As the fifth-watch clapper ground the winter frost to dust, Shen Xitang stood in the general's study.
The Glazed Lamp illuminated the *Annals of Border Defense* on the desk. She moistened the yellowed pages with saltpeter water, her fingertips trembling as the hidden script was revealed—written beside the winter record of her mother accompanying the army on campaign under the alias "Lin Shu" in the seventh year of Yonghe was the general's vermilion annotation: "A woman of peerless spirit and crimson courage; I am unworthy of her, yet I dare not fail her."
"Back then, when the Beidi launched a night raid on the grain camp, it was your mother who held off the enemy for three days with her Ice Silkworm Silk formation." Stroking the scar from a poison needle over his heart, the general took out a gilded secret casket. "The Xuanji Lock she entrusted to me on her deathbed should have been handed to you on your coming-of-age..."
Chapter 30