The Patrol Seal Office arrives with a document ordering the transfer of three thousand bolts of tribute silk and seals the accounts of the Rinsing Silk Pool. The secondary signature bears Shen Qingluan's registered seal. Under the law, all three people implicated by a forged seal on the same document must be executed. She doesn't fight over the paper. She only asks to see its back, pointing out that the seal ink has bled into scattered petals and fuzzy threads. At the materials room, she says, the real seal is pressed onto a hard pad, so the ink spreads into a solid patch. This one was stamped while the paper was held in someone's hand, making the ink run to the edges. She concludes that someone stole the seal and stamped the paper with a wet hand.
Zhang Su draws a sharp breath, but the man from the Patrol Seal Office only pauses before sealing the accounts anyway. Shen Qingluan brings up her father, who was also one of three people implicated seven years ago. Deputy Commissioner Jiang Hong enters, and four men in green robes bow. He asks how long the dye water has gone unchanged. She says three years, then asks him why the seal register is replaced every year: Is the dye dirty, or is the register? She adds that if the register is clean, then the paper is dirty, and if dirty paper is pressed against a clean register, they ought to know exactly where the dirt came from. Jiang Hong looks her in the eye. He was the one who ruled at the time that her father's seal had been revoked and sent his family to the Rinsing Silk Pool without charging them. But who stole that registered seal from her materials room and used it to stamp the paper?
