When the grain barges on the Yangzhou canal hoisted their blue sails, Pei Hongxiu's abacus bead slammed with a loud "clack" against a vat of inferior dye, bouncing onto the sleeve of the Hu merchant's spy to spell out the word "FILTHY": "How dare you throw quicklime into the dye vat! Do you take this young lady's abacus beads for the blind?" Zhang Yifan waved a dye-stained pair of tweezers to fish out the chunk of lime, while an abacus bead bounced across the surface of the vat to form the word "TURBID," instantly coagulating into bead-shaped floccules.
"Take this!" Xiao Moli flourished her brush to splash out Blue Crystal Water, and an abacus bead bounced across the Xuan paper to spell out "DIAGRAM"—Huwa's carved miniature was using an abacus-bead arrow to pierce the Hu merchant's conspiracy. Pei Hongxiu scooped up the floccules and chuckled softly: "Look, you little rascals! The abacus beads automatically identify impurities, sharper even than the Imperial Insignia Guard's spies!" An abacus bead immediately spelled out "ALERT," flashing with blue light on the gold hairpin in her hair.
At 1:30 in the afternoon, the dye workshop launched "abacus bead anti-counterfeit dyeing"—every bolt of cloth concealed fluorescent patterns made of abacus beads, which bounced under the cloth-inspection lamp to spell out "BRIGHT," illuminating the "Green Ox Bead Dye" secret mark carved by Huwa. A certain cloth merchant held up the inspection lamp and cried out in astonishment: "Why won't th…
Chapter 198