Chapter 1: A Torn Scripture Surfaces

The white mourning banners of Qinghe Fang, just outside Hangzhou’s city walls, were soaked to the bone by the slanted rain and wind. Song Huaijin knelt in the mud, his father’s black-lacquered casket settling into the fresh earth, while the muck splattered the plain, washed-out hemp mourning clothes he wore. All that was left of the old family estate was a handful of yellow soil and three crumbling old tiled houses. Though he lived in the city making a living repairing ancient texts and paintings, his official records still listed him as a tenant farmer registered under Jiushui Tower.

He had barely stepped into the incense-smelling parlor when his close friend Lu Zhibai staggered through the threshold, limping under a tattered oil-paper umbrella. He hugged a long, rectangular wooden box wrapped tightly in oilcloth against his chest, his face pale with panic, his voice low and urgent.

Lu Zhibai shook the rain off his straw hat, his breathing sharp and ragged: “Uncle Song’s man sent this box before the funeral. The patrol captain from Jiushui Tower searched and seized items three times along the way. If I hadn’t claimed I was delivering official documents from the academy, we’d have been detained at the canal checkpoint hours ago.”

Song Huaijin took the heavy ebony box, brushing off the water stains: “My father was just a ledger clerk at the docks. Yet on his deathbed, he insisted on returning to the countryside to die. This box is coated in three layers of waterproof tung oil. There’s no way this is an ordinary account book.”

Lu Zhibai glanced around the drafty room, its walls webbed with spider silk, his voice trembling: “Nie Yunzhou currently rules the Jiangnan grain transport with an iron fist. He takes a thirty percent cut on any antiques or artworks entering the city via the docks. Your father made one final, desperate request before he died: do not let anyone from Jiushui Tower get so much as a whiff of this.”

Song Huaijin broke the clay seal on the oilcloth, revealing a moldy, crumpled ancient text beneath. The cover was saturated with canal moisture, and the pages exhaled the foul stench of rotting river mud. Suddenly, the sound of hooves stopped outside. A plain white oil-paper umbrella was quietly tucked under the eaves. Chu Hanyi, the county’s forensic examiner, slipped inside. She wore the standard green robe of a government clerk, the faint scent of atrachiles and saponin clinging to her sleeves.

She didn’t light incense to mourn. Instead, she stopped dead before the threshold where the body had lain, her cold gaze sweeping over the depressions the coffin had left in the floor, then landing on the sodden, pulp-like old book.

Chu Hanyi pressed her hand on the edge of the wooden box, her expression blank: “I was ordered by the magistrate to examine the body before it was dressed. Deep blue silt was packed into Uncle Song’s lungs. He was submerged in the depths of the sunken ship for at least half a stick of incense before he died. It wasn’t a heart attack, as the county records claim.”

Song Huaijin unbuttoned his outer robe and rolled up his sleeves, laying out a neat row of bamboo picks and tweezers: “My father was an exceptional swimmer. He could glide a half-li through the canal underwater. Unless someone pinned him to the riverbed and killed him, he would never have come home in such a state to be buried.”

Lu Zhibai’s face turned as white as paper. He stepped back, his shoulder hitting the mottled earthen wall: “Does that mean Nie Yunzhou already knew the secret of this old book and ordered the sinking of the transport ship three days ago? Huaijin, if you lay a finger on this cursed relic, you might not see the sun tomorrow morning.”

Chu Hanyi pulled a delicate ivory probe from her robe and gently picked at the yellowed thread stitching along the book’s spine: “Last night, the county yamen pulled three bodies of Jiushui Tower sailors from the docks. All had fatal wounds to the throat—a single, clean kill. The technique matches the lost *Duanshui Liu* sword style from Sword Forging Mountain Villa.”

The wind howling through the courtyard picked up fallen leaves, sweeping them into the yard. A slender, upright figure in azure stepped into the light. Yan Guihong stood with his sword sheathed against his elbow, the brass rings on the scabbard clinking softly, producing a clear, sharp ring.

He was the young master of Sword Forging Mountain Villa, a friend of Song Huaijin’s for years through their shared love of archaeological research. His eyes flashed like lightning, piercing through the group to fixate on the water-damaged manuscript. Rain dripped from his hair, shattering against the bluestone floor.

Yan Guihong pressed his hand on his sword hilt, his voice cold and firm: “There are at least four informants from Jiushui Tower hiding around Qinghe Fang. I took out two tails along the way, but the rest are converging on this old house. Huaijin, you have one stick of incense’s time to find out what’s hidden in that book.”

Song Huaijin’s face remained serene. He lit a charcoal brazier in the center of the parlor, then mixed warm water with a small amount of white orchid root into a fine slurry: “Panic will only tear the pages. This book is on Song dynasty yellow hemp paper. After being soaked this long, the fibers have completely loosened. If we force it open, it will turn to ash.”

Lu Zhibai held a oil lamp close to the table, his hand trembling, the flame dancing wildly in the wind: “It’s clearly just a fragment of the old *Yingzao Fashi* (Rules of Architecture). The whole thing is just dimensions for beams and brackets. Why would all the major sects in the jianghu throw a fit over this?”

Chu Hanyi leaned down, inhaling the smoke rising from the paper, her brow furrowing slightly: “The white orchid mixture is mixed with the burnt scent of Xiyu ambergris. No ordinary bookbinder uses such a tribute-grade incense. Something inside the paper layers is being forced out by the heat of the coals.”

Song Huaijin held his breath, his fingers gripping a warm woolen carding brush. He gently smoothed the wrinkles along the paper’s grain, then used a razor-thin bamboo sliver to carefully slice through the layers.

As the moldy surface layer was fully peeled away, a resilient, transparent, dark amber oil-paper sheet emerged from the interlayer. Not a single Chinese character was written on it. Instead, it was densely covered with bizarre, strange symbols. The strokes looked like iron hooks and silver scratches—resembling Sanskrit, but mixed with strange angular lines and numerical markers.

Lu Zhibai leaned over the lamp for a long while, cold sweat beading on his forehead: “This is definitely not a standard Buddhist translation. It looks like Sanskrit script, but the spacing between the radicals is incredibly narrow. And every seventh character has a horizontal cinnabar mark. I’ve read every book in the Tianshui Pavilion collection and never seen this kind of font.”

Song Huaijin used bamboo tweezers to lift the edge of the oil paper, holding it up to the flickering firelight: “This isn’t a foreign language. It’s the *Feibai Sanskrit Variant* created exclusively by the Shaolin Scripture Pavilion. It’s a cipher used by high monks to hide secret texts. Look at the gap in this turn of the stroke.”

Yan Guihong’s eyes narrowed as he stepped forward, staring at the symbols on the oil paper: “Jianghu rumors say that thirty years ago, a fire broke out on the back mountain of Shaolin. Dozens of *Darbo Academy* and *Arhat Hall* manual of internal energy fragments vanished without a trace. Could that disaster have been connected to the grain transport sects?”

Song Huaijin let out a cold laugh, tapping the bamboo pick precisely on the seal in the top right corner of the oil paper: “These aren’t martial arts manuals. They are marked with *gong chi* steps for construction orientation. They map the secret aqueducts between the old palace on Phoenix Hill and the canal sluice gates.”

Chu Hanyi’s nose twitched敏锐ly. She suddenly raised her hand and pinched out the half-burned candle on the table: “I hear the crack of wet mud falling from the roof tiles. Someone is moving stealthily ten meters outside the window. Their footfalls on the blue tiles are heavy. The opponent is carrying at least one anti-armor heavy crossbow.”

Song Huaijin’s hands moved with the speed of lightning. He folded the removed oil paper into a small square and slipped it into the hollow space in the blue brick beneath the table. Then, he took a half-sheet of wet, old cotton paper and quickly patched it over the break in the original book, his technique so flawless it was indistinguishable from the original.

In that exact moment, the lattice of the back window shattered. A agile figure in black fish-skin armor burst through, carrying a foul wind. He thrust a *Fenshui Tui* (Branching Spike) toward the unfinished book on the table, his eyes flashing with murderous intent.

The black-clad escort held his spike reverse-grip, glaring at Song Huaijin with a sinister look: “Jiushui Tower is pursuing smugglers on the water routes. Stand back, extras. Mr. Song, if you want to live, hand over the hidden ledger you pulled from the sunken ship.”

Song Huaijin held his carding brush, his expression calm. He didn’t even glance at the tip of the spike: “Maybe your eyes are failing you, Captain. This is a copy of the *Yingzao Tongshi* (Comprehensive Commentary on Construction) left by my father. The water has soaked through the back. Take one more step and your palm wind will shatter this hundred-year-old Song paper.”

Yan Guihong’s sword remained unsheathed, resting in his hand as he stepped between the table and the intruder: “Jiushui Tower’s reach is getting long. Chu Head Constable of the county yamen is right here. Song Huaijin is a clean-handed scholar. It’s not the job of canal bandits to break into a private home to arrest people.”

The black-clad escort’s gaze swept over the fragment on the table, then landed on the icy Chu Hanyi, his tone a mix of caution and probing: “Young Master, don’t threaten me with government authority. A crucial grain transport secret was missing from the sunken ship last night. If Mr. Song is really just repairing books, do you dare let me check the thickness of this paper?”

Chu Hanyi sneered coldly, drawing the silver twin-edged blade from her leather sheath: “I was just about to re-examine Uncle Song’s body for scratch marks. The width of the *Fenshui Tui* at your waist is two fen and three li wide. That matches the wounds on the victim’s ribs exactly. Why don’t you come to the yamen with me for a chat?”

The black-clad escort stiffened. His eyes darted between Song Huaijin’s pristine repair table and Chu Hanyi’s short blade. Finally, he gritted his teeth and laughed ferociously: “Green mountains don’t change, green water flows long. Director Nie has set up a seven-day water and land memorial service at the main headquarters. Mr. Song, if you can’t repair this old book, your late father’s spirit will rest uneasily in the grave.”

The man flipped out into the drizzle. The hurried sound of footsteps faded outside the courtyard. The parlor fell into deathly silence again, save for the dripping of rain from the eaves.

Song Huaijin slowly retrieved the dark amber oil paper from the brick crack. He laid it flat over the weak charcoal fire. Using the rising warm current, a few lines of fine cinnabar text gradually appeared on the reverse side of the oil paper. It was an index written in special mineral ink, and the first line read clearly: “Year 2 of Xuanhe: Master List of Authentic Scriptures Transferred from Shaolin Secret Pavilion to the Imperial Inner Treasury.”

Lu Zhibai stared at the cinnabar characters and gasped, his voice trembling off-key: “So the great fire back then was just the thief crying out ‘thief.’ The most profound fragments from the Shaolin Scripture Pavilion were smuggled to Jiangnan before the Jin invaders came south, hidden in the secret holds of the canal boats.”

Yan Guihong drew his sword half an inch. The snow-bright blade reflected the hidden water maps on the oil paper: “Nie Yunzhou has sealed off all the canal waterways in Hangzhou prefecture. It’s not about monopolizing rice or silk. He wants to drain the bottom water of the Xixing Canal to recover this batch of weapons that will rewrite the power balance of the jianghu.”

Chu Hanyi slotted her dagger back into the leather sheath, her face grave as she pressed her hand on Song Huaijin’s shoulder: “Mr. Song, since you can decode these ciphers, Jiushui Tower won’t let you live. Even the county jail can’t stop a poisoned arrow. What are you going to do with this hot potato?”

Song Huaijin pinched the corner of the oil paper with his bamboo tweezers. The firelight cast sharp shadows on his lean, resolute face: “Hiding it won’t save our lives. Nie Yunzhou thinks he can swallow Shaolin’s secret collection with brute force and money. But he doesn’t know that the modular scale of the celestial globe map for ancient texts was altered during the southern migration. The water map he has in his hand is clearly a dead-end that will lead to his own destruction.”

Lu Zhibai realized the implication and looked up sharply at Song Huaijin: “You mean the previous dynasty’s construction envoy who guarded this shipment and tampered with the drawings was an ancestor of your Song family?”

Song Huaijin didn’t answer. He simply closed the repaired *Yingzao Fashi*. A deep, cold glint emerged in his eyes: “My father was trapped in grain transport for half his life and died in the undercurrents. Since I revealed this oil paper with my own hands, it’s time I collect the old debts owed by the sixty-four water fortresses of Jiangnan and the Shaolin Temple, one by one.”

The cold rain outside grew more urgent, hammering the bluestone steps and creating foam that looked sickly white. Song Huaijin carefully tucked the oil paper close to his body. Suddenly, the muffled sound of bronze gongs echoed from the distant canal dike—three long, two short, urgent and sharp. It was the highest alarm signal indicating a sudden dike breach or a nighttime raid by water bandits at the main grain transport camp. The heavy, acrid smell of burnt gunpowder cut through the rain curtain, rushing toward them.