Chapter 6

Chapter 6

“Get out of the way, you madwoman!”

The eunuch kicked me in the shoulder in disgust.

I let the force send me rolling to the ground, then kept twisting and giggling like an idiot.

He stared suspiciously at us again and again, his gaze shifting between the pile of junk and our deranged behavior.

In the end, perhaps he decided we truly did not look capable of doing anything.

Or perhaps those symbols were simply too strange for him to decipher. He spat and snapped,

“Filthy things, the lot of you! Search carefully. See if they’re hiding anything else!”

In the end, they did not find the banknotes or the most crucial records.

The real records had long since been wrapped in layers of oil paper when the first rumors turned bad, then stuffed by my own hand into a deep crack in the well wall and sealed shut with silt.

But they took away everything related to writing, then sternly warned Old Mo to keep a tighter watch on us.

If we were caught plotting anything again, he would be held responsible.

The courtyard gate clanged shut once more, leaving behind wreckage everywhere and a bone-piercing wind.

Attendant Li looked at the embroidery frame that had been trampled to pieces, silk threads scattered all over the ground. Her shoulders trembled faintly as she wept in silence.

That had been her last little beautiful connection to the past, to the world outside.

Consort Zhao’s face was ashen. She murmured, “It’s over… It’s all over… Cui’er must be…”

I slowly climbed up from the ground and brushed the dust from my clothes. The dull ache in my shoulder only made my mind clearer.

“It isn’t over.”

“Everything is gone! The records are gone too! And Cui’er, she…”

“Things can be made again. The records are all in our heads.”

I went to the well, scooped up a handful of icy water, and washed my face. The cold stung my skin until it hurt.

“As long as we’re still breathing, there is still a way.”

That night, I had Old Mo pass a message to the middle-aged eunuch who had once dealt in recovering lost items and later worked with us a few more times.

“A storm has struck the West Third Institute. The goods have sunk to the bottom of the well. If old ties still matter, please send a few Calming Stones.”

“Calming Stones” was our code. It meant money, and also any benefits that could loosen a guard’s vigilance.

Three days later, Old Mo secretly slipped in a small pouch of broken silver, along with a message delivered in a lowered voice.

“The wind comes from the east, and it is fierce. Lie low for now. Do not resist head-on.”

East meant the Imperial Consort of the Eastern Six Palaces.

The meaning was that the Imperial Consort was still furious, and the pressure was intense. We were to go to ground.

So we lay low for an entire winter.

During that time, Cui’er never came back.

Later, through several twists and turns, we learned that she had been beaten with thirty strokes of the paddle, her legs broken, and then thrown into the Laundry Bureau, a place even worse than the cold palace.

Not long after, someone found her body in a dry well nearby.

We had people quietly send medicine and food to her a few times, but in the end, we still could not save her.

A hole had been torn in our web. One companion had vanished forever.

But we spiders remained.

We grew even quieter, and even more cautious.

Every method of contact was upgraded. We used only the briefest messages and marks that were absolutely reliable.

Our archive was moved into our minds. Every night before sleep, we recited and checked the contents against one another in the dark.

The frequency of our trades dropped to the bare minimum. We maintained contact only with a few old customers who had been tested by life and death and proven completely reliable.

With danger lurking in every rustle of the wind, we curled in on ourselves like hibernating animals, hiding every trace of breath as we waited for the ice and snow to melt.

Time flowed on through fear and slow recovery.

We began stockpiling supplies again and recording information in even more secretive ways.

Consort Zhao even started experimenting with herbal juice as invisible ink, writing the most critical information on the lining of rags.

In the spring of the seventh year, news of the emperor’s grave illness exploded through the deathly silent palace like a muffled thunderclap.

The atmosphere abruptly turned strange and tense.