Things were progressing well for HwaHwa and Ling Qi as their business started accumulating wealth.
They invested equal share of their profits in between three of them to buy Jade stones. They started with medium quality jades which would have been ignored by rich nobles previously but the craftsmanship of Zhou Shen and in built defense tools by Ling Qi made them irresistible.
To make the public aware for it an idea was prepared by Ling Qi, they made contact with local children playing on the streets. They mainly comprised of orphans but also children of servants of noble families.
Each child was given 10 copper to introduce a story to rich household maids which had a background like this
" Rich young lady of noble house 'Z' was attacked by the bandits, while she was on the main market. She had the soldiers of her family with them, while the fight was ongoing a bandit sneaked behind the lady to harm her face. But before the bandit could touch her she used the secret mechanism of her bangle to send few needle flying out of it.
Those needles had deadly poison dipped in them, one of the needle scratched the face of the bandit and he became dead right there.
By this time soldier became alert as they covered the lady and safely escorted her home.
Later it was revealed that she was a di daughter of her family and the concubine daughter sent some goons to destroy her face or worse kill her.
Luckily her mother purchased the jewelry from new jewellery shop LinHwa, where these well crafted jewellery to protect young ladies were sold.".
When this story was circulated on the streets of the capital city of Ming Qi, it had to effects. Firstly, they had curiosity who was this member of family 'Z'. Capital city had multiple noble families named Zhou, Zhen, Zhi and many more. But they would never find the family because it was crafted by HwaHwa and 'Z' was the most common surname used.
Secondly, rich noble ladies, especially mothers of those delicate young Miss were all serious and careful about their protection because internal politics was a huge matter in those households because main family or side families were always fighting with each other sometimes openly but mainly secretly with .
As the people came in waves to buy jewelleries of LinHwa. Financial security was well established for HwaHwa and she was finally looking forward to the future independent of Go family.
Meanwhile in Shadow clan things became bloody, when La Kun returned and found out about Ling Qi. He became silent for few months. Everyone thought that La Kun had no effect for what happened to Ling Qi.
Finally the day of marriage between Shen Mi and La Kun took place in the clan house.
Doors were well opened for the local residents to attend the festivities.
When the dinner was ongoing, Shen Mi was sitting on the bed with her face covered in the veil. Her two loyal servants prepared the room with fragrant incense, roses covering every surface of the room.
As the party was ongoing. The incense stick finally took effect when Shen Mi woke from a stupor she looked at the rose petals around her in confusion ,as red drops were dripping on them. Looking at the ceiling she screamed as the headless corpses of her loyal maids were hanging from there.
Loud scream echoed from the room as Shen Mi covered in blood ran out where she found all the corpses on the way.
Going down to the dining hall another greusome scene welcomed her.
Headless corpses of her father's trusted men sat at the table with their heads on the platter in front of them. She looked at her own father who was the only one with his head intact.