Footsteps hurried outside the storeroom. Shen Xitang shoved the ledger into Xiao Heng’s arms and ran toward the collapsing northern wall. She stepped onto the crossbeam of a jacquard loom, leaped up, and caught a hemp rope suspended from the beams—an escape line her mother had installed years ago in case of emergency.
"My lord, if you wish to catch both the thief and the stolen goods..." She swung toward the window and looked back, watching the bloody Big Dipper on the bolt of fabric lifted by Xiao Heng’s blade suddenly begin to move. "...you had best reach the Sea God Temple before the third watch. When the tide rises to the seventh reef, the receiving boat will arrive."
The moment she crashed through the window, Shen Xitang heard Shen Yanzhou’s furious roar behind her. She plunged into the lotus pond in the dyehouse courtyard, her fingers brushing against an iron box buried in the silt. The arrangement of the Seven-Star lock on its lid matched the green-fly seal in the ledger precisely.
As she changed her clothes, Qingxing brushed a fragment of colored glass from her hair. Shen Xitang examined it closely in the mirror: the edges were stained with tiny specks of gold dust, revealing the Lesser Seal script characters for "Imperial Merchant" in the candlelight.
She pressed the fragment into the gap of the Xuanji Jade Pearl Lock, and the structural diagram of the half-jacquard loom in the cellar suddenly flashed through her mind.
When the third watch drum sounded, Shen Xitang stood upon the flying eaves of the Ancestral Shrine of the Shen Family, watching ten red lanterns drift across the sea surface. The tide broke against the seventh reef, the splashing foam laced with the scent of sulfur.
She gripped the iron box tightly and heard a soft rustling of tiles behind her—Xiao Heng’s blade glinted blue in the moonlight, the sign that it had been poisoned with sea snake venom.
"The trap Miss Shen has laid is certainly interlocking." Xiao Heng tossed over a roll of silk cloth—it was a search warrant bearing the official seal of the Ministry of Punishments. "Too bad the witness you want is currently feeding fish in the water prison of the Court of Judicial Review."
Shen Xitang hurled the iron box into the sea, watching six of the red lanterns suddenly go out. "My lord might as well guess when the remaining four will go out." Abruptly, she pushed open a hidden compartment behind the shrine's plaque. The bronze mirror left by her mother caught the moonlight, refracting a beam of light toward a spot on the open sea.
A deafening explosion erupted from the deep sea, and countless bolts of indigo fabric floated up amidst the flames.
Shen Xitang turned around in the heat wave, seeing not the fire reflected in Xiao Heng’s pupils, but the red traces of the Big Dipper that had emerged on her wrist amidst the explosion—identical to those on the fabric.
"Now," she tore off half of her charred sleeve to reveal the cinnabar mole on her arm, "does my lord intend to arrest the fugitive?"
The sea waves carried the burning indigo fabric crashing onto the reef, the smell of sulfur mixing with the scorching scent of ambergris to pierce her nostrils. The Big Dipper marks on Shen Xitang's wrist throbbed violently in the firelight, as if boiling lead were buried beneath the seven cinnabar moles.
Gazing at the fragments of Wanyan lacquerware drifting on the sea, she suddenly remembered the missions ledger of the Tang envoys she had seen in the museum before her transmigration—those distorted foreign characters were identical to the ones on the golden pearls.
As the edge of Xiao Heng’s blade pressed against the side of her neck, Shen Xitang reached back and gripped the blade. A bead of blood rolled down her palm print, staining the blue bricks of the shrine into an incomplete character: "Tang". This was precisely the personal signature she used when publishing web novels in her past life, looking eerily enchanting under the moonlight.
"Has my lord ever heard of the ancient method of the green-fly returning money?" Abruptly turning around, her blood-stained fingertips brushed against the intertwined branch pattern on Xiao Heng’s bristle-guard. "The mother coin and child coins resonate with one another, and between blood relatives..." Before she could finish, the bristle-guard’s mechanism suddenly snapped open, shaking half a jade jue loose to the ground—it fit seamlessly with the other half inside her bosom.
The sea breeze swept past her ankles, carrying burning cloth. Shen Xitang caught a glimpse of a star map appearing among the scorch marks, gradually merging with the patterns inside the Xuanji Jade Pearl Lock. Amidst the sound of waves stirred by the explosion, she heard an extremely light sigh spill from Xiao Heng’s throat, like a withered autumn leaf falling into an ancient well.
"Third Miss!"
Qingxing’s scream pierced the night sky. Shen Xitang spun around to dodge a sleeve arrow flying through the air; the arrow tip grazed the bronze mirror, reflecting moonlight toward a certain spot on the sea.
The four remaining red lanterns suddenly burst simultaneously, and a black-sailed ship emerged from the flames, flying the "Zhiyun" flag—abandoned by the Shen Family twenty years ago—from its mast.
Xiao Heng’s cloak swept around her, rolling her behind the reef as broken waves splashed against her face with a salty, bloody tang. Shen Xitang felt a bronze compass embedded in the crack of the reef, its needle spinning wildly before finally locking onto the direction of the shrine.
This was an item her mother had never parted with while alive; the "Tianshu" position on the compass face was severely worn, clearly the result of years of constant handling.
"The Shen family's boat will pass Ghost Head Reef before the fifth watch." Xiao Heng spoke abruptly, his blade lifting a piece of burning plankwood. "What is loaded on it is certainly not Wanyan sulfur."
Shen Xitang examined it closely by the firelight, finding a crystal-clear object embedded in the charred wood grain—it turned out to be unburned Ice Silkworm Silk. She suddenly remembered those forty-and-a-half jacquard looms in the Jia Armory; the missing half had originally been converted into a spinning wheel, specially woven to produce this fire-and-water-resistant Ice Silkworm brocade.
When the tide rose to her ankles, the sound of a conch horn came from the distance. Shen Xitang pressed the compass into the groove of the reef, and twelve bronze pillars suddenly rose from the sea floor, their surfaces densely covered with needle-sized air vents.
The salty sea breeze passed through the air vents, playing the tune of "The Breaking of the Battle Array"—precisely the Tang dynasty music introduced to Wanyan during the Zhenguan era.
"Calculated to the last detail." Xiao Heng suddenly grabbed her vital point, his fingertips pressing against the Big Dipper red marks. "Does Miss Shen know that these Seven-Star locks were originally supposed to be branded on the bodies of death row inmates at the Ministry of Punishments?"
A sharp pain shot through Shen Xitang's wrist, and the red marks actually began to seep gold dust. She suddenly recalled the mulberry bark paper she had swallowed before the explosion, and her stomach instantly churned like boiling water. The paper fragments she vomited were soaked with blood, and the needle-holed star map revealed itself upon contact with blood, forming a shipping route pointing directly to the Salt and Canal Yamen of Yangzhou.
The black-sailed ship suddenly turned its bow, and a flash of python-patterned hem flickered across the deck. Shen Xitang grabbed a handful of fine sand mixed with gold dust and flung it into the air; as the wind rose, the gold dust outlined a massive Jiangnan canal transport map, with a flickering red dot marking the Shen Family Shrine.
"Pardon me, My Lord, but please escort me somewhere." She suddenly gripped the bristle-guard on Xiao Heng’s wrist. "At the third quarter of the zi hour, the tidal signal will open the waterway leading to the ancestral mausoleum of the Shen Family."
With that, she bit the tip of her tongue and sprayed blood foam onto the bronze compass. The "Tianxuan" position on the compass face suddenly popped open, revealing a fish-shaped bronze key that matched the lock hole of the hidden compartment in the shrine with absolute precision.
Xiao Heng’s pupils reflected her blood-stained face, and the mechanism of his bristle-guard split apart layer by layer, transforming into a nine-section Steel Whip that coiled around an incoming crossbow bolt. The shaft of the arrow was engraved with a tiny Big Dipper, and its fletching was dyed indigo—the exact same color as the gemstone on Shen Yanzhou’s short blade.
When sneaking into the waterway, Shen Xitang wrapped the Ice Silkworm Silk around her waist. The ghostly green water light reflected dense, fine carvings along the tunnel walls, all of which were markers used by generations of the Shen family to measure water levels.
She ran her fingers over the newest carving, discovering that the depth had surged by seven feet compared to last year—this was precisely the change since Shen Yanzhou took charge of the canal transport.
"Miss, look at this!" Qingxing suddenly pointed at a floating wooden crate. The crate was wrapped in seaweed, and its lock hole was jammed with a half-length of Ice Silkworm Silk. Shen Xitang used the fish-shaped key to pick the bronze lock, and inside the crate were neatly arranged twelve jade Guanyin statues, their palms' spindles all pointing northward.
Xiao Heng suddenly struck the water with his Steel Whip, stirring up waves over a hundred feet high. Amidst the violent shaking, Shen Xitang saw iron chains hidden among the stalactites hanging from the ceiling of the cave, covered with indigo lanterns, each painted with a bloody Big Dipper.
This was a secret signal used by pirates; she had seen similar charts in the interleaved pages of the Tian Gong Textile Annals.
The end of the waterway suddenly opened up wide, and the white marble stele of the Shen family’s ancestral mausoleum was submerged in bloody water. The four characters of the stele inscription, "The Shen Family's Qin Clan," were covered over by newly chiseled marks, altered to read "Canal Transport Leading to the Sea." Shen Xitang chipped off a piece of stone, its fractured surface glowing with the yellowish-brown tint of burnt saltpeter.
"Third Sister has come to offer incense to Father?"
Shen Yanzhou’s voice came from behind the stele. The hem of his python-patterned straight robe was dripping with water, and he held a gilt bronze brazier in his hands. The ashes inside the brazier flickered with his breath, revealing unburnt fragments of mulberry paper—the very page recording the "white sand" transaction.
Shen Xitang suddenly hurled the jade Guanyin toward the brazier. The Ice Silkworm Silk did not burn upon encountering fire; instead, it pulled taut like a bowstring.