The Rivet's Mark Bears Witness to the Past

The craft of antique porcelain restorer Gu Ci conceals a secret. When she repairs broken objects with specially made nano-metal staples, she can briefly awaken their visual memories of the past 24 hours. But this ability is bound by the cold laws of materials science: Ming dynasty porcelain can be traced back no more than three days, while traces on Qing dynasty famille rose enamel last only two. When a shattered piece of jade with strangely branching cracks reveals, in her hands, the path of droplets at the scene of a bloody case from ten years ago, suspicion and danger close in. Gu Ci joins forces with Zhang Xiao, a stubborn criminal investigation captain, and Chen Yanqiu, a forensic examiner with a technical bent. Racing against time through the fragile images held by objects, they build a database of damage to artifacts, using the speed at which bubbles burst in glaze and the subtle patterns of metal corrosion as silent testimony. From the restoration workbench to the courtroom, Gu Ci uses the staples in her hand as a key, not only piecing together fragments of the truth across time, but also opening a new door for traces on cultural relics to serve as legal evidence, amid the rhythmic clinking of ancient porcelain repair.