In the split second of a flash, she suddenly understood the prophecy her mother had tucked into the pages of the *Tian Gong Textile Annals*: "When stars shift and the constellations turn, an old friend arrives by moonlight."
As the cellar collapsed, Shen Xitang pressed the Xuanji Jade Pearl Lock into the mechanism of Xiao Heng’s wrist guard. The iron guard expanded in layers, transforming into a shield engraved with a star chart.
The shockwave of the explosion threw the three of them aside. Her final conscious thought rested on Xiao Heng’s blood-stained cuff—the trace of malachite gold powder there was identical to that found on the Dragon Pattern Brocade.
When she awoke, Qingxing was wiping her face with a cloth soaked in mugwort. Outside the window, the night watchman’s clapper sounded. By the third strike of the gong, Shen Xitang felt a hard object tucked under her pillow.
It was half a broken jade pendant, the fractured edge stained with indigo gunpowder. On the inner side, a tiny "Tang" character was carved in the seal script—the exact personal seal she had used in the modern world before transmigrating.
The moonlight filtered through the window lattice, casting the character for "Prison" on the floor. Shen Xitang looked at the spiderwebs hanging from the rafters and suddenly laughed aloud.
So, from the night Madam Chen drowned, she had become the most vital "living eye" in this game of Go. The Xuanji layout her mother had left behind finally began to turn slowly the moment she broke into the cellar’s secret.
When the morning mist, thick with the scent of tung oil, drifted through the window, Shen Xitang was using a Silver Hairpin to pick at the indigo crystals on the broken edge of the jade pendant.
Qingxing entered carrying a gilded hand warmer. Mixed into the ash were several unburned pieces of mulberry paper; their edges were charred black, yet the writing remained clear: "Jia Armory, third cellar, 5:45 PM."
"Young Mistress, the Eldest Lady sent someone over with the new ledgers." Qingxing placed the gold-painted lacquer box on the desk. The pattern of twin carp clutching a pearl on the lid glowed with an eerie green light. Shen Xitang tapped the carp’s eye with her Silver Hairpin; hearing a faint hollow sound, she used the tip to pry open a false bottom, revealing half a bronze key.
The teeth of the key resembled the copper pivot of a jacquard loom. As Shen Xitang stroked the icy surface of the key, she suddenly caught the scent of bitter almonds.
She dipped the key into a cup of cold tea, and a layer of oily film immediately floated to the surface—this was sealing wax made from saltpeter and pine resin, which dissolved upon contact with water.
"Change my clothes. We are going to the Jia Armory."
Passing through the corridor, Shen Xitang deliberately detoured to the dye house. The thirty earthenware vats were steaming in the morning light; the dye, which should have been indigo, cast an ominous purplish-red hue. She paused at the third vat, her fingertips grazing the crystallized grains on the rim, and suddenly leaned over to blow away the foam.
At the bottom of the vat lay half a piece of plain gauze, its warp threads eaten through with holes. Shen Xitang’s pupils constricted. This was the "Ice Silkworm Snow" unique to her mother, which required seven rinses in Tianshan snow water to produce. Clearly, saltpeter had been added to the water, which was why the threads had corroded.
"Third Sister is in good spirits."
Shen Yanzhou’s voice came from the moon gate. Today, he wore a bamboo-green robe, but the sapphire short blade still hung at his waist. Shen Xitang noticed his boot heels were stained with dark red mud—the cinnabar soil unique to the cellar of the Jia Armory.
"Does Brother know how acidic the rainfall is this year?" She wrapped the ruined gauze around her wrist. "If this vat of dye isn't changed, I’m afraid the Cloud Brocade destined for the Textile Bureau will be ruined."
Shen Yanzhou drew his blade half an inch; the steel reflected his distorted reflection in the vat. "Since recovering from your illness, Third Sister has become quite the textile expert. It’s a pity that Father entrusted the Jia Armory key to me before he passed..." He stopped abruptly, his gaze fixed on the bronze key dangling at Shen Xitang’s waist.
Shen Xitang casually touched the jade ring of her pendant, revealing half of the key as if by accident. "Is this the one Brother speaks of? I found it in the ancestral hall this morning. Perhaps Mother is guiding me from beyond..." Before she could finish, the dye vat suddenly emitted a muffled thud, and the purplish-red liquid sprayed out like blood.
Shen Yanzhou couldn't dodge in time; the hem of his brocade robe became mottled like spilled ink. Shen Xitang had already retreated behind a pillar, watching the green smoke rise from where the liquid corroded his clothing, the corner of her lips curling upward—when she blew away the foam, she had quietly dropped a wax ball coated in quicklime into the vat.
Taking advantage of the chaos, she slipped into the side passage of the armory. When she inserted the bronze key into the Jia Armory’s copper lock, a wisp of smoke drifted from the keyhole, and the pupils of the *taotie* beast on the lock suddenly rotated.
Shen Xitang quickly turned the key half a circle and heard the faint click of the mechanism engaging—this was the "Yin-Yang Key" recorded in the *Tian Gong Textile Annals*.
The moment the door swung open, the scent of mold mixed with rust rushed to meet her. Fifty jacquard looms were draped in spiderwebs, the unfinished Dragon Pattern Brocade wound between the reeds, its gold threads already blackened.
Shen Xitang lit a silk strand soaked in phosphorus powder. In the ghostly blue light, she saw several shadows cast upon the wall that did not belong to her.
"Young Mistress, watch out!"
Qingxing’s cry of alarm and the sound of a Crossbow Bolt tearing through the air rang out simultaneously. Shen Xitang spun and dived behind a loom; the bolt head pinned itself into the warp beam, making the silk threads hum.
She tore off several strands of Ice Silkworm Silk and tossed them into the air. The phosphorus powder ignited in the breeze, instantly illuminating the face of the attacker—it was the Shen Family’s head manager, an indigo cloth strip wrapped around his left wrist, identical to the assassin at the tile kiln.
"Third Sister, why seek your own death?" The manager rotated the crossbow, the arrowhead stained green. "The Dragon Pattern Brocade in this warehouse is enough to have the entire Shen Family executed..."
Shen Xitang let out a soft laugh, her fingertips brushing the copper pivot of the loom beside her. "Has the manager ever counted how many jacquard looms are in here?"
She yanked the mechanism hard. Five-colored silk threads sprayed out like a spiderweb. "Forty-nine and a half. Is that missing half-loom currently in the evidence room at the Court of Judicial Review?"
The manager’s pupils shrank instantly. Shen Xitang seized the chance to kick over a dye vat. As the indigo liquid splashed, she saw that the cinnabar mud on the soles of his boots was mixed with gold powder—exactly like the residue on the bricks of the tile kiln. As the next crossbow bolt flew toward her, she had already used the silk threads to swing to the second floor of the warehouse.
The rotted wooden stairs shattered beneath her feet, and Shen Xitang fell into a cubicle piled high with ledgers. Yellowed pages fluttered like butterflies, and she suddenly caught sight of a wing-flapping *qingfu* insect drawn on the corner of a page—it was the secret code her mother used for bookkeeping, representing the flow of money.
"Fourth month, eighth day, Jiaxu year, purchased three hundred piculs of sappanwood..." Shen Xitang examined the text closely in the light from the skylight, but suddenly felt something was wrong. The market price of sappanwood was two taels per picul, but this entry recorded five; the ink density varied, clearly added later.
A piece of mulberry paper slipped from between the pages of the ledger, its edges scorched as if by fire. Shen Xitang held it up to the sun; the paper was riddled with needle holes, the pattern perfectly matching the Xuanji star chart.
She pressed the paper against the window lattice, and the light spots cast a navigation map onto the wall. A red dot fell precisely on the Washing Silk Shrine where she had prayed the day before.
Footsteps sounded outside the warehouse. Shen Xitang quickly swallowed the mulberry paper. Amidst the swirling ledgers, she saw Xiao Heng’s black boots stepping over the wreckage, his blade still dripping with blood.
"Does Miss Shen know the penalty for tampering with official accounts?" Xiao Heng shook out his blood-stained cloak, revealing half a piece of Dragon Pattern Brocade in the inner pocket. "The warp threads of this brocade were soaked in gunpowder. It explodes when it touches an open flame, matching the fragments from the tile kiln explosion case perfectly."
Shen Xitang pulled herself up, leaning on a ledger shelf. The plain gauze on her wrist had somehow snagged onto the hilt of Xiao Heng’s blade.
She gave a light tug, and gold powder fell from the gauze in a flurry. "My Lord might want to inspect this gold powder. Does it not come from the official mines in Diannan?" She deliberately let the powder drift toward the window, where it shimmered with an eerie seven-colored halo in the morning sun—this was gold from private mines mixed with glass powder.
Xiao Heng leaned in close, his wrist guard brushing against her ear, the sound of the mechanism clicking open clearly audible. Shen Xitang felt a chill at her neck; the Xuanji Jade Pearl Lock had been hooked away by a fine Silver Silk.
She grabbed Xiao Heng’s wrist with her backhand, her fingertips pressing a spot on the twining pattern. "My Lord, could you turn the third decorative swirl on your wrist guard three times to the left?"
The cellar suddenly trembled, and all fifty jacquard looms roared in unison. A golden light shot from the wrist guard on Xiao Heng’s arm, striking the Xuanwu pattern on the warehouse pillar. The bricks surged, revealing a hidden compartment. Inside, twelve rolls of indigo cloth were stacked neatly, each embroidered with a blood-red Big Dipper at both ends.
Shen Xitang tore open the fabric, and hundreds of gold beads rolled out from the double-layered lining. The surfaces were engraved with foreign scripts from overseas. She picked one up to the light and suddenly laughed. "So, the Shen Family wasn't shipping white sand after all; they were moving sulfur-gold from Japan."