Chapter 25: The Exquisite Wedding Gown
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That look was like a tempered steel blade, severing the last trace of hesitation in Gu Changshan’s heart.
He reached out and steadied Shen Guilan’s cold arm, his voice low but resolute. “Don’t be afraid. I’m here.”
The warmth from his palm lasted only an instant, yet it made Shen Guilan tremble faintly.
She did not pull away. She merely nodded.
The night was as dark as ink. Shen Guilan lit the oil lamp in the study.
Beneath its glow, she brought out a batch of brilliant red bridal-fabric delivered to the household only moments before.
The cloth had originally been ordered by Shopkeeper Qian of the Yufeng Trading Company, to be sent to a prominent family in the prefectural city as a festive gift.
But now, in Shen Guilan’s hands, it was about to become the blade that would bury Shopkeeper Qian.
She took out threads in five colors and set to work, her needle flashing as her fingers flew. One auspicious cloud and lucky bird after another sprang to life across the fabric.
To outsiders, it was nothing more than exquisite embroidery. Only Gu Changshan knew that she was using the long-lost Double-Sided Contrasting-Color Embroidery technique.
On the front bloomed flowers symbolizing wealth and honor. On the reverse, a wash of specially prepared herbal liquid would reveal an entirely different image—the boundaries of the wastelands secretly swallowed up by Shopkeeper Qian and the county magistrate: jagged field ridges, concealed irrigation channels, and even the falsified tax amounts assigned to every plot.
All of it was woven, stitch by stitch, into the festive patterns in the form of a coded message.
Three days later, the batch of “bridal garments” arrived at the Yufeng Trading Company as scheduled.
Shopkeeper Qian gave them a cursory glance. He saw only that the embroidery was even more skillful than before, and nodded in satisfaction before ordering his men to pack and send them away.
He had no idea that a net large enough to destroy him utterly had already begun to descend over his head.
That night, a shadow sprang onto the wall of the county office’s rear storehouse like a civet cat.
It was Gu Changshan.
Relying on his memory, he evaded the night patrols and located the storeroom where the land registers were kept with perfect accuracy.
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He pried open the old copper lock, and a wave of musty air rushed into his face.
In the darkness, he struck a fire-starter and swiftly drew from his robes an identical piece of bridal embroidery, which he moistened with the medicinal solution he had brought with him.
Under the dim glow, the auspicious clouds on the reverse of the embroidery instantly faded, replaced by a clear map of the fields.
Holding his breath, Gu Changshan compared the design with the thick yellow land register in the storeroom, entry by entry.
Every mark on the map matched perfectly with the falsified records in the register.
The evidence was conclusive!
Shopkeeper Qian had colluded with the county magistrate. Taking advantage of the famine, they had transferred the disaster-relief land allocated by the imperial court into their own names at rock-bottom prices, then falsified the acreage and exploited the people at every level, lining their own pockets!
Gu Changshan returned the yellow register to its place and extinguished the fire-starter. He was just about to leave quietly when the courtyard suddenly blazed with torchlight.
“There’s a thief! Catch him!”
The shout came from Zhao San, Shopkeeper Qian’s trusted henchman.
Gu Changshan’s heart tightened.
Damn it. His presence had been discovered!
He had no time to think. Turning, he charged toward the rear wall.
Several cold arrows tore through the air, carrying a murderous intent.
Gu Changshan twisted aside and dodged several of them, but a ripping pain tore through his left shoulder. A feathered arrow had sunk deep into the flesh.
He let out a muffled groan, used his momentum to vault onto the wall, and vanished into the heavy darkness without looking back.
The following morning, Shen Guilan was comforting her daughter, Xiuwei, who was still shaken by the news of Gu Changshan’s injury. She sent the girl to the herbalist grandmother known to the family at the village entrance to gather some herbs for stopping the bleeding.
Little did she know that this journey would lead the girl straight into the tiger’s den.
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Half an hour later, Zhao San’s face, thick with folds of flesh, appeared at the Gu family’s doorway. In his hand was Xiuwei, trembling from head to toe with terror.
“Madam Shen,” Zhao San snarled, “Shopkeeper Qian says that whatever your friend Gu Changshan stole last night was only one part of it. Hand over the remaining designs, or your beautiful daughter will be taken into the mountains to feed the wolves!”
Shen Guilan’s face turned deathly pale. She staggered and caught hold of the doorframe, her eyes filled with terror and despair.
She pleaded and sobbed, looking every inch the helpless woman driven to the end of her rope.
“I’ll give them to you! I’ll give you everything! Please, let my daughter go!”
She stumbled back into the house, brought out a plain white silk handkerchief, and, before Zhao San’s eyes, began embroidering something upon it at astonishing speed.
Zhao San assumed that terror had broken her spirit and that she was embroidering the so-called “remaining design.” His eyes were filled with contempt.
After the time it took an incense stick to burn, Shen Guilan handed the embroidered handkerchief to Zhao San with trembling hands.
“The design… it’s all here. Please…”
Zhao San snatched it away and spread it open. Sure enough, it bore lines marking out fields. With a satisfied sneer, he shoved Xiuwei forward and strode away with the handkerchief.
He did not see the icy flash that passed through Shen Guilan’s eyes at the instant she took her daughter back.
Hidden in the corner seam of the handkerchief, she had swiftly embroidered, in an almost imperceptible color, a miniature map—the secret routes through the nearby mountains where bandits frequently roamed.
When Shopkeeper Qian received the handkerchief, he treated it like a priceless treasure.
He believed it was the final trump card hidden by Gu Changshan and his wife, marking the most fertile stretches of “ownerless wasteland.”