The paired mirror rang twice in the ancestral hall’s message room. Daro set aside the transfer index and opened the speaking panel. A note appeared from Gu He at White Orchard, followed by a second line marked for a reply.
“Two bursts,” Lian said. “The first is Gu’s record. The second is his question.”
Daro read the message aloud. Gu had found a number in an old Ashfall disposal ledger that resembled the shard’s catalog code. One digit differed. He asked the island archivists to check whether the entry had been copied from a damaged original. Without the complete transfer ledger, he could not say which item it named.
Yan asked Lian to replay the message once. Gu’s wording was careful: resemblance, not match. The disposal ledger had been copied from older pages, and the number could belong to a different item with the same prefix. Gu had not claimed more than the pages allowed.
“Did he say whether the Ashfall record was a medicine list or a research list?” Qinghe asked.
“An old medicine record,” Daro replied. “The code is in its disposal column.”
Bai tapped his own trade ledger. “A disposal number could identify a crate, a sample, or an entire batch. We need the complete entry before it means anything.”
