Frost fell in the 16th year of Zhengde, and fine snow fell in Yangzhou City. Li Zhen knelt in the center of the mourning hall, with incense ashes falling on his plain white mourning clothes. Fine smoke was rising from three incense sticks in the bronze incense burner in front of him, which blurred the large gilded characters on the coffin: "The coffin of Mr. Li's family." She lowered her eyes and stared at her folded knees. The edges of the filial piety shoes embroidered with tangled branches were worn and turned white. They were made by her mother overnight, and the stitching was crooked, much like the crooked line her father drew on the account book when he grabbed her hand before he died.
"Mother Zhen, it's time to burn some account books for your father." Uncle Li Cheng'en stood beside the altar table. His black cotton robe was embroidered with half-flowered lotuses, and his cuffs were still stained with silver powder from last night's horse crane ride. "Your father has been buried in a pile of silks and satins all his life. Without these things, he might be blinded when he gets down there."
The kneeling relatives in the mourning hall let out low laughter. Li Zhen looked up and saw his second uncle Li Chengzong grinding the incense ash in the cracks of the blue bricks with the soles of his shoes. The reflection of the coffin was reflected in his triangular eyes. She suddenly remembered that she went to Suzhou with her father to collect accounts last month. On the way back, her father touched the top of her hair and said, "Mother Zhen is born like your mother, but her eyes are like mine. She can see through the expenses in the account book."
"Uncle is joking." Li Zhen said, his voice like soaked in frost and snow, "My father told me before he died that the Li family's account book should be left to someone who can understand it." Her fingertips crossed her knees. There was half a piece of crumpled rice paper hidden there, which she pulled out from under her father's pillow this morning. On it were drawn with cinnabar the locations of the twelve silk and satin shops in Yangzhou City, and three circles were drawn on the word "Chengqingtang" - that is the Li family's head office in Dongshi.
