The ashes in the basin were swept up by the silk threads, stitching themselves into a complete naval map of Japan in the air, with a red-circled location identifying the Ryukyu royal palace.
"Big brother, do you know why Father died so suddenly?" She abruptly pried open the altar table in the ancestral tomb, revealing a secret compartment beneath. "Because he discovered this." Inside lay half a refined iron jacquard loom, the shuttle entwined with an unfinished dragon robe, the gold threads laced with the distinctive purple-gold of Ryukyu.
The moment Shen Yanzhou swung his short blade, Xiao Heng’s steel whip lashed out, binding his wrist. Seizing the moment, Shen Xitang triggered the loom’s dragon head; countless silver needles shot from the machine’s belly, their tips quenched in sea snake venom. Shen Yanzhou staggered backward, his python-patterned brocade robe shredded by the needles, revealing a blood-red Big Dipper tattooed over his heart.
"You think Lord Xiao is really here to investigate a case?" He laughed maniacally, his short blade prying up the tomb floor tiles. "Why not take a look at the true face of the Shen family..."
The sound of an explosion arrived before the flash of light. Shen Xitang was thrown by the blast wave into the icy pool. Amid the chaos, someone gripped her wrist; shards of Xiao Heng’s wrist guard cut into her palm, and as her blood dripped into the pool water, it shimmered with a golden glow.
She caught sight of dozens of iron chests submerged at the bottom of the pool, their lids arranged in a seven-star formation—the missing Yuheng position of the Xuanji Star Chart.
When she surfaced, the east was already graying. Shen Xitang lay on the ruined stele, coughing up salty seawater, and saw Qingxing bandaging a shoulder arrow wound on Xiao Heng with ice silkworm silk. As the silk met the blood, it turned indigo, gradually revealing a brocade pattern—it was the unfinished *Map of the Ten Thousand Li Maritime Frontier* her mother had worked on before she died.
"Young Mistress, the ancestral hall... the underground palace has opened!"
Shen Xitang followed the sound, watching as the Huan-Sha Ancestral Hall slowly sank into the morning mist. The stone door of the underground palace was carved with reliefs of overseas fairy mountains, and the door knocker was a Xuanwu holding a copper pivot.
She inserted the blood-stained fish-shaped key into the mouth of the Xuanwu. As the stone doors groaned open, twenty modified jacquard looms appeared, their dragon-patterned warp and weft threads woven from a blend of ice silkworm silk and gold thread.
Xiao Heng suddenly gripped her shoulder. "Does Mistress Shen recognize this?" He unfolded half a scorched imperial decree, stamped at the end with the Imperial Seal from the third year of Yonghui—the very year her father died.
A thunderous sound of mechanical gears echoed from deep within the palace. As Shen Xitang watched the looms automatically weave new brocade, she suddenly understood the final prophecy her mother had left in the *Tian Gong Textile Annals*. The ice silkworm silk rippled in the morning light, gradually revealing a line of small script:
"The dragon hides in the abyss, waiting for the time to fly. Once the Xuanji moves, the seas are calm and the rivers clear."
She brushed her hand over the dew still damp on the brocade, her fingertips catching on flecks of Ryukyu purple-gold. Suddenly, the sound of hooves echoed outside. A vermilion official sedan from the Jiangning Imperial Textile Factory pulled up before the ruins, and a eunuch’s shrill voice pierced the morning mist:
"The selection for the Imperial Merchant begins! The Shen family, receive the decree—"
As the morning mist was shattered by the hoofbeats, Shen Xitang’s fingertips traced the vermilion seal smudged on the decree. That touch of red bled into the brocade’s weave, wandering through the ice silkworm warp and weft to form a coiled dragon shape—it was identical to the dragon-patterned brocade in the underground palace.
The peacock feathers on the eunuch’s cap brushed against the back of her hand, leaving behind a few grains of indigo powder—the signature "Peacock Wisdom King Blue" produced only by the Shen family’s dye house.
"Third Young Mistress, receive the decree." The eunuch flared his fingers in an orchid gesture to unfold the yellow silk, but his voice suddenly dropped to a whisper: "The Master of the Textile Factory asked me to bring you a message: if the Shen family wants to reach the capital in one piece..." Half a gilded bell slid from his sleeve, a Japanese chrysanthemum crest carved into the bell’s tongue.
As Shen Xitang kowtowed, she slipped the bell into her sleeve. The interior of the bronze bell was lined with fine teeth, making a mechanical sound when turned—it was a signal bell used by sea pirates, which she had seen among the wreckage of a Ryukyu merchant ship.
Xiao Heng’s reflection was cast on the bluestone floor. The silver fish bag at his waist had been replaced, without her noticing, by one bearing a golden chi-dragon pattern—the mark of a Vice Minister of the Ministry of Punishments.
A colorful canopy had already been erected over the temple ruins. Twelve modified jacquard looms were draped in plain silk, like brides waiting for their wedding day. Shen Xitang took the weaving shuttle handed to her by Qingxing; hidden within the hollow body of the shuttle was the Xuanji Jade Pearl Lock.
She deliberately dropped her teacup; the flying porcelain shards tore through the plain silk, revealing half of an unfinished *Map of the State and the Nation*.
"What a grand display by the Shen family!" a wealthy merchant in the crowd suddenly exclaimed. "Is this a map of Jinling being woven?"
Shen Xitang stooped to pick up the porcelain shards, using the refraction of the sunlight to examine the brocade closely. At a specific angle, the ice silkworm silk revealed the network of waterways, and a vermilion mark pinpointed the exact location of Yanziji, where the Shen family’s grain transport boat had sunk the previous year.
She suddenly remembered the map in her father’s study, covered with ink blots, the margins annotated with: "Seventh day of the seventh lunar month, Year of Guiyou, tide delayed the mission."
Xiao Heng’s black leather boots trod across the edge of the brocade. The golden chi-dragon at his waist caught the sheen of the ice silkworm silk, reflecting an eerie purple light. "The Imperial Merchant selection requires verifying three generations of unblemished reputation. I wonder how many generations of account books Mistress Shen can produce?"
"My Lord, you jest." Shen Xitang pressed the broken porcelain into the Xuanji Lock. The jade pearl suddenly burst with golden light, casting a star map onto the copper pivot of the loom. "Since the time of my great-grandfather, the Shen family has used the 'Tian Gong Accounts,' recording all income and expenditure in the hidden patterns of our brocade." She ripped away the plain silk, and as the morning wind blew through the looms, the ice silkworm silk vibrated, emitting musical tones like those of a stone chime.
The crowd stirred. One of the looms began to operate on its own. Five-colored silk threads darted like flying needles, gradually weaving a moving image—the Shen family’s pleasure boat sailing along the Qinhuai River, and the woman inside the boat, her arm bearing three red moles, was unmistakably the drowned Madam Chen.
The Madam Chen in the brocade suddenly turned her head, her lips clearly forming the word: "Sulfur."
"Sorcery... it's sorcery!"
Someone shouted this, and the crowd erupted like a disturbed anthill. Shen Xitang, however, clapped her hands and laughed: "This is the 'Xuanji Living Brocade' recorded in the *Tian Gong Textile Annals*; the warp and weft threads are soaked in magnetic powder."
She pressed the jade pearl into a secret compartment of the loom, and the image shifted instantly—the embroidery frame in Madam Chen’s hands suddenly displayed a string of numbers, the exact page numbers of the Shen family’s private ledgers.
Xiao Heng’s steel whip suddenly coiled around the brocade, shattering the image into a flurry of silken rain. As he leaned down, his wrist guard brushed against Shen Xitang’s earlobe, his whisper carrying the bitter scent of pine soot ink: "At the third watch, the Ministry of Punishments will seal the Shen family dye house."
By the hour of the sun’s decline, Shen Xitang stood under the eaves of the dye house watching the clouds. The thirty dye vats were rimmed in gold by the setting sun; the niter crystals on the edge of the third vat had grown into coral-like shapes.
She dipped the gilded bell into the dye, and verdigris crept over the bell’s surface at a visible speed, cracking into lines—this was the "Ghost Face Pattern" unique to Ryukyu copper mines.
"Young Mistress, two jacquard looms are missing from the Jia Armory," Qingxing said, her hands trembling as she held the ledger. "Old Man Fu, who was on night watch, said... he said he heard the sound of looms coming from the underground palace last night."
Shen Xitang dipped her brush in indigo, sketching on mulberry paper, before abruptly stopping. The ink bled along the fibers of the paper, forming half a coastal defense map.
She recalled the research on Ming Dynasty coastal defenses she had participated in before she traveled through time, and her brush tip instinctively added several Red-Clad Cannons—items that should not have existed in this era.
After the dusk drum sounded for the third time, strange blue smoke rose from the dye house. Gripping the modified Pear Blossom Rain Needle—a hidden weapon box repurposed from a jacquard loom—Shen Xitang slipped into the Jia Armory, catching the familiar scent of bitter almonds. The door was slightly ajar, and moonlight spilled inside, illuminating a floor covered in ice silkworm silk, each thread tied to a golden bead.
"Third Young Mistress, you really did come."
Shen Yanzhou leaped down from the beams, his python-patterned robe torn in several places, revealing the chain mail beneath. The Wodao saber in his hand shimmered with blue light, a piece of Ryukyu purple-gold embedded in the center of the chrysanthemum-patterned hilt. "Do you know why this storeroom is called the Jia Armory? Because it was originally a military ordnance depot!"
The moment the blade swept down, Shen Xitang triggered the mechanism. The jacquard loom ejected not silver needles, but a net of ice silkworm silk soaked in indigo.
The net ignited the moment it met the wind, and amidst the exploding sparks mixed with sulfur powder, Shen Yanzhou was forced back into the array of dye vats.