By the time he left the restaurant and returned to the Wu residence, it was already late. Lights blazed throughout the Wu family’s great estate, inside and out — the joyous atmosphere that had filled the Wu household these past month and a half still hadn’t faded, an air of celebration visible in the very spirit of every servant and attendant. Perhaps only the servants who attended the family’s most senior members could faintly sense that something was wrong. As he entered through the gate, a servant on duty there approached cautiously.
“Young Master’s back. Second Young Master and the Master arrived home half an hour ago. Also, Third Master, Fifth Master, Sixth Master, Manager Luo, and Manager Nie have all come as well — they’re currently discussing matters with the Master in the side hall.”
This was an unusually early hour for such a gathering — for most of the past month, the household’s various managers had typically been out socializing until late into the night before returning. Only these past two days had things been different. Wu Qilong nodded and walked silently toward the side hall. As he reached the corridor, he heard a loud crash from within — the sound of a teacup shattering on the floor.
“You’re telling me it can’t be solved? After only three days? You’re already saying it can’t be solved?”
It was his father, Wu Chenghou, who had just smashed the cup and was speaking. In all these years, it had been rare to see him lose his composure like this. This was largely because the consequences of this failure were so severe, and the turn of events had come so suddenly, that everyone had been caught off guard. A sudden blow to the head had left them all somewhat dazed. In the side hall, the one currently speaking with his father was Fifth Uncle from the clan. On the technical side, the fabric’s dyeing was Manager Nie’s responsibility, but the main person overseeing it all was still Fifth Uncle. At this moment, he was likely the only one who could speak to his father in something like a bargaining tone.
“But… it truly cannot be solved. It wasn’t a formula we developed ourselves to begin with. In the two months since we got it, our craftsmen have kept trying to adjust it, but this formula is simply too sensitive — even the smallest change causes drastic shifts in color. The Su family even used some materials in it that were originally only used for dyeing blue fabric. Right now… it’s not that it’s absolutely unsolvable, but if we’re lucky, perhaps…”
Fifth Uncle, Wu Chengke, looked somewhat troubled at this point. Wu Qilong entered the room; his father glanced at him and waved casually for him to sit off to the side, then turned back to face off with Fifth Uncle.
“…Luck?”
“Heh, the Su family spent two or three years developing this formula. We haven’t a single clue right now. Master Chen and the others say… perhaps it’ll simply come down to luck…”
In the world of business, when asking how to solve a problem, to be told the answer was “luck” — Wu Chenghou glared, eyes wide, and the entire main hall fell silent.
After a long while, Wu Chenghou opened his mouth a few times before finally sinking back into his seat. “So, this confirms it, then? It’s not that we made some mistake — we really have been… played by the Su family?”
No one among those in the side hall dared speak, no one dared draw such a conclusion. Perhaps everyone had already considered it, but if it truly were the case, the price they’d have to pay afterward would be genuinely terrifying. In the silence, Luo Minzhi shook his head.
“There’s something strange about this, hard to understand. If the Su family really had laid such a trap, wouldn’t it have been better for them to simply take the imperial merchant title for themselves directly? Su Tan’er spent years working toward this — everyone can sense that. Look at the Su family now, in complete disarray. Even if there’s some turnaround coming, the disturbances of this past month and a half alone would have cost them a great deal. San Ye, Manager Nie, and I have all considered this — if there had truly been some conspiracy two months ago, the risk to the Su family would have been enormous…”
Wu Chengyuan, third in seniority within the Wu family, nodded as well at this point. “Brother Luo is right. We never originally planned to use the Su family’s formula — it was only a spur-of-the-moment decision a little over two months ago. If the Su family really had another formula prepared, there’s no way we wouldn’t have known. We’ve verified this multiple times since, and confirmed there was no problem before using this brilliant gold brocade. To say the Su family laid this trap from the very beginning — how could they have been so certain from the start that we’d walk right into it? To say they calculated it so flawlessly — I don’t believe it. Su Tan’er doesn’t have that kind of ability, and even Su Yu, deeply scheming as he is, hasn’t reached that level…”
“But regardless, this is the situation we’re currently in…” Wu Qilong had been sitting off to the side without speaking since entering the room, though his mood clearly wasn’t good, his gaze resting quietly on everyone in the side hall. Wu Qihao glanced at his brother a few times, then finally sighed and began to speak.
“Since things have already come to this, we need to start considering how to respond going forward. Father and I spoke with Lord Dong today — pushing back the delivery date shouldn’t be a problem. But the trouble now is that once we formally request a delay from the Bureau of Weaving and Manufacturing, this matter will have to go into an official document, and at that point Lord Dong won’t be able to suppress it anymore. News that something has gone wrong with the Wu family will inevitably get out, and there’s no telling what will happen once it does. We have ten days left until the agreed delivery date — after those ten days, we’ll need to have figured out how to handle this.”
He paused. “But whether we delay by one month or two, in the end, to actually solve the problem, we’ll still need to get this formula sorted out. Fifth Uncle, Uncle Nie — whether by sheer effort or by luck, we’ll just have to try. Also, if the Su family really does have the correct formula, we’ll probably need to try to get our hands on it too. When it comes to that… Elder Brother, it’ll be up to you…”
Wu Qihao looked toward his brother. On the other side, Sixth Uncle in the clan shook his head. “If it isn’t the Su family scheming against us, then doing that would indeed make sense — but right now we can’t even confirm that.”
“But for now, that’s the only way to handle it.” Wu Chengyuan cut in. “We really can’t confirm it either way right now. But if it isn’t the Su family’s scheme, and it really is just our own bad luck, our own mistake — and we fail to address what we could have addressed — wouldn’t we end up a laughingstock in the end regardless?”
Amid the somewhat heated back-and-forth, Wu Qilong rose to his feet under his younger brother’s gaze, patting Wu Qihao’s shoulder. “Father, uncles, everyone — I… I’ve been handling matters concerning our expansion in the northwest lately, and haven’t really been paying close attention to what’s happening here in Jiangning. I know a little, but not in much detail. Would someone tell me — what exactly has the Su family been up to recently?”
Wu Qilong carried something of his father Wu Chenghou’s bearing, and though his voice wasn’t raised, it was clear he already had some conclusion forming in his mind. Everyone looked at him. Wu Chengyuan thought it over, then sat back down. “Internal strife, I’d say.”
“The situation isn’t good. Su Zhongkan and Su Yunfang have been pushing hard, and things are in complete chaos right now over there,” Wu Chengke said, shaking his head as well. “Su Tan’er is run ragged, going around apologizing, trying to maintain relationships, trying to hold together all the old partnerships.”
“I hear… it hasn’t been having much effect, actually. Su Tan’er is certainly capable, but she used to have Su Boyong behind her, and now Su Boyong is apparently paralyzed, unable to get out of bed for a while now. The Li family and the Nian family, who used to work with them, are already preparing to cut off their cooperation with the Su family’s main branch, and various smaller odds-and-ends business dealings have been affected too. Mostly, people are saying Su Tan’er is going to lose control of the main branch soon enough, and the Xue family’s been recruiting these very people lately too — once the Su family’s business shrinks, some of the more loosely connected partners would rather just work with the Xue family from the start…”
Everyone had been busy with other substantive matters lately, and didn’t know much about the specifics of the Su family’s situation. Luo Minzhi had been attending quite a few dinners recently and had picked up some information. As everyone chimed in with bits and pieces, Wu Qilong frowned. “And Su Tan’er herself, then?”
“Trying to maintain the old partnerships.” Wu Chengyuan smiled. “With Su Boyong down, the second and third branches’ businesses shrinking, and her still trying to hold onto all the old business Su Boyong used to manage — how could that possibly work…”
Wu Qilong looked at Third Uncle, his gaze unchanged. “But what exactly is the entire Su family main branch doing?”
“The entire Su family main branch, she…” Wu Chengyuan looked at his nephew, waved a hand, then stopped midair. After a moment he shook his head without saying anything further, as though he understood something, or perhaps had thought of it earlier but hadn’t wanted to voice it — the more he thought about it, the more absurd and inconceivable it seemed. Everyone in the room’s expressions shifted slightly; what came to mind now was nothing good.
“Actually…” Wu Qilong’s expression carried an indescribable, bitter smile as he slowly spoke. “Actually… Third Uncle, Fifth Uncle, you two must have considered this a few days ago already, haven’t you?”
“That’s putting the cart before the horse — reasoning backward from the outcome. It’s not possible.” Wu Chengke said grimly, his face darkening.
“There’s no other way at this point, even if it is reasoning backward from the outcome…” Wu Qilong shook his head. “Three years of preparation, a lump-sum investment of two hundred thousand taels before the imperial merchant bid even began — and probably more before that too. Su Tan’er upgraded the looms under her control — we originally assumed it was to handle the large demand for tribute cloth, that she was determined to win the imperial merchant title at all costs. But even after winning it, she still hasn’t stopped. People outside think she’s gone mad, that she’s in too deep to back out now, trying to raise production and undercut prices to target our Wu family…”
“A woman with a broken mind will do anything,” Wu Qilong murmured. “But what if she isn’t broken? Father, uncles — undercutting prices, ruining the market, everyone would band together to strike back at her for that. That’s exactly why we’ve never feared that move of hers. But what if, from the very beginning, this woman has had her sights set on our Wu family’s market share — and she’s been waiting for us to vacate it ourselves? What then?”
Wu Chenghou, seated ahead, looked at his son for a long while before finally speaking, his voice somewhat hoarse. “If that’s really the case, then she’s already nearly finished preparing.”
“Yes.” Wu Qilong gave a weary smile, then raised his voice. “Right now, no one in the entire market is watching our Wu family. We’re about to expand — we could even walk right past everyone, and they’d all be considering how to get out of our way. With the Xue family leading the charge, everyone’s watching the Su family right now, waiting for the day it suddenly collapses so they can carve up the pieces. But what if the Su family isn’t going to collapse at all? The moment this woman takes the imperial merchant title from us…”
He waved a hand. “No — she’s probably been waiting even before taking the title. Once something goes wrong on our end, every cloth merchant in Jiangning who’s been watching the Su family will end up looking like a fool. The moment our Wu family’s market share opens up, before anyone else can even react, Su Tan’er will have already swallowed up most of it, and everyone else will just be left staring, unable to do a thing.”
“For a month and a half, we thought nothing was wrong, treating them as a beaten opponent left behind us. But in reality, she had already drawn away the entire focus of Jiangning’s textile industry, quietly finishing all her preparations. Su Tan’er upgraded her looms, raised her output capacity that seemed useless at the time. Everyone was laughing — only we, once we finally realized, discovered they’d already been preparing for over a month…”
An indescribable suffocating feeling settled over the entire side hall. After a moment, Wu Chengyuan still shook his head. “That’s the worst-case scenario. If that’s really what happened, this scheme would have been laid on an absurd scale — how could we possibly not have sensed any of it at all…”
Wu Chengke frowned. “Even if that’s really the case, the Su family isn’t having an easy time of it right now either. How long can Su Tan’er hold out? How long can we hold out? Worst case, we just delay — drag it out two months, wear her down…”
“Whether it’s absurd or not, this is the reality in front of us, and moreover…” Wu Qilong looked at Wu Chengke. “Fifth Uncle, they’re not going to just wait for us to collapse on our own. The workshop only ran into trouble the day before yesterday, Uncle Qin only fell ill yesterday — did you notice? Someone’s already spreading rumors outside, saying something’s gone wrong with our Wu family over the imperial merchant matter… Of course, groundless speculation and rumor-mongering are common enough in business circles, but this came awfully fast. Everyone knows someone’s spreading rumors behind this, it’s just that not many people are taking it seriously yet, but…”
He pulled a sheet of paper from inside his robe. “Before coming back, I actually checked into Su Tan’er’s movements over this past month or so. Looking at it now, things are a bit clearer. After the imperial merchant matter, every adjustment and expenditure has been aimed squarely at our Wu family — meticulously calculated. For a month and a half, we’ve been charging blindly forward, while they’ve silently and quietly set every blade, spear, sword, and halberd in place, each one aimed straight at our vital points… Father, Fifth Uncle, do you feel it now?”
Wu Qilong smiled bitterly, shook his head, and looked in the direction of the Su residence. “That woman has already quietly finished all her preparations… and now she’s making her move…”
The sheet of paper was passed around the hall. For over a month, all of this had seemed like a joke — as long as nothing went wrong for the Wu family, none of these threads meant anything at all. But what could possibly go wrong for the Wu family? It was under that very assumption that they had charged ahead toward what seemed like the best possible outcome, and only now, in the moment of confused realization that the path ahead led to disaster, did they discover that they were already surrounded on all sides by blades.
An indescribable feeling swept through the room as everyone looked at the sheet of paper listing out Su Tan’er’s maneuvers against the Wu family over the past month and a half — a chill seemed to creep up every spine, a bone-deep cold rising from within. If this were true…
“I still don’t believe it.” Wu Chengyuan suddenly waved a hand. “If it really were like this, then it wasn’t us who walked into this ourselves — it was them who lured us in. Have they really been scheming against us since two months ago, or even earlier? Su Tan’er spent three years laying a trap like this? We did consider before whether we might have gotten a fake formula — anything that deliberate, and people would have noticed! No one could pull off a scheme like this! This isn’t something you can just think up and make happen! Think of how difficult the whole process would be, how many things could have gone wrong — everyone here knows that perfectly well. It’s not possible for Su Tan’er, and Su Yu wouldn’t gamble on something like this either! If they could take the imperial merchant title, why wouldn’t they just take it outright? If they couldn’t, why build up so much momentum beforehand, to the point they nearly lost their chance entirely? Just take the matter of obtaining the formula — if it were too hard, we wouldn’t have gotten it; if it were too easy, we wouldn’t have believed it. We verified it so many times afterward before we were confident there was no problem — who could possibly pull off something to that degree of precision!”
“She’s already made her move — in a few more days we’ll know for certain. Honestly, I hope I’m just imagining things too…” Wu Qilong sat there, shaking his head, rather subdued. “But if I’m not… then this whole affair, thinking back on it, is… heh, quite something…”
“Su Tan’er’s collapse was real at the time, and Su Yu wasn’t in any position to handle something like this during that period either — he’s getting old, after all. But there’s one person we may have all overlooked — or rather, aside from the very beginning, none of us ever really took him seriously. Think about it… throughout this entire affair, he appeared to do nothing at all. Yet after Su Tan’er fell ill, in fact, everything was being handled by him. He led us all in circles, seeming to spend every day cracking jokes. But behind all that, it was he, in his rather brash way, who rushed out and insisted on loudly publicizing that yellow fabric, proclaiming that the Su family had the greatest capability of anyone…”
“Thinking about it now, there’s something rather interesting — both I and the people from the Xue family had a habitual assumption at the time. Every time we sat around in restaurants and teahouses talking about whatever foolish thing Ning Yi had done lately, we’d always remind each other: Su Tan’er is formidable, the Su family is still competing for the imperial merchant title through entirely legitimate means, so don’t be fooled by Ning Yi’s performance. And it turned out everyone thought themselves so clever, all of us kept staring at that one piece of cloth belonging to the Su family.”
“Third Uncle, do you remember what you told me as a child? If you want people to notice something, the best way isn’t to put it in the most obvious spot — it’s to place it somewhere and cover it up, or bury it in the ground and spread a layer of sand over it. The more you try to hide it, the more it stands out — announcing your own guilt by trying to cover it up. From beginning to end, Ning Yi kept telling us: the Su family has the best fabric, the Su family has the best fabric, the Su family has the best fabric! And… we all thought ourselves clever, thought we’d seen through to what really mattered, and slowly let our guard down…”
“He’s a fool, a complete simpleton in business, we thought — Su Tan’er fell ill, some oversights were only natural. If Su Tan’er herself had been handling things, we’d probably have been more cautious, since certain small mistakes shouldn’t have happened at all. But he kept making small mistakes, one after another, and not one of us thought it strange. Heh… in the end, he didn’t seem to do anything at all — we got the formula for the yellow fabric regardless, and he just watched it all happen, and then… like a swordsman recognizing a friend by his white hair, still keeping his sword hand ready — once his work was done, he tossed it all aside and walked away. For this month and a half, he’s carried on exactly as before, not even bothering to glance at anything happening in the business world — and to this day, no one realizes that perhaps he simply never took any of it seriously to begin with…”
Wu Qilong finished speaking as though talking to himself, sitting there with a mocking smile. Beside him, Wu Qihao frowned. “Ning Yi? How could that be… it’s not possible…”
Wu Qilong raised his head. “Heh, I hope I’m wrong too. But do you know — today I went and spoke with our informant planted inside the Su family. He told me something: two nights ago, while chatting with Manager Zhou, who’s in charge of the dye formula for the Su family, Manager Zhou got drunk and said something. He said that throughout the entire Su family, the person he admired most, aside from Su Yu, was the family’s Young Master Ning…”
Someone’s eyes went wide.
Wu Qilong paused. “In any case… we still have a few days left. Whatever happens, within ten days we’ll have to request a delay from the Bureau of Weaving and Manufacturing. When that time comes, if the Su family really did lay this trap, everything will come out with it — and then we’ll know whether he was really just putting on an act this whole time, or whether he knew exactly what was happening all along. If it really is like this…” He looked toward the darkness beyond the door, thinking of that scholar’s figure. “I might just find myself afraid of him…”
Recalling Ning Yi’s behavior over that period and in recent days, everyone remained silent, stunned, exchanging looks of disbelief with one another. But if it really were true, that spine-chilling feeling would truly be strange beyond words.
After a moment, Wu Qilong rubbed his forehead and let out a low, murmured sigh.
“Poor Xi Junyu — he still doesn’t know…”