When dark red blood seeped from the cracks in an ancient painting from Republican-era China, memories of history long buried began to awaken. Lu Chenzhou, a cultural relic restorer, took on a painting of a woman in a rain-soaked alley, signed "Yanbai." During the restoration, however, it triggered a mysterious resonance. As his head throbbed with unbearable pain, images of gunfire in 1943, the Japanese army's cherry blossom insignia, and the shattered drafts of the painter Shen Yanbai pierced his consciousness like bullets.
He discovered that he could read fragments of memories stored in antiques. More terrifying still, the woman's hair ornaments and the folds of her umbrella concealed Morse code and escape routes. And all of it was closely tied to the schemes of Xingyuan, a modern cultural relic smuggling syndicate. Qianhezi's mechanical eye gleamed coldly, while the new leader's memory-altering technology threatened to rewrite history. They intended to exploit disputes over cultural relics to stir up international tensions and bury the truth of their plunder forever.
Lu Chenzhou and his partner Lin Xubai pieced together clues from ancient paintings, bronzeware, and Dunhuang murals, risking their lives in a contest between memory and reality. As a proposal for the Convention on the Return of Lost Cultural Relics sent shockwaves through the United Nations, and a space-time device beneath the Arctic ice started up once more, a battle to protect civilization spanning eighty years was about to unfold. Armed with memory, they would cut through the fog shrouding the truth of history.
Cultural relics carry not only civilization, but also memories that must never be forgotten. And they are the keepers of secrets, walking through the cracks in time.
