“Moonlight streamed through the stained-glass window, falling on the newly made dark green qipao. Gu Zhaozhao ran her fingertips over its twin-lotus pattern, and half a map of the foreign concessions emerged from the silk! This was the Gu family’s ‘shadow-pattern technique,’ and the lethal weapon she had kept hidden for ten years. But when she entered the Shen household with her embroidery patterns in hand, she stumbled upon the secret of Shen Yanqing, the reckless young marshal: his pocket watch held the gunshots from the night the Gu family was wiped out, and the soles of his military boots were stained with the gray dust of the Shen family storeroom’s bricks. The most dangerous revenge, it turned out, was joining forces with the enemy’s son and using the stitches in a qipao to tear open the conspiracy engulfing all of Shanghai.”
