At the words “add money,” Xia froze like a candle flame caught by a draft.

In her head, four sharp characters flared and vanished like sparks: street-market manners.

Annoyance rose first, then reason cooled it. You couldn’t blame Lingcai for that, she thought, like chalk marking a line on rough stone.

Lingcai came from the Chulde region, a wind-scoured, poor northern strip where hunger gnaws like winter.

Her goal had been simple as a pebble in a pocket, clear as water in a bowl.

Study, learn a trade, earn coin, come home in silk, marry Scarlet Leaf, have a child, and live laughing through the seasons.

And what’s wrong with liking money? It’s not theft, not robbery, just bread and brick.

Be a plain little citizen with a pinch of kindness, like a lamp kept low but steady.

Xia didn’t mind spending, and relief moved in her chest like a tide finding shore.

People who loved money felt safer; their desires lay on the table like bright fruit.

She slid another gold ingot onto the desk, sun caught in a brick of metal.

“Fine. If you answer everything I ask, clearly and completely, all this gold is yours.”

Distrust prickled first, then strategy followed like a shadow.

She’d ask Lingcai, not the Alchemical Bureau’s think tank, because she feared those old men like roots that run under a fence.

They were Brunkia-era leftovers, mossy officials from a fallen time, their loyalties fogged like a cold mirror.

They might lie, hide, or collude with the rebels like hands meeting under the table.

So Xia’s distrust was natural, a wary hawk circling a thicket.

Lingcai’s eyes locked on the second ingot, pupils bright as pins, and she agreed on the spot.

“Ask away. If it’s about Alchemy, there’s nothing I can’t answer,” she said, voice like a matchcatch.

Xia set her palm on the desk and rapped her knuckles, rain on old wood.

“First. These cannon barrels were shipped in secret to Saltsea Town. If the rebels want them battle-ready, what other parts do they need? What do those parts look like?”

Lingcai caught the purpose like a fish on the line and answered without fuss.

“Knowing won’t help. The other parts don’t need special transport. A smoky little workshop can make them.”

Puzzlement tugged at Xia’s mouth, a knot in thread. “Why? If they can make the other parts, why not make the barrel?

Why cast it elsewhere and haul it to the border?”

“Because the barrel must be one piece, and its shape needs tight precision,” Lingcai said, bending to lift the cold metal cylinder.

“In a back-alley shop you’d rivet plates. Load powder in a riveted tube, and the barrel bursts like a rotten gourd. You kill yourself before you hit the enemy.”

Xia drew a sharp breath, cold as steel, and leaned back into her chair like a tree against wind.

“So you mean some large-scale factory made this?”

Lingcai nodded, firm as a seal on wax. “A common private shop won’t do. At least an arsenal.”

By rights, after Brunkia fell, Ariex took every arsenal like a net sweeping a pond.

Yet now, at this knife-edge moment, products from an arsenal were flowing to rebel camps like underground streams.

Xia felt the weight of that thought settle like nightfall.

She tapped the desk again, casual in posture, stern in her eyes, a silk glove over iron.

“So there’s a mole in an arsenal, shaking hands with the rebels. Right?”

Lingcai startled and waved fast, like shooing sparks off a sleeve.

“I—I didn’t say that…! It doesn’t have to be an arsenal. Any place with arsenal-level equipment could make it…”

“With your skills, can you tell where this barrel came from?” Xia pressed, voice cool as river stone.

Brunkia’s remnants were swelling like storm surf, quietly arming like ants carrying seeds.

If they weren’t checked, the realm would break like thin ice under hoof.

Princess Sia’s lands were the northern keystone; to reach the capital, the rebels must crack her gate.

She’d been burning her days on that blaze, hair singed by worry.

And in the hardest hour, the Elven King sent a single-page edict, a leaf that cut like a blade.

He pulled her from her fief to shoulder the Regency in Princess Korol’s stead.

When Xia received the decree at home, murder flashed in her heart like lightning behind cloud.

At this cursed juncture, you drag me to the capital?!

She loathed it, but Princess Korol’s exile had been ordered, and she was shoved up the ladder like a duck onto a rack.

Second only to the throne, she sat the Regent’s chair, stiff as frost on stone.

That’s why she hauled this damned barrel across half the realm into the palace, a thorn to lay before the crown.

She had two aims, twin arrows on one bow.

Trace the source and choke the flow of weapons at the root.

And make the Elven King see that if he kept playing blind chess, the country was damn well doomed.

Lingcai faced the question and could only shake her head, a wilted reed in shallow water.

“It’s just a barrel. The process isn’t special. With the right machines, anyone can make it.

There are arsenals everywhere. Specs all look alike. One barrel won’t tell you the source.”

At that wall, Xia knew the road was mud and stones.

She’d have to probe by other paths, like a lantern seeking a door seam.

Lingcai, green in politics, couldn’t help asking, curiosity fluttering like a moth.

“If we know they’ll rebel, why not strike first and crush them?”

Xia gave a tired smile and tapped the ingots, gold ringing like a bell under cloth.

“See this ingot? A 2,000-man army, from muster to final drum, with all logistics and fallout, burns this much per soldier for every extra day of war.”

“The money turns to smoke on the field and becomes taxes on the poor, like frost on their rice.

If we can not fight, we don’t. If we can spend less, we do.”

She released the ingots and pushed them toward Lingcai, gold sliding like sunlight.

“Alright. That’s all I needed. Your answers are good enough. At least I know where I stand.”

Lingcai looked at the gold, then didn’t lift a finger.

She nudged it back, quiet as a leaf returning to the branch.

“What, you don’t want it? What are you after?” Xia shot her a sidelong glance, half frown, half smile.

Lingcai scratched her head, blush creeping like dawn. “No merit, no reward.

I only answered a few questions. Let the gold go to the soldiers. I’d feel guilty taking it.”

The gesture made Xia laugh, a silver thread through her sternness.

Her tone came half praise, half tease, like sunlight through lattice.

“Didn’t expect a little city mouse to carry the realm in her chest.”

Since Lingcai put it that way, Xia didn’t press.

She slipped the gold back into her purse, coins clinking like pebbles in a stream.

But she didn’t plan to let Lingcai walk free, either.

“I won’t make it hard for you. I’ll hold the money for now.”

“I’ll give you one week.

If you figure out where these barrels were made, then both ingots are yours by right.”

Hopelessness tugged at Lingcai’s shoulders like wet cloth.

The task felt impossible, and now a seven-day noose to boot. No Alchemy in history solved that.

Her voice dipped. “And if… I can’t?”

Xia refused the gloom and turned the lantern around.

“Why not ask the other way? What if you can?”

“Your work could cut down casualties for our soldiers, and spare the common folk some pain.

Merit earned by real deeds beats any title, like iron over gilded paper. Right?”

She said it on purpose, an arrow aimed to pierce hesitation.

With every lead frayed, this small Alchemist had become her last thread of hope.

So Xia nudged and prodded, soft water wearing stone, to have Lingcai serve the realm by her own will.

A politician, after all, sees more angles than most.

With the words laid like stones across a stream, Lingcai could only nod and step.

“I’ll try.”