The silk-like canal of Wujiang County in Suzhou Prefecture rippled with light as Shen Xitang's leather boots crushed the scorched pages of the *Records of the Wumen Weaving Bureau*. Xiao Heng's Xiuchun Saber split open a camphor-wood chest in a silk shop, and bolts of Song brocade burst apart in the canal wind—emerging from the gold-woven dark patterns were not flowers and birds, but fifteen volumes of Persian chain mail forging blueprints. Beside the Pahlavi inscription reading "Fourteenth Year of Chongzhen" on the sheepskin parchment, the "Isfahan Ordnance Bureau Quenching Parameters" were unexpectedly marked in the Wu dialect!
"Lord Thousand-Householder, look at this loom shuttle." Her fingertips brushed the spiral engravings on the sandalwood shuttle. "This 'Nine Palaces Interlaced Weft' jacquard technique is an improved method by Huang Daopo during the Yongle era. Why is it mixed with Safavid dynasty sun-and-lion etched motifs?"
The sound of a loom suddenly echoed from the depths of the silk warehouse. Thirty weavers wrapped in green turbans rushed out from the dyehouse, the forged patterns on their pattern-picking needles matching with absolute precision the sleeve-crossbow molds used by Qi Jiguang to suppress Japanese pirates during the Jiajing era. Shen Xitang's Silver Silk shredded a bolt of makeup-brocade, and a fallen fragment of the *Shiraz Secret Ledger* was revealed—beside the official document reading "False report of 8,000 bolts of tribute brocade," a Sogdia…
Chapter 194