Chapter 13: Unbroken Threads, Unyielding Needles

Page 1 of 3

When Shopkeeper Qian’s laughter, mingled with wind and snow, swept into Li Family Village on a snowy night, Li Cuihua was squatting beside the well, washing radishes.

She rubbed her hands, red and numb with cold, shivering from head to toe. When she looked up and saw Mrs. Wang approaching with a vegetable basket, she immediately stuffed the radishes into a hamper and hurried over, lowering her voice.

“Have you heard? Zhao San from Yufeng just got back from the county seat. He says Widow Shen’s embroidery thread was dyed with the blood of mountain bandits!”

Mrs. Wang’s basket clattered to the ground. “Don’t go spreading nonsense—”

“Nonsense?” Li Cuihua pulled a crumpled scrap of paper from her bosom. “Zhao San wrote it himself! Last month, the horse thieves of West Mountain robbed a merchant caravan, and Widow Shen’s wild-silkworm silk was covered in bloodstains!” She jabbed a fingernail hard against the blue stone beside the well. “Why did Chen’s Embroidery suddenly place a larger order yesterday? Maybe that blood embroidery bewitched them!”

The rumor rolled downhill like a snowball, spreading in the blink of an eye to the old locust tree at the village entrance.

Shen Guilan was crouched before the stove, feeding the fire, while Xiuhui drank porridge from a coarse clay bowl. Then, all at once, someone outside began shouting curses—“husband-killing harbinger,” “murderous embroiderer.”

The little girl’s hand trembled, and porridge splashed across her apron. “Mother, they said… they said you…”

Shen Guilan pulled out a sheet of straw paper and wiped her daughter’s hand. Firelight caught the fine lines at the corners of her eyes.

“They say I’ve colluded with mountain bandits?” She pushed another bundle of dry wood into the stove. Sparks burst and crackled. “Shopkeeper Qian’s move is far more vicious than accusing me of poaching.”

Xiuhui clutched her sleeve. “Then… can we still sell our embroidery?”

“We can.” Shen Guilan shoved in the last armful of wood, rose, and dusted the ash from her apron. “If he blocks my road, I’ll build one right beneath his nose.”

Before dawn the next morning, Shen Guilan wrapped her embroidery frame in blue cloth, left Xiuhui in the care of Auntie Zhang next door, and set off for the county seat, walking over the frost.

The flagstones were glazed with ice, and she made slow progress. By the time she reached the gates of Qinghe City, the sun was already high.

“Mrs. Shen?” Lady Liu of the embroidery shop on the corner was airing embroidered handkerchiefs. When she saw Shen Guilan approach, she hurriedly swept them into a basket. “I’m sorry, but my shopkeeper said this morning… we’re not accepting work from outsiders.”

“What about Chen’s Embroidery?”

At the second shop, the clerk shrank behind the counter and shook his head. “Master Chen was taken away by the constables yesterday. They said they had to investigate… investigate the origins of the embroidery.”

The third embroidery shop stood with its door half open. Just as Shen Guilan was about to enter, the door slammed shut.

“Blood embroidery brings bad luck!”

Shen Guilan stood in the middle of the street as the north wind sent scraps of paper skittering past her feet.

She touched the embroidery frame hidden against her chest, then suddenly smiled. Shopkeeper Qian had sealed off every embroidery shop in the city. That saved her the trouble of visiting them one by one.

She set a bamboo stool at the street corner and rested the embroidery frame on her knees.

The unfinished piece was titled Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix. Only half the phoenix’s tail feathers had been embroidered; the rest remained a blank expanse.

Shen Guilan pinched a strand of wild-silkworm silk and lowered the needle toward the phoenix’s eye.

“Look! It’s Widow Shen!”

“She actually dares to embroider here? Isn’t she afraid the blood thread will infect people?”

The crowd grew larger and larger.

Shen Guilan did not even raise her head. Her fingers flew.

The wild-silkworm silk shimmered darkly beneath the sunlight. Each stitch followed the direction of the feathers. When she reached the phoenix’s eye, she suddenly paused and drew a strand of gold thread, fine as a spider’s filament, from her bosom.

“What’s that?” someone murmured.

The gold thread passed through the wild silk, tracing a single gleaming point at the center of the phoenix’s eye.

The empty body of the phoenix seemed to come alive. The feathers of the azure phoenix, peacock, and golden pheasant appeared ready to burst from the cloth and take flight.

“Magnificent!”

Page 1 of 3

Page 2 of 3

“This isn’t blood embroidery! It’s divine embroidery!”

Amid the cheers, Zhao San pushed through the crowd with four local thugs.

He twisted his mouth and raised a wooden club. “You dare sell evil wares in Qinghe? I’ll smash your stall—”

Before the club could fall, a dull thud rang out.

Zhao San looked up.

Half a bloodied wild boar lay across the front of the stall, its rank odor mingling with the scent of snow and rushing into his nostrils.

“Who touched her?”

The voice was cold as shards of ice, sharp enough to wound.

Zhao San followed the sound and saw a man standing in the snow, dressed in a gray cotton jacket and trousers.

A scar ran from the tip of his left ear diagonally to his chin. His brow was high, the outer corners of his eyes slightly raised. He stared at people the way a hawk watched a rabbit.

“Splash the pig’s blood across the gate,” the man said again, one hand resting on the boar’s hind leg, his knuckles pale.

The thugs hunched their shoulders and retreated.

Zhao San’s legs went weak. His club fell into the snow with a clatter, splattering blood across the ground.

“H-Hunter Gu, this is Yufeng’s affair—”

“If it’s Yufeng’s affair, settle it with Yufeng.” The man did not look at him. His gaze fell on Shen Guilan.

It was the first time he had stood so close to her. He could make out the curve of her brows and the faint brown mole at the corner of her eye.

Shen Guilan looked up and met his gaze.

His eyes were like a mountain stream sealed beneath ice: cold on the surface, yet turbulent waters churning below.

Her heartbeat faltered, then steadied. She lowered her head and continued embroidering.

“Hunter Gu, are you selling this wild boar?”

“It’s a gift.” The man turned to leave, then stopped. “The hind leg is tender. Make soup for the child.”

The crowd scattered in an uproar.

Shen Guilan touched the fresh blood on the boar’s hide and suddenly understood why he had come at this particular moment. The pig’s blood would smother the rumor of blood-dyed thread, while the weight of the boar would crush the thugs’ courage.

That evening, every elderly and solitary villager in Li Family Village received half a piece of pork.

Shen Guilan washed the last pig’s ear and spread it beneath the lamp.

Moonlight fell across it, revealing the shape of an old scar with perfect clarity—the exact twin of the scar on Gu Changshan’s left ear.

She took out her finest needle and embroidered two words on the inner side of the ear: Ear Mark.

The stitches were so fine they could not be seen except when held up to the moonlight.

Early the next morning, she sealed the pig’s ear inside a bamboo tube and handed it to an escort who frequently traveled to the neighboring counties.

“Please deliver it to the Joyful Arrival Embroidery House. Tell them… the man in the mountains has a message.”

The escort accepted the bamboo tube and glanced at the cinnabar seal on its mouth. “Madam Shen, are you trying to investigate Hunter Gu’s background?”

“He has saved me twice.” Shen Guilan tightened the strap of his travel bundle for him. “I ought to know who has been taking the blows meant for me.”

Shopkeeper Qian soon heard about the embroidery being sold in the street.

Page 2 of 3

Page 3 of 3

He gripped his account book and sneered. “Wild-silkworm silk? Gold thread? I’ll buy up every strand of embroidery thread in the entire county. Let’s see what she can embroider with then!”

Three days later, Shen Guilan searched through every chest and found only two bundles of faded red thread.

Xiuhui crouched in a corner and spread out, one by one, the colored papers she had saved for half a year.

“Mother, paper can be folded into flowers… Can it be used as thread?”

In her hands, the colored paper was rubbed into slender strips. When the sunlight struck them, they shimmered with every color of the rainbow.

Shen Guilan’s heart jolted. She picked up a strip and tested it against a piece of hemp cloth.

Paper softened when wet and charred when exposed to flame. But if it were soaked in honey water and then dried…

She boiled half a pot of honey water and submerged the colored strips in it, then lifted them out and left them to dry in the shade.

At dawn the next morning, when the first ray of sunlight entered the room, she held up the completed Winter Plum Blossom and smiled.

The plum blossoms embroidered with paper strips looked exactly like silk embroidery from a distance. Up close, there was not a single loose thread.

“Silk may break, but the needle does not.” She stroked the embroidered surface. “Thread may run out, but artistry never dies.”

Three days later, the streets of Qinghe were packed so tightly that no one could move.

Shen Guilan stood in the center of the crowd with a brazier before her.

She picked up the Winter Plum Blossom and threw it into the fire.

“What a calamity!”

“She’s destroying her own livelihood!”

Amid the curses, the flames licked at the paper strips.

The colored paper burned to ash, yet the hemp cloth slowly revealed the deep-brown shadow of plum blossoms. The honey water within the paper strips had carbonized in the fire, leaving its image branded onto the cloth.

“Do you see?” Shen Guilan raised the scorched cloth for all to see. “This is not blood embroidery. It is fire embroidery!” Her clear voice rang through the crowd. “Who says a widow’s handiwork cannot burn a new world into being?”

The crowd fell suddenly silent.

Someone shouted, “Brilliant!”

Then came a second cry, and a third, erupting like thunder.

Snow sifted down from the city wall and fell into the brazier, sending up a cloud of white mist.

On the hills beyond the city, Gu Changshan stood beneath a pine tree.

The veins on the back of the hand gripping his bow stood out sharply. His eyes were fixed on the thread of smoke rising in the distance.

The wind lifted the hem of his clothing, revealing the bamboo tube hanging at his waist—the very one Shen Guilan had entrusted to the escort.

By then, people were already running through the streets of Qinghe, holding up the scorched plum-blossom designs and spreading the news.

Shopkeeper Qian’s teacup fell to the floor and shattered.

As he stared at the shifting heads beyond the window, he finally understood his mistake. He had thought he could drive the woman to her death, but he had forgotten that those forced to the end of the road were the ones most skilled at biting through chains and carving out a path to survival.

Page 3 of 3