The golden caisson of the Hall of Supreme Harmony glowed strangely under the searchlight, and Shen Nanxing's hand holding the bronze box trembled slightly. The Taotie pattern on the box cover suddenly rotated, and the six-hundred-year-old mechanism made a crisp clicking sound.
Don't touch it! Lu Zhiyuan's warning was half a second too late.
Bronze lotuses bloom in the box, and purple stardust rises into the sky, weaving into a rotating star pattern among the twenty-eight stars in the caisson. The birthmark on the back of Shen Nanxing's neck suddenly burned. The patterns of the Big Dipper that she had repaired countless times now perfectly coincided with the trajectory of the stardust.
Director Chen fell into a huanghuali armchair in front of the surveillance screen. He looked at the stardust floating in the picture and finally understood why Professor Shen set a fire in the Hall of Supreme Harmony twenty years ago - the fire that burned three gold bricks was originally to cover up this secret.
Lu Zhiyuan's hiking pole struck the white marble Xumizuo, and the sound was like hitting a bronze chime. The professor who studied the symbology of the Yongle Grand Canon was currently staring at the gold foil that had fallen off in the middle of the caisson - where the Ziwei Yuan should have been, but now half of the ink star map was exposed.
This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.
