Southern Capital | Red District
The girl with the braid entered without knocking. She was thirteen, barefoot, and wearing a red qipao too short for her legs. In her palm, curled like a flower bud, rested a folded scroll sealed in wax the color of dried blood.
Sun Yizhen didn't look up from the ink slab.
"From Huai'an," she whispered, dropping it into the bronze dish beside him. "Hidden in a fish belly."
He nodded once. She vanished.
The door clicked shut behind her, leaving only the sound of dripping wax and the subtle shift of heat as another log cracked in the brazier. The room was underground—six paces beneath a brothel that served wine, opium, and soft-mouthed lies to every traveling official south of the Daiyu River. But down here, there was no silk, no laughter, no painted courtesans.
Only war.
Yizhen cracked the seal with the edge of his fan and unfolded the scroll. His eyes moved once over the characters.
