House Of Silk / Season 1, Episode 7
Shroud of Secrets
Lin Xiaoming’s fingers trembled as they hovered over the spectrometer’s display, the cold blue light flickering across her face in the basement lab beneath the House of Silk. The hum of the machine was a low, incessant drone, like a heartbeat she couldn’t silence, and the air down here carried the sterile bite of antiseptic layered over something older, mustier, a scent that clung to the ancient shroud fragment sealed in its glass case beside her. She’d been at this for hours—days, maybe, time blurring into a haze of data and desperation—trying to isolate the protein structure that made the silk pulse like it was alive. The readouts were gibberish again, jagged peaks and valleys that mocked her with their refusal to conform to any known biology. She pressed a palm to her forehead, the skin clammy despite the lab’s frigid chill, and muttered to herself, “It’s not possible. It can’t be—” “Talking to ghosts now, Dr. Lin?” The voice sliced through the silence, sharp and polished as a tailor’s shears. Madam Fen stood in the doorway, her silhouette framed by the dim amber glow of the stairwell. Her qipao was a deep indigo tonight, embroidered with silver cranes that seemed to shimmer as she moved, the fabric catching the light like water rippling over stone. Her presence filled the...