Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I am the one who can end Pre-embroidery.

I am the only person who has ever survived having their Death Contract severed.

My life was once cut short by Mother, then reattached by Father using the Blood Needle. Both the living and the dead recognize me. Thus, when I hold the needle, I do not see the future; I see cause and effect.

I finally understand why I always embroidered Father’s death.

It wasn’t an obstacle; it was a lesson.

With his death, Father stitched the first lesson into my hands.

I returned to the Shen Family Embroidery Tower and locked myself in the room where Father had died.

Du Niang stood guard outside the door, while Lu Wenzhou kept watch downstairs.

I spread out the white silk, laid down the Red Thread left by Shen Zhaoyue, and pricked my fingertip, letting the blood drip into the secret ink.

This time, I did not force myself to think about the murderer’s death.

I thought of the three years she spent kneeling outside the Embroidery Tower. I thought of her watching through the window as Father taught me how to embroider butterflies. I thought of her learning to imitate Father, stitch by stitch, and then learning to imitate me.

I thought of how she hated me, and how she hated herself.

As the first stitch fell, Father did not appear on the silk.

Instead, a doorless Embroidery Tower emerged.

With the second stitch, Shen Zhaoyue appeared, sitting inside the tower.

With the third stitch, I appeared on the embroidery frame before her.

My hands did not stop.

Start Needle to Inquire Guilt.

Shen Zhaoyue stole the Fate Thread, luring Father into the trap.

Execute Needle to Gather Evidence.

Wang Yuanwai’s Fate Thread was altered, and Father’s Death Contract was stolen.

Finish Needle to Determine Punishment.

By the time I cast the final stitch, the light outside the window was bright.

On the silk, Shen Zhaoyue knelt on the ground, bleeding from her seven orifices.

Beside her stood a figure.

That person wore the grey-green robe Father had been buried in.

Shen Zhaoyue arrived at dusk.

She brought no attendants and wore no veiled hat.

As she stepped into the Embroidery Tower, blood was already trickling from her nostrils. Yet she smiled calmly, as if she had long known she would come to keep this appointment.

“Have you finished your embroidery?”

I hung the silk on the frame.

When she saw the depiction of her own death in the image, a flicker of terror finally cracked through her eyes.

“Impossible. You’ve only been learning for three days.”

“I haven’t just been learning for three days.”

I raised my hand, the Golden-tailed Needle letting out a faint chime between my fingers.

“My father taught me with his life.”

Shen Zhaoyue suddenly lunged at the embroidery frame, trying to cut the finishing stitch.

Lu Wenzhou rushed out from the shadows to intercept her. A small knife slid from her sleeve, slashing his arm before she spun around to thrust it at me.

I did not dodge.

The tip of the blade stopped three inches from my throat.

It wasn’t she who stopped it.

It was the Red Thread.

Countless strands of Red Thread crawled out from behind the embroidery frame, entangling her wrists, neck, and ankles. She was forced down into a kneeling position as if pressed by invisible hands.

Blood gushed simultaneously from the corners of her eyes, her ears, her nose, and her mouth.

She stared at me, her voice hoarse. “You think you’ve won? You have also embroidered an innocent person. Just like your father, you will eventually be dragged back by the Fate Threads.”

“Are you innocent?”

I spread out Wang Yuanwai’s Fate Paper, Father’s Fate Paper, and the Death Portrait of myself one by one.

“You stole the Shen family blood, you altered Wang Yuanwai’s finishing stitch, you forced my father to use his death to open the needle, and then you stitched an old death back onto me. Shen Zhaoyue, you are not innocent; you simply refuse to admit your guilt.”

Her laughter froze mid-way.

Behind her, the shadow in the grey-green robe within the portrait moved.

When Father stepped out from the silk, every lamp in the Embroidery Tower went out.

He still looked as he did at the moment of his death, the Golden-tailed Needle pierced through his chest and his white hair hanging down, yet his gaze was gentler than it had been in life.

Shen Zhaoyue knelt on the ground, bleeding from her seven orifices, staring at him in a daze.

“Father,” she whispered.

Father looked at her for a long time.

“Zhaoyue, I did not write your name into the genealogy because every name on the Shen family genealogy is eventually consumed by Pre-embroidery. I did not teach you because there is resentment in your heart, and resentment turns the needle into a blade.”

Shen Zhaoyue wept.

“Then what about her? Why does she deserve it?”

Father turned to look at me.

“She shouldn’t have learned it either. But someone handed the blade to her, so she had to learn how to put it down.”

He raised his hand and pressed the needle in his chest.

I suddenly realized what he was about to do.

“Father!”

He shook his head at me.

“Pre-embroidery has been passed down for too long; it should have been ended long ago. Wanying, the final stitch is not for killing-it is for severing the thread.”

He pulled the Golden-tailed Needle from his chest and placed it in my palm.

In that instant, the old Death Portraits hanging on the four walls of the Embroidery Tower ignited simultaneously. The image of the Cao Gang leader drowning, the salt merchant’s blade wounds, the old eunuch’s hanging-every unfulfilled Death Contract from the last thirty years curled into ash within the flames.

Shen Zhaoyue collapsed to the floor, her bleeding slowly coming to a stop.

She did not die.

The person kneeling and bleeding from seven orifices in the portrait had become an empty shell.

I finally understood that what Father wanted me to embroider was not the murderer’s death.

It was the death of the murderer living inside her heart.

By dawn, the Shen Family Embroidery Tower was nothing but an empty shell.

Lu Wenzhou supported his injured arm and asked me what I planned to do next.

I snapped the Golden-tailed Needle and threw it into the brazier.

“Close the Embroidery Workshop.”

“What about the Shen family reputation?”

I looked at the ashes covering the floor.

“A reputation exchanged for the lives of the dead is better off discarded.”

The first cockcrow sounded outside.

I thought everything was over.

Until Father’s voice rang out softly from the ashes.

“Silly child.”

I froze in place.

Inside the brazier, a strand of unburnt Red Thread slowly rose, as if someone were reaching across the boundary of life and death to hold my hand.

Father said, “Who do you think taught you ‘Pre-embroidery’?”