Chapter 1: The Forger's Eye

Osaka’s rain-soaked night painted the canal water the color of gray cloth soaked in old blood, pressing heavily against the stone slabs. Sawa Matsuei stood just inside the threshold of Shiyi Zhai, his fingertip resting on the lintel stone that the rain had just made slick. The touch was icy, searing through his skin as if piercing the wood to reach the restless souls buried deep underground. His gaze didn’t drift toward the flickering, dim lantern outside; it was locked on the pile of scattered porcelain shards hidden deep within the counter. These were the only clues left from his father’s final escort mission before he vanished. Ten years. For a decade, these fragments had waited in the dark like dried bones, waiting for someone who could piece them together.

The door hinges shrieked, breaking the dead silence.

The man who entered carried a heavy wetness and a suffocating pressure. It was the specific intimidation of Osaka’s merchant class, mingled with the stench of cheap tobacco and strong liquor. Sawa didn’t stand up. He merely adjusted his posture, straightening his spine until he looked like a long sword sheathed—every sharp edge retracted, leaving only a cold gleam.

“Mr. Matsuei,” the man was a middle-aged fellow in a brocade robe, his eyes clouded, a smirk of disdain curling the corner of his mouth. “I heard you just got a batch of antiques shipped down from Kyoto. Mind sharing a peek?”

Sawa lifted his eyelids, his expression perfectly neutral. “I’ve got a few duds here, nothing worth your time. If high society needs an appraisal, they’re welcome to look elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere?” The man laughed bitterly, casually pulling a gold-leaf-wrapped token from his sleeve and waving it in Sawa’s face. “I’m a senior clerk at the Machibugyojo. I’m here on official orders to audit the books. Some of your ‘old stock’ has a murky provenance. I need to see for myself if it’s mixed with stolen goods.”

Sawa watched the token, the faintest curve forming on his lips. He knew this guy wasn’t really auditing accounts; he was the puppet of the black hand controlling Osaka’s underground banks. In an era where the jianghu and the government coexisted, an “audit” was usually just a robbery dressed up with paperwork.

“Be my guest.” Sawa stood up and walked toward the back hall.

The back hall was piled with old goods hauled in from all over. Dust motes danced in the weak light seeping through the door cracks, looking like ash drifting from a battlefield’s last embers. Sawa picked up a blue-and-white plum vase with a chipped rim. He’d bought it three days ago from a down-on-his-luck scholar. The scholar claimed his grandfather found it during the war; the vase had cracks, but the glaze was smooth and the aura was exceptional.

The middle-aged clerk approached, scanning the vase, and let out a snort of derision. “This is your ‘new stock’? A broken bottle? The glaze is peeling, the clay is rough, it’s not even a complete piece. Mr. Matsuei, are you trying to swindle the government with trash like this? Or do you have a guilty conscience and are hiding something that can’t see the light of day?”

Sawa ignored the jab, studying the bottom of the vase in silence. His breathing was steady, his heartbeat normal. In the dim candlelight, his eyes were startlingly bright, like a deep well reflecting everything around it.

“Look here.” Sawa pointed to a repair mark on the base, his voice low. “This isn’t rough clay. It’s an official kiln piece from the Yongle era. The cloud and water patterns under the glaze were painted with Sumali Blue, a pigment reserved strictly for royal use. Look at the crack—it’s not a firing flaw. It was cut deliberately. The technique is ancient; the knife marks are smooth, as if it was carved away bit by bit with a jade blade.”

The clerk frowned. “What nonsense are you spouting? It’s an old relic. There’s no way anyone cut it.”

“If it had shattered naturally, the break would show a shell-like luster with tiny chipped edges.” Sawa rotated the vase gently, letting the candlelight catch the fracture surface. “But look at this. The surface is smooth as a mirror, and there’s a faint seep of red at the edges. That’s not the color of the ceramic. It’s blood seeping into the clay body. Before this was a vase, it was a shield.”

The clerk’s expression changed. He hadn’t expected a skinny, gaunt antiques dealer to have such an eye.

“A shield?” The clerk sneered. “Ridiculous. Porcelain shields? What kind of heresy is that from which country?”

“Great Song potters once embedded porcelain shards into armor to resist fire and water,” Sawa said casually. “But the cuts on this bottle weren’t made for embedding. They were made to hide something. Someone tucked a small object into the inner chamber at the base.”

The clerk’s pupils contracted for a second. He reached out to grab it, but Sawa pulled the vase back quickly. His movement wasn’t fast, but it was solid as Mount Tai.

“What are you trying to snatch?” Sawa stared at the clerk’s clenched fist. “If it’s stolen goods, it should be turned in to the authorities. But since I dare display it in my shop, it’s legally mine.”

The clerk ground his teeth. “Legal? Do you know what else is in your shop? An item lost by the Black Tiger Escort Agency ten years ago! It’s a prohibited item banned by the imperial decree. If you don’t hand it over, you’re an accomplice!”

The coldness in Sawa’s eyes deepened. Ten years. His father had vanished into the mist of the canal with the Black Tiger Escort Agency, leaving behind only a charred letter tube. Inside, there was no gold or silver, just a scrap of paper with coordinates pointing to these water alleys in Osaka.

“I’m not hiding stolen goods,” Sawa said. “But I do have one item connected to the Black Tiger Escort Agency.”

He pulled an oilcloth bundle from under the counter, peeling back the layers to reveal a palm-sized shard of white porcelain.

The clerk’s gaze froze instantly. The shard was pure white, devoid of any patterns, but in the candlelight, it exuded a cold, eerie blue glow.

“What is this?” The clerk’s voice trembled slightly.

“This is the White Moonlight,” Sawa said. “Ten years ago, a batch of secret court porcelain escorted by the Black Tiger Escort Agency ran into pirates in Edo Bay. Everything was destroyed, but this single piece was hidden by my father inside his collar, until...”

He paused, a flash of pain crossing his eyes.

“Until my father’s body was nowhere to be found. This shard changed hands many times before it finally landed in mine.”

The clerk stared at the shard, greed nearly spilling out of his eyes. He lunged forward, snatching the porcelain and clenching it tightly in his palm.

“Good! Very good!” The clerk cackled. “Since you admit it’s Black Tiger loot, I won’t be polite. By law, stolen goods belong to the government, which means they belong to me. You, Sawa Matsuei, are holding prohibited items. Your crime just got heavier. Come in, smash this shop!”

Several thugs who had been lying in wait outside smashed through the window, sticks and clubs swinging wildly.

Sawa didn’t resist. He just stood there calmly, watching the shard get snatched from him. He wasn’t afraid of the thugs; he was afraid that this piece of porcelain would disappear into the dark again.

However, just as the clerk turned around, stuffing the shard into his robe with a smug grin, Sawa spoke.

“You’re wrong.”

The clerk stopped, turning back to look at him.

“What’s in your hand is not the White Moonlight,” Sawa’s voice was calm as still water, but carried a chilling chill that made one’s skin prickle. “The real White Moonlight comes in two pieces. One yin, one yang. Together, they form a complete mirror. What you’re holding is a counterfeit.”

The smile on the clerk’s face froze.

“W-what?”

“Look at the back of the shard.” Sawa raised a hand, pointing to the space inside the clerk’s robe. “The real White Moonlight has the characters for 'Matsuei' engraved in seal script on the back. That was my father’s private mark. Yours is blank.”

Panic seized the clerk. He looked down, but the instant the shard touched his palm, fine cracks began to spiderweb across its surface. That’s a reaction that only happens when porcelain is subjected to high heat or violent impact, but it wasn’t hot around them.

“Impossible!” The clerk screamed. “I watched you pull it out! How can it be a fake?”

“Because you were too eager,” Sawa sighed. “Your grip strength just now exceeded the shard’s limit. Real official kiln porcelain has dense clay bodies; they don’t crack unless you smash them with a hammer. But this one you’re holding has a coarse clay base. A slight squeeze and it crumbles. I knew it was fake from the start. I could have retrieved the real one in the chaos, but I wanted to see what you’d do.”

The clerk’s face went pale. The shard in his hand *cracked*, splitting in two. No blood seeped out from the fragments, as expected. Instead, a line of tiny engraved characters was revealed.

The clerk’s hands shook as he held the fragments up to the candlelight.

It was a scrawl of small, uneven characters etched into the edge of the shard, as if scraped there by fingernails with desperate force.

The clerk read it aloud, his voice dry like sandpaper: “South... Crossing...”

Sawa’s breath hitched for a second.

“South Crossing?” he murmured. The last words his father had written in his letter were also “South Crossing.” It was the direction toward the imperial capital, the path to the center of power, and a death trap.

The clerk looked at Sawa, his eyes filled with both fear and confusion. He hadn’t expected this young antiques dealer to use a fake to reverse-engineer the entire situation.

“Who the hell are you?” the clerk asked.

“Someone looking to settle a debt,” Sawa said. “My father’s debt wasn’t just his life. It was the truth. You think stealing this fake puts you in control? Wrong. What’s in your hands is just bait I left behind.”

The clerk sneered. “Bait? You’re using a scrap of coarse pottery as bait. Who are you trying to fool?”

“Those who don’t look at the porcelain, only at the profit.” Sawa turned and walked toward the door. “As for the real piece in my possession? It’s not in this shop anymore.”

“Where?”

“It’s with Seijiro Fujihara.”

The clerk’s face twitched. Seijiro Fujihara. A constable at the Machibugyojo. Sawa’s close friend. A hard nut who upheld the law and bowed to no one. If the real piece was in his hands, then today’s chaos had been for nothing.

“You...!” The clerk roared. “Fine. Very good. Sawa Matsuei, you’ll wait. I’ll report this to the authorities and leave you with no defense!”

He left in a huff, the broken fake clutched in his hand.

The thugs exchanged bewildered glances, eventually backing out, knocking over a few shelves and kicking up a cloud of dust as they went.

Sawa stood in the center of the trashed shop, surrounded by wreckage. Dust settled on his shoulders; he didn’t brush it off. He walked slowly to the counter, where another oilcloth bundle lay.

He untied the cloth, revealing a complete piece of white porcelain. Different from the fragment in the clerk’s hand, this shard was smooth and warm, like jade. Engraved on the back were two small characters.

Not “Matsuei,” but “Xiaoyuki.”

Sawa’s fingers brushed over the characters, his tips trembling slightly.

Xue Xiaohori. Daughter of Sakei Horie. Sakei was a shipping titan, outwardly kind but secretly manipulating the lifeblood of Osaka’s canal transport. Xiaoyuki was good-hearted, but she knew too many secrets about her family. Ten years ago, before his father vanished, Sawa had a secret meeting with Sakei.

And this shard? Was it a token his father left for Xiaoyuki, or did she leave it for him?

More importantly, on the edge of this shard, beside “Xiaoyuki,” was a tiny, almost invisible mark.

It was an eye.

Sawa squinted, examining it closely in the candlelight. The outline of the eye matched exactly the symbol marked as “Source of Prohibited Items” in the Appraisal Chart in his father’s study.

His father used to say that every treasure in the world has a source. Some sources are official seals; some are faction emblems; and some are invisible eyes, watching every trace of greed.

“The Eye of the Fake...” Sawa whispered.

He’d thought that just finding the White Moonlight would solve the mystery of his father’s disappearance. He was wrong. His father hadn’t left behind a treasure. He’d left behind a riddle. A riddle that touched not just the fall of the Black Tiger Escort Agency, but the massive shipping empire behind Sakei Horie.

Outside, the rain gradually stopped. A lanky figure stood silently under the eaves, watching the dim lights inside the shop.

It was Musashi Ono, an old subordinate of Sawa’s father, now the instructor at a sword dojo. He stood there like a silent statue, only for a split second did a flash of emotion cross his eyes—the same emotion Sawa felt.

It was compassion, and resolve.

Sawa tucked the shard away, keeping it close to his body. He knew that from this moment on, he was no longer the quiet antiques dealer living in Osaka’s water alleys. He was walking the path of his father’s destruction. Every step he took was over old blood and new grudges.

The darkness swallowed the shop, and it swallowed the last hint of softness in his eyes.