A handover of cultural relics on a winter night at the Palace Museum brings restorer Zhou Yanshen and researcher Shen Qingli together again over half of a jade pendant stained with blood. The instant their fingertips touch the jade, a snowy night from four hundred years ago comes roaring back: shattered music, bloodstained armor, and an unfulfilled vow become a piercing ringing in their ears. Past and present overlap beneath the Palace Museum’s red walls. In this life, whenever he restores a damaged artifact, he tastes rust in his throat; whenever she copies an ancient painting, mysterious bloodstains seep across her rice paper. When an archaeological team dredges up a pair of mandarin-duck jade pendants from the bottom of the Yongding River, engraved with the characters “Gu” and “Shen,” the truths buried beneath the dust of history begin to come together with the blood-red jade pendant…
