In the fourth year of Chongning, Su Wan’er, daughter of a disgraced official, is sent to the Embroidery Bureau as a slave. After secretly embroidering a forbidden design from the common streets, she is exposed by Xue, a blind embroiderer whose eyes were gouged out, as a master of Shu embroidery. Her original “split-thread embroidery” technique draws her into a palace conspiracy. When Du Sizhen frames her for a capital crime using a dragon-scale reverse barb, and the Jurchen demand an embroiderer as a condition for peace, she embroiders “A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains” with her own hair to conceal a blood-written memorial, and uses the rowers’ scarred backs in “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” to shake the imperial court. Amid the blood and flames of the Jingkang Incident, she leads a group south with the “Xuanji Diagram,” which conceals a secret canal passage. In the end, the lost art of Bian embroidery flourishes anew in Lin’an, while a blue-and-white porcelain needle case sunk in the Bian River waits a thousand years to see daylight again.
