The shopkeeper and Xiangcao were talking in the courtyard, and Su Luoyun could hear them clearly, but her head was still heavy — she simply could not get up. The shopkeeper was pressing urgently, so Xiangcao thought it over and volunteered to go to the shop in her mistress’s place to prepare the ingredients.

After all, the secret lay in the ingredients and the initial preparation method; the rest could be left to the shop’s assistants. But when Xiangcao recited the steps from memory, there were still omissions.

Xiangcao knew that these techniques, even for someone practiced, would take several repetitions to memorize properly. So she simply wrote the method down on paper, tucked it inside her robe, and could refer to it whenever her memory failed her.

Before she left, Nanny Tian still felt uneasy and reminded Xiangcao to keep a close watch on that paper recipe — it must not be seen by anyone who had no business with it.

Xiangcao nodded brightly and agreed, then followed the shopkeeper back to the shop.

With Xiangcao there to oversee things, Su Luoyun could at last rest in peace and wait for the headache to pass. Xiangcao went back for two consecutive days, and each day she would bring home some of the finished product for her young mistress to inspect. Thankfully, Xiangcao was meticulous in her work and followed the method without the slightest deviation, so the finished product had not gone astray.

But on the day she returned, Xiangcao seemed utterly drained — her face weary with exhaustion — and the moment she was back in the room, she collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep.

Nanny Tian could not help muttering: blending fragrance was not like working the fields, so how had she worn herself out so thoroughly?

Su Luoyun was deeply fond of her personal maid and feared that Xiangcao might have fallen ill from overwork, so she promptly sent for a physician.

The physician was an old hand who had traveled far and wide, well-experienced in all manner of ailments. He examined Xiangcao’s condition and carefully sniffed the breath she exhaled, then frowned and said: “Has this girl eaten something bad? From what I can see… it looks like she has been poisoned!”

Su Luoyun was startled. But after the physician administered an antidote and an emetic decoction to Xiangcao, she seemed to recover considerably. When asked what she had eaten carelessly, she said that she had been craving something that day, and before going to the shop, she had bought a bowl of douhua and roasted sweet potato from a street stall. Later at the shop, she had also drunk a bowl of thick sweetened water. She could not recall anything else for the moment.

The physician said there was no great cause for alarm, but she would still need to rest and recuperate to fully recover.

Fortunately, Su Luoyun’s own mind had also cleared over these past two days, and there was no need for Xiangcao to make any more trips to the shop.

Strangely enough, when Su Luoyun went to the shop herself, the shopkeeper rubbed his hands together with a smile and said that no one had ordered the Pale Pear Fragrance Balm these past two days, so there was no need for her to trouble herself.

Su Luoyun said nothing, turned, and went to buy fabric to make clothing for Su Guiyan.

Yet in the days that followed, no one from Shouwei Pavilion came to the door again. Su Luoyun knew in her heart that something was certainly wrong here.

So she had Nanny Tian find an acquaintance of hers — a woman with an unfamiliar face — gave her some silver, and sent her to Shouwei Pavilion to buy some fragrance balm and, while she was at it, to gather what information she could.

The old woman was quite clever; in less than half an hour she had returned.

She told Nanny Tian: “Following your instructions, Elder Sister, I went to order the Pale Pear Fragrance Balm — but the shop assistant said the Pale Pear Balm is no longer being made. However, there is a new balm whose fragrance is just as pleasant as the Pale Pear Balm, and it has also been infused with crushed pearl powder, which nourishes and beautifies the skin when applied. The price is only ten percent higher.”

As she spoke, she produced a small porcelain vial the size of a plum and handed it to Nanny Tian.

When Su Luoyun carefully sniffed this new product called the润雪 Moistening Snow Fragrance Balm, the scent that greeted her was utterly indistinguishable from her own Pale Pear Balm. This was nothing but old wine in a new bottle.

Su Luoyun slowly set down the porcelain vial and, after a moment’s thought, asked Xiangcao: “During those two days you went to the shop to prepare the medicine, did anyone see your recipe?”

Xiangcao stood in a daze for a moment, then her color suddenly drained from her face, and she dropped to her knees with a thud: “Young Mistress, I… the last time I went to the shop, I accidentally fell asleep… Could it be that someone took advantage of my sleep to secretly steal the recipe?”

Nanny Tian, listening at the side, was so furious she nearly pinched Xiangcao’s face: “You silly girl! You’re usually so sharp — how could you fall asleep and slack off over there? Wait… I remember you came home that day and were sick. Could it be that you ate something bad, which made you fall asleep?”

Xiangcao said through her tears: “I… I don’t know either. I have never had the habit of sleeping in the daytime — yet that time I was completely unconscious!”

Su Luoyun carefully went through the sequence of events once more, and when she heard that Xiangcao had fallen asleep only after drinking a cup of sweetened water offered by a shop assistant, she felt something was amiss.

Just as Xiangcao herself had said, she had never had a tendency to doze off during the day — so why had she been able to fall into a dead sleep at Shouwei Pavilion, an unfamiliar environment?

And the physician had said she had been food-poisoned. Could this be connected to that cup of sweetened water?

After Su Luoyun had finished her questioning and could get no more from it, she went directly to the shop. The shopkeeper put on a fawning smile, yet with bulging eyes insisted that the new recipe had been developed by the shop’s own master artisans.

As for why Xiangcao had fallen asleep that day — no one had disturbed her; who was to say why she slept in the middle of the day?

Facing such a slippery old fox, Su Luoyun could extract nothing. But as she led Nanny Tian to the corner of the street, one of the shop’s artisans — a man surnamed Li — came walking over. He casually pressed a slip of paper into her hand, then glanced left and right to make sure no one was watching, and said quietly: “That day I happened to catch a glimpse of someone putting this into that maid’s water… I still depend on this shop for my livelihood. Please investigate on your own, Young Miss, and whatever you do, do not say it was I who told you…” And then he walked away.

Su Luoyun gave no outward reaction, but inwardly a great deal became clear: when Master Li was young, he had been an apprentice under her long-deceased mother, and his family being poor, her mother had given him much assistance.

Su Luoyun asked Nanny Tian, and learned that what he had just slipped to her was an ordinary yellow wrapping paper from a medicine shop — the kind typically used to wrap medicine. But the paper looked as though it had been retrieved from a slop bucket, its edges smeared with considerable vegetable broth.

Su Luoyun sniffed at it, and immediately caught the smell of medicine on the paper. She asked a shop assistant at a nearby apothecary and learned that it was the smell of aconite root.

Used in small quantities, this substance numbs and deadens pain — commonly employed by physicians to induce sleep in patients, sparing them the suffering of surface wounds. But in larger doses, it could kill instantly.

Su Luoyun thought it over and understood: in all likelihood, someone had seen Xiangcao take out the written recipe while she was preparing the ingredients, and had then resorted to this vile trick — slipping some aconite root into Xiangcao’s sweetened water, knocking her unconscious, and quietly copying down the recipe.

What followed was a simple substitution: add some flashy pearl powder to the Pale Pear Fragrance Balm, turn it around, and sell it as a new product called the Moistening Snow Fragrance Balm.

Master Li evidently knew what had happened. Mindful of the kindness shown by the late Hu Shi, and unable to bear watching her blind daughter be so ill-used, he had retrieved the discarded medicine wrapping that the thief had thrown away and brought it to her.

Now that the medicine was known, tracing who had purchased it was a simple matter — the wrapping paper bore the seal of the apothecary.

In no time at all, Nanny Tian returned with Xiangcao to report: it was a young manservant from Ding Pei’s courtyard who had purchased three qian of aconite root powder.

Su Luoyun could not help but give a cold laugh. She and her father had agreed at the outset that the second tier of profits from the new balm would go to her. But now that the Pale Pear Fragrance Balm was no longer being sold, her share of the profits would naturally come to nothing.

If she guessed correctly, it could not possibly be her father who had gone to such elaborate lengths to set this trap. Though he was calculating by nature and showed little care for the children of his deceased wife, he would never stoop to such petty and sordid dealings.

That left only one person: her stepmother, Ding Pei. To drive her into a corner, her stepmother had truly gone to painstaking lengths.

At the thought of this, Su Luoyun’s fists clenched tight, and she said coldly: “Let us go. Back to the Su household to demand an explanation.”

Xiangcao stood with her mouth hanging open as she listened to her young mistress piece it all together. Trembling with indignation, she accompanied her young mistress back to the household — while Nanny Tian was sent off on another errand Su Luoyun had arranged and did not go with them.

They arrived right at the midday meal. Su Luoyun’s father disliked the bland and watery food at the government offices, and so returned home to eat.

Su Hongmeng was in good spirits today; hearing that Su Luoyun had come back, he picked up a piece of preserved vegetable braised pork and asked her: “Have you eaten? If not, have a servant set out a bowl and chopsticks for you.”

Su Luoyun quietly pressed down the anger in her chest, took a seat at the table, and asked her father whether he was aware that the shop had stopped selling the Pale Pear Fragrance Balm.

Su Hongmeng genuinely did not know.

These past few days he had taken on a large assignment: every year at the start of spring, the Office of Trade had to select and purchase all the spices needed for the palace for the year ahead. Beyond the standard customary varieties, newly arrived distinguished persons within the palace also had their own individual requirements, which had to be recorded and accommodated.

Su Hongmeng had only just taken up this new assignment and had not yet found his footing — he was so overwhelmed that he had handed the management of Shouwei Pavilion entirely to Ding Shi.

Having heard his daughter out, he turned to look at Ding Pei, who was ladling soup for Su Luoyun: “What is this? Is the new fragrance not selling well?”

Ding Pei placed the soup bowl in front of Su Luoyun and said with a bright smile: “I was just about to mention this to you both. Here is the matter: Master Xiao at the shop, inspired by the Pale Pear Fragrance Balm, developed a new balm. Because it surpasses even the Pale Pear Balm in fragrance, all the noble ladies from various households have been purchasing this Moistening Snow Fragrance Balm. As for the balm that Luoyun prepared — the price was on the higher end and it occupied an awkward position in the market, with no buyers. So the shop took it upon themselves to discontinue the Pale Pear Fragrance Balm in order to conserve materials.”

Xiangcao had been manipulated by others, and because of it, she had lost the recipe her young mistress had worked so hard to develop. She had long been consumed by guilt and grievance. Now, hearing Ding Pei speak in such high-minded and self-righteous terms, she could endure it no longer, and burst out furiously: “The First Mistress must be joking — what new balm? It is nothing but our young mistress’s original recipe with some crushed pearl powder added in. Before, the master artisans could not figure out our young mistress’s method. Then I took the recipe to the shop and fell asleep for a spell, and suddenly the master artisans had a stroke of divine inspiration? It could only be that someone drugged my water and then stole the recipe while I slept…”

“Insolence!” Ding Pei brought her chopsticks down hard on the table and sharply rebuked Xiangcao. “What sort of nonsense is this! Shouwei Pavilion is a shop that sells spices — it is not some den of thieves! You fell asleep out of laziness, and now you slander others by saying your water was drugged! Besides, that recipe is no elixir of immortality — why should the shop’s experienced master artisans be unable to work it out for themselves? You, girl — do you think that because you have gone off to live separately with the young mistress, you no longer need to regard me, the mistress of this household, with any respect!”

Ding Pei’s voice was ordinarily soft and gentle; now, provoked to speak louder, it still quavered and trilled delicately, stirring in the listener an almost instinctive pity.

Su Hongmeng’s heart ached for her; he turned and glared at Xiangcao: “A servant, making an uproar beside her master’s dining table! How has your young mistress been raising you all this time!”

Xiangcao knew she had acted impulsively. She wiped her tears and knelt down.

Su Luoyun, however, placed two porcelain vials before her father and said calmly: “Father, you are yourself a connoisseur of fragrances. Please smell these two — what difference do you find between them?”

Su Hongmeng’s face was still clouded with displeasure, but he picked up the two vials and sniffed at them. And upon sniffing them, he found… that there was indeed no discernible difference.

The anger on his face eased somewhat: if the fragrances were merely similar, it was still possible that the artisans had developed it independently. But for the fragrances to be this perfectly identical — that could only mean the preparation technique was truly one and the same.