Spring 2023, restoration site at the Xuanji Tower in Donghai City
Lu Zhaohua stared through her protective visor at the fragment of jade on the workbench. Beneath the magnifying glass, the chi dragon pattern seemed to breathe. This was her third time sneaking into the restoration room late at night. During the day, the investors' drones were always circling outside the windows.
"Ding!"
The laser scanner suddenly blared an error alert, and she snatched back her white-gloved hand as if shocked. Tiny seal-script characters had appeared inside the piece of green jade. They were unmistakably the mark of the Twin Jade Pendant, the symbol her grandfather had repeatedly sketched in his final days.
"Engineer Lu, sneaking a peek at the experimental data again?"
The teasing voice behind her nearly made her knock over the jade bowl filled with gold-leaf solution. She turned to see Fu Sihan leaning against the doorframe. Moonlight edged his impeccably tailored suit in a silver sheen as cold as a blade.
He spun a gold-plated lighter between his fingers. As the flame flickered, it illuminated a red mark by his collarbone, the wound she'd made with her kingfisher-feather hairpin in a desperate moment at last week's auction.
"Mr. Fu is interested in broken jade, too?" She slipped the fragment of the Twin Jade Pendant into her sleeve. "I hear your company's AI restoration system mistook a Ming-dynasty blue-and-white porcelain piece for a Starbucks mug yesterday."
