At three-quarters past the hour of You, the celebration banquet of the Silk Road Trade Alliance was filled with the fragrance of wine and sesame flatbreads. Pei Hongxiu was dressed in an indigo gold-brocaded robe, with a newly inserted "Heart-Protecting Ghost Face" hairpin carved by Huwa nestled in her hair. Her abacus bead eyes were fixed on Zhang Yifan's Abacus Bead Pouch—the "spoils of war" she had traded for three bolts of Shu Brocade that very morning.
"Yifan," she tapped her ivory comb against a luminous wine cup filled with wine, her golden hairpins gleaming with craftiness in the candlelight, "I heard the 'Scholar Reading in the Snow Night' painting you made for Miss Xiao sold for a hundred strings of cash?"
Zhang Yifan raised an eyebrow, and an abacus bead on the rim of his cup bounced into the shape of the character for "painting": "Boss Pei is well-informed—yet the seal on that painting bears Huwa's carving knife."
Chapter 113