“What exactly happened? Wasn’t it only the first batch that had problems…”
“Reporting to Second Young Master, everyone originally thought it was only the first batch. After the earlier incident, that fabric had already been locked away by Steward Qin in the warehouse beside the workshop — this was precisely to guard against further problems before delivery. Every day, only Steward Qin would go in to look things over for a while, and at first no one noticed anything wrong… well, actually, that’s not quite right either. These past few days, people had already started noticing that Steward Qin didn’t seem quite himself. It wasn’t until today, when it was discovered, that everyone realized — it’s very likely that after the problem with the first batch, Steward Qin had already noticed the fading happening day by day. It just wasn’t obvious in the first few days, so even though he went in to look every day, he didn’t dare say anything rashly. He was probably… still holding out some hope. But as the fading fabric increased day after day, Steward Qin knew a serious problem had emerged…”
“This…” Inside the carriage, Wu Qihao’s brow furrowed. His left hand clenched into a fist as though he wanted to curse aloud, but in the end nothing came out. “Why wasn’t this reported sooner…”
Yet in his heart, he already understood the answer to that question.
“Has the news been contained?”
“It was sealed off the moment it was discovered. Not many people know. It’s just that Steward Qin’s condition doesn’t look good — a physician has already been called for him…”
“Uncle Qin, he… has done his duty to the end after all…”
Wu Qihao’s brow stayed knit as he finally said these words, then sat there without speaking further. He had been pulled out from a cloth merchant’s home by one of the family’s attendants, and even now he couldn’t fully grasp the whole situation. Combined with the problem from the first batch of fabric a few days earlier, the feeling in his gut was very bad — as if something had come up from behind and struck him across the back without warning. He didn’t even dare imagine the worst possibility yet, only hoping this was some individual mistake on their own side. After all, this was new fabric — some problems were only to be expected.
He lifted the carriage curtain; the workshop wasn’t far off now. A signboard reading “Su Textiles” came into view. These past days, every time he saw that sign in the city of Jiangning, he’d felt a little like laughing. If he happened to see it alongside others, they would usually have something to say about it too — commenting “objectively” on all the various problems the Su family might run into in the future, how much profit would slip through their fingers, while he stood by shaking his head and smiling, offering no further comment, quietly savoring a sense of accomplishment. As a member of the Wu family — even one of its heirs — he truly felt like someone standing at the summit, looking down at all the lesser peaks below. Neither the Su family nor those who gossiped beside him mattered in the slightest. But now, he let the curtain fall and shook off the irritation rising in his chest.
It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with them — it’s already been over a month…
Without dwelling on it further, the carriage made its way straight to the small workshop. At the gate, he crossed paths with Luo Shenzhen’s carriage. He exchanged a greeting with Luo Minzhi, and in each other’s eyes they could both see that same worry. Neither said much more, and the two went in together. Off to the side, the workshop was still bustling with the work of producing the brilliant gold brocade — the bright yellow fabric fluttering in the air, dazzlingly radiant, showing no sign of any possible problem. Over there, workers were shouting as they dragged lengths of fabric from an enormous dye vat, while a steward called out beside them, “Careful, careful, not the slightest mistake — this fabric is being made for His Majesty himself…”
The scene at the workshop was bathed in the light of the setting sun.
Wu Qihao and Luo Minzhi made their way past to the warehouse. It had always been closely guarded, and now even more hands had been added. They made their way inside the small warehouse, where the lamps had already been lit. Among those present, besides Wu Qilong, there were several senior stewards of the Wu family — elder-generation members trusted by the family, responsible one after another for the various stages of production. Laid out before them was a wall of the brilliant gold brocade, and among it, the fading of some of the fabric was plain to see at a glance.
Luo Minzhi took only a single glance before beginning, along with two other shop managers, to examine the markings on the fabric.
“How — how is Uncle Qin?”
Wu Qihao looked up at the wall of fabric, then furrowed his brow and closed his eyes for a moment. Still, his first question was for his brother. Wu Qilong was sitting on a stool at the time; he shook his head, and after a long silence finally said, “The physician says he’ll be fine. Just utterly exhausted…”
“Why is it fading?”
“I don’t know, but—” As he said this, Wu Qilong abruptly stood, waved a hand at his younger brother, and strode over to the wall of fabric in a few steps, then picked up a bolt of cloth leaning nearby and held it up against the display.
“Look at this. This bolt was made today. These others were made over a month ago. Look — a full month’s time, and they’re exactly the same, not the slightest trace of fading. We took them out and tested them — the dye holds fast, completely fast. But these fading ones, ha…”
Wu Qilong gave a faint smile and pointed at the several bolts Luo Minzhi and the others were currently examining. “We already looked at this just now — the timing… the timing lines up almost exactly, going back over a month. Between a month and a half and a month and twenty days ago, they seem to have started fading in sequence, one after another. We just went and checked the discarded fabric too — it’s almost exactly the same pattern. And then there’s this…”
He picked up a somewhat wrinkled piece of cloth nearby. It was still a glimmering bright yellow, and only when tossed in among the other brocades did its color seem slightly out of harmony. “This is one of the ones sitting right at the edge of the timeline. It looked perfectly normal before, no sign of fading at all. We just soaked it in water and dried it over fire — I cut off a piece and brought it here. It’s already starting to fade. The rest are still being tested.”
“How could this be happening…”
“Indeed.” Wu Qilong gave a somewhat mocking smile, sat back down, and looked around the warehouse. “Did the problem come from the dye house’s side?”
The question, simply asked, left everyone silent for a moment, exchanging glances. After a long pause, Wu Qihao finally asked, “Is that even possible?”
“How could it be?” Wu Qilong frowned and shook his head. “We’ve got more than just one person placed within the Su family. In a situation like this, for them to still hand us the wrong formula — unless this person… unless this person had been watching everything we do from the very start, for years. How could there possibly be someone like that? Even Su Yu couldn’t manage something like this. Our push for the imperial merchant title only became a decision this year. Are you telling me someone was laying groundwork for this years ago… and the only one who could have laid groundwork years ago is Su Tan’er. Why would she have been targeting us all those years back…”
“If she really had been watching us from behind the whole time, she’d have gained far more by simply taking the imperial merchant title for herself than by doing something like this…”
“For now… it’s possible the problem is on our own end,” Wu Qilong said, rubbing his forehead, then looking toward the several shop managers before him. “Uncle Luo, Uncle Nie — for the time being, I must trouble everyone to keep this news contained. Have the dye house masters check over the formula and analyze where the problem might lie. This matter is too strange; we can’t jump to conclusions yet. Everyone, please attend to your own duties. My father and I will also be in closer contact with Lord Dong at the Bureau of Weaving and Manufacturing, to have the delivery date pushed back. The Bureau has already entrusted the imperial merchant commission to our Wu family this time — they won’t simply stand by and watch us fail. Our Wu family has come this far over decades; we’ve weathered no small number of crises before, big and small, and we’ve come through the storms together. In the textile trade of Jiangning, no one dares claim first place over us, only second at best. This time, as long as everyone does their best, things will turn out fine just the same… I’ll leave matters here to you, uncles.”
Everyone in that room, besides being trusted core members of the Wu family, were also seasoned veterans of the marketplace who had weathered storms of their own — roughly on par with people like Manager Liao from the Su family. Even without Wu Qilong saying more, they largely understood what needed to be done. They answered in unison and began gathering together to discuss.
The two brothers, Wu Qilong and Wu Qihao, made their way out. The setting sun faded its last red glow at the horizon’s edge. In the workshop, torches and lanterns had already been lit; the workers were changing shifts, eating, handing things off to the next group coming on. Work never stopped, but the two brothers’ hearts were, at this moment, hard to put into words. This fabric kept being made without pause, sent into that warehouse once finished, and then if all of it… ended up fading… then what exactly were they doing right now?
Over this past month, every single thing they’d done had felt like it was moving forward, moving with extraordinary purpose. They had understood clearly, every step of the way, what they were doing and what it was for. But after all this busy work, looking back now, it seemed the very foundation itself might be flawed. So then, all this bustling activity of the past month or so — what exactly had it all been for? Suddenly, they found themselves without any sense of where they belonged.
“Brother, is someone really working against us in secret?”
Wu Qihao had been thinking this over for a long while. Now, looking at the bustling scene before him — a scene that had, in an instant, lost all meaning yet still had to carry on regardless — he finally asked it aloud. Wu Qilong’s brow furrowed tightly. He shook his head and turned to look back toward the warehouse entrance.
“How could we know that now — it shouldn’t be this way. For now… for now, let’s just hope the problem is on our own end. If it isn’t…”
He frowned, unable to make sense of it. Indeed, looking all around, they could see no enemy anywhere. Before winning the imperial merchant title, they had felt no hostility directed at them; after winning it, even if there had been some hostility, there had been no way for anyone to act on it. They had indeed made their move once, but every part of the plan had been carried out in secret — in theory, no one should have been able to detect their preparations. They had been like a tiger that, with lightning speed, had devoured a goat in an instant — the whole process flawless, no bow, no hunter, no blade, not even the goat itself had time to resist. Everything had gone perfectly and smoothly. And yet, in the end, he found there was a wound on his own body, with no idea when or where it had appeared — and the wound was severe, perhaps even fatal.
Who could it be…
The tiger startled awake and began looking around into the surrounding darkness, but still, searching all around, it could see nothing. The forest itself had begun to feel full of hostility…
“If it isn’t… then perhaps someone has been behind us, watching, since months ago already…”
Wu Qilong murmured these words. Wu Qihao instinctively glanced behind him, turning in a circle. “Then who could it possibly be? Su Yu? Su Tan’er? Who else is there? Some of the Su family elders?”
“Doesn’t seem like it…” Wu Qilong shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like it… it doesn’t seem likely at all. This doesn’t feel like something they would have arranged. It couldn’t be Xi Junyu either — what we obtained wasn’t just his alone. This time… who exactly has struck at us in the dark?”
“Don’t dwell on it, brother. Maybe it’s just some small thing that went wrong somewhere. We can’t let ourselves fall into chaos right now. Let’s investigate properly first.”
Wu Qihao offered his brother these words of comfort, and Wu Qilong nodded after a moment. “Mm. Let’s go back and start looking into it. For now…” He looked toward the workshop still at work ahead of him, and further beyond, the lights coming on across the city of Jiangning. “For now… let’s just see.”
In the sky above, night fell, and darkness had only just begun to descend.
They passed through the dim corridor outside the small workshop, emerged into the lantern-lit area outside the workshop gate, boarded their carriage, and rode off toward home carrying an inexplicable anxiety, the road alternating between light and shadow. And there were still countless more people who, at this moment, had no idea at all what had happened that afternoon in this corner of Jiangning.
Within the Su household, Ning Yi had only just finished bathing and come out, sitting in the small pavilion in the courtyard to enjoy the cool evening air. Xiao Chan had brought out a bowl of boiled peanuts, and the two of them sat at the table, idly playing the childish game of guessing how many were in a handful. Just as voices and footsteps could be heard from the courtyard gate, Su Tan’er returned as well, along with Juan’er and Xing’er. She had probably spent the whole day rushing about here and there again, but the moment she saw Ning Yi, she still pressed her lips together and smiled, full and content.
On evenings like this in the past, there would often be children coming over to play, or some of the older-house cousins dropping by to ask for money or chat, but these days, such visitors had grown much rarer. Xiao Chan went off to prepare a simple meal, and before long Su Tan’er had also bathed and come out, and it was Juan’er’s turn to go. Everyone sat together in the pavilion, chatting, talking, eating a little. Even matters belonging to the world of business, Su Tan’er now spoke of freely with Ning Yi without a second thought. Of course, Ning Yi usually just made some idle joke about it, letting everyone have a laugh at his expense.
Beneath the stars and moon, it was, once again, an unhurried day.