At three quarters past midnight, the moonlight was frosty, filtering through the kirin patterns on the warehouse's carved window lattices, casting specks of light like broken jade on the dust-covered blue bricks. Chen Weiwan held a gilded candlestick, the crackling of the wicks echoing through the empty warehouse. The stale aroma of old sandalwood and mothballs lingered at her nose. She gazed at the mountain of wooden boxes before her and couldn't help but rub her aching waist. This was the first time since her rebirth that she had spent so much time in this warehouse.

"Miss, the spiderwebs on the beams are three layers of dust." Chuntao followed behind, holding a sheep-horn lantern. Her eight-piece silk skirt made a soft rustling sound as it swept through the spiderwebs in the corners of the wall. The candlelight cast her shadow on the peeling paint on the wooden box, making a distorted outline. "We've been looking for almost an hour. Did the general really hide the treasure here?"

The old butler, leaning on a jujube wood cane, stopped in front of the third row of copper boxes. The tip of the cane poked the mottled kirin pattern on the box lid. His cloudy old eyes suddenly lit up. "My lady, I remember the general said before he left for the battle that if anything happened, the third row of the warehouse on the left..."

"The fifth pearwood chest!" Shen Weiwan suddenly stopped, the candlelight illuminating the half-man-high pearwood dowry chest before her. This chest was a head shorter than the surrounding bronze chests. Its body was engraved with a lotus pattern, and the edges of the lotus petals still bore the crooked marks of her childhood rouge painting—a secret inscription she had made in a previous life when her father wasn't paying attention, never expecting it to become a marker for finding something years later.

"Is this... the Madam's dowry chest?" The old butler narrowed his eyes, his fingertips tracing the patinated, warm copper pages at the corners of the chest. "Why would the general hide something in the Madam's chest?"

Chen Weiwan said nothing as she fished a mother-of-pearl silver hairpin from her sleeve pocket. Engraved with a lingering lotus pattern, it was the "Hundred Solutions Hairpin" she'd hidden in her hair in her previous life when Liu had tricked her into handing over the storehouse key. Her father had said it was a handy tool for emergencies during military campaigns, but he had never imagined it would actually come in handy today. She inserted the hairpin into the keyhole and twisted it gently. A sharp click, remarkably crisp in the silence, sent the copper lock tumbling down.

Chuntao let out a low cry, and the old housekeeper was so startled that he almost dropped his cane. Shen Weiwan, however, didn't care to be proud. Her fingertips brushed away the dust on the lid of the box, revealing a neatly folded plain cotton robe inside - it was her mother's favorite moon-white brocade robe when she was alive, now tinged with a worn beige color.

"Another old piece of clothing?" Chun Tao was disappointed. She squatted down and poked at her cotton robe. "The general didn't sew the banknotes into the folds of his clothes, did he?"

Chen Weiwan didn't respond, her fingertips suddenly brushing against something hard beneath her clothes. She peeled back her cotton robe, revealing a three-foot-square wooden plank at the bottom of the chest. The edge was engraved with a mosquito-thin military symbol—the very seal her father often used. "Found it!" Her eyes lit up. She pulled out the red-gold hairpin from her hair and used the sharp feathers of a phoenix's tail to pry open the cracks in the planks. The carved gold ornaments squeaked against the wood.

The old housekeeper and Chuntao hurried forward to help, and together the three of them finally removed the secret compartment. Inside lay a half-foot-long red sandalwood box, unlocked, but densely engraved with the patterns of the "Eight Formations Diagram." Shen Weiwan took a deep breath, and just as her fingertips touched the lid, Chuntao suddenly pointed at the bottom and exclaimed, "Miss, look!"

The small cinnabar characters shone like tears of blood in the candlelight: "My daughter, Wanwan, has opened this box personally. Seeing this box is like seeing your father." The handwriting was vigorous and powerful, it was her father's handwriting. Shen Weiwan's fingertips trembled suddenly, remembering that in her previous life, when she received the military report that her father had died in battle, she was embroidering a dowry handkerchief for Shen Ruorou. She didn't even see her father for the last time. Suddenly, a soreness rose in her throat.

"Open it, young lady," the old butler said, his voice choking with sobs, his cane slamming down on the ground. "The general has been waiting for this day for perhaps ten years."

The moment the wooden box opened, Chuntao cried out "Wow!" Shen Weiwan froze in her tracks. There was no gold, silver, or jewelry inside, as she had imagined. Instead, there was a stack of yellowed military manuals, and on top of that, a sheepskin map with frayed edges. The brown bloodstains looked like solidified rust in the moonlight.

"Sun Tzu's Art of War... Wu Tzu's Art of War?" Chun Tao picked up the top volume, dry maple leaves falling from the pages. "And a treasure map?"

Chen Weiwan grabbed the sheepskin map, the candlelight illuminating the charcoal drawing on it: a solitary grave nestled in a precipitous mountain range, a longsword impaled on the grave, and the words "Burial of Bones, Hidden of Gold" written in cinnabar beside it. Her lips twitched as she tossed the map back into the wooden box. "Dear father! Wouldn't it be better for you to hide two boxes of gold? Hiding one box of military manuals is nothing! Other fathers hide their own private money, but mine hides military books and maps!"

The old butler picked up the map and ran his finger over the bloodstained edge. "This is a topographical map of Langya Mountain, the site of the general's final battle... Could it be that..."

"Did he bury his military pay in his own grave?" Shen Weiwan held her forehead, remembering her father's frequent sayings, "Soldiers dedicate their lives to their country, why would they need wealth?" She was so angry that she wanted to bang on the coffin. "If I needed money to buy rouge and powder, would I have to dig up the money from his grave?"

Chun Tao's shoulders were shaking from trying to hold back her laughter. She pointed at the Six Strategies of War book and said, "Look, young lady, there's something stuck in this book!"

Chen Weiwan flipped it open unhappily, and the tiny calligraphy on the title page caught her eye: "My daughter, remember this: a man is innocent, but he who possesses a treasure is guilty. The treasures in the treasury are external to the body; only military books and strategies can protect the safety of the family and the country."

"Can protecting the country and the nation earn you a living?" Shen Weiwan threw the book back into the wooden box. "Can it shut up that old hag Liu? Can it turn Shen Ruorou's coming-of-age ceremony into a joke?"

The old butler suddenly burst into tears and pointed at the map with his cane: "My dear lady! The general is afraid that you can't protect the gold and silver, so he hid the real 'treasure' here!" He pointed to Langya Mountain on the map and said, "The general ambushed the enemy here and defeated them. Maybe he really got the military pay..."

"Military pay?" Shen Weiwan's eyes suddenly lit up like morning stars. "That's right! That idiot Liu only cared about the gold and silver in the treasury. How could she have thought that my father hid the money in the grave!" She grabbed the map and brought it close to the candlelight. "Burial place, hidden gold place... Could it be referring to his cenotaph?"

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