extreme agony and struggle, while others had smiles frozen on their faces, as if they had found peace in their final moments. Richard was at a loss for words, overwhelmed by shock. How could they die in such torment yet still wear smiles? He didn’t understand. His sister had been brutally murdered by terrorists when he was just a child, and that image of suffering was etched into his memory. He couldn’t stand the thought of it happening again.

In a fit of rage, Richard pulled out his gun and fired several shots into the air, ordering everyone present to be restrained. But in the end, he couldn’t punish a single perpetrator. It wasn’t that Richard couldn’t find the culprits; it was that nearly everyone there was complicit. Each woman bore wounds inflicted by multiple hands, and no one could identify the man responsible for the fatal blow.

Crimson Lane had a dark history, dating back to a worldwide war when it became a playground for men. Women were either kidnapped or forced to sell themselves just to survive. Even after the war ended, Crimson Lane evolved into Kingstown’s largest red-light district. The only difference was that here, any man with a bit of wealth could exploit women at will. Many of these women were born into this life; their mothers had sold themselves, and they followed suit. Some mothers even taught their daughters the trade from a young age, using their mouths and hands before eventually resorting to their bodies. To them, it was just a way to make a living—nothing shameful about it. In their minds, this was simply how things worked, and the money came easily.

Even now, Richard could vividly picture the women he encountered during the investigation. Their expressions were flat and resigned, as if they had accepted their fate. Some even reached out to him, pulling his hand toward their garments. “Hey, handsome, want to have some fun?” one of them teased. “Honestly, we were born for this kind of work. If we weren’t doing this, what else would we do?” another chimed in with a laugh. “Can’t lift a finger, can’t carry a load. Why not enjoy lying in bed? What other way to make money is easier or more pleasurable than this?”

Before that, Richard had never imagined that any woman could describe such a profession so grandly, her face even carrying a hint of pride. In Crimson Lane, aside from women like this, there were also those who, with no other options left, had to rely on selling their bodies to make a living. Some were terminally ill or had been abandoned here. It was because of these women that Crimson Lane attracted many men—those with insatiable desires, those too broke to afford entertainment venues, delinquent youths, street ruffians, and even perverts looking for easy prey.

The thirty female corpses were only discovered because the men, angered by their fights, got into a brawl that caught the attention of the nearby military. In Crimson Lane, women died in such tragic ways every day, and no one paid it any mind, as if everyone had grown accustomed to it. Had it not been for the men’s fighting and the commotion it caused, those bodies would have been quietly buried.

As for how the women died, there were various rumors. Some said they overdosed on drugs; others claimed it was due to their insatiable greed, wanting to earn more money by servicing more men until their bodies couldn’t take it anymore. Some even suggested that these women, so provocative, could have gotten drunk and gone crazy on their own. Worse yet, some believed it was the women themselves indulging in mutual manipulation.