During the Cheng'an period of the Jing Dynasty, Shen Yansheng, the concubine of the Shen family in the south of the Yangtze River, was fostered in his maternal ancestral home in Gusu since he was a child. He was good at building but not good at playing piano and chess. While renovating the west wing of the old house, he discovered a suicide note left by his uncle Shen Jingyan fifty years ago from the mezzanine, thus uncovering a weaving injustice case covered up by the weaving pattern. From the bird's nest in the old house in Gusu to the loom room of the Shen family in Jiangning, from the life-and-death game between the looms to the battle for the sea ban in the temple, Shen Yansheng uses the tile knife as the pen and the silk thread as the guide. In the cracks between the gentry, eunuchs, weavers and the court, he traces the truth behind the double-sided makeup technology step by step, finally bringing to light the injustices that have been buried for fifty years, and earning a glimmer of livelihood for thousands of weavers.
