Novel Synopsis
The summer sun scorched Hundred Crafts Alley, and cicadas buzzed like boiling water. Thirteen-year-old Chen Shouzhuo crouched beneath the old locust tree, taking apart the ink line reel in his hands. He was modifying the sixty-year-old heirloom with spring strips made from discarded horseshoes. Seeing this, his father, Chen Laoshi, shouted, “That ink line reel served your grandfather for forty years and me for twenty. Now it's in your hands, and you've smashed it to pieces?!” Chen Shouzhuo stood his ground. “A thing is only good if it works well! Once I install this, the ink line will rewind by itself. It'll save so much effort!”
Xuan Ling stood nearby with a food box. Looking at the smudges on the boy's face, he smiled. “Picking another fight with Uncle Chen?” Chen Shouzhuo immediately held up the reel. The spring snapped, the ink line shot onto a plank with a pop, then zipped back with a swish. “Check out my improved ink line reel. Pretty impressive, right?” Xuan Ling gently wiped the grime from his face and said softly, “You'll be a master craftsman one day, little brother Shouzhuo. Even more skilled than the legendary Juzi.”
Chen Shouzhuo had no idea that the faint click of gears he heard while polishing the axle hole, or the scorching sensation of ink-line patterns he felt when Xuan Ling touched the back of his neck, concealed deeper mysteries. As he used his ingenious ideas to improve old tools, time had already woven the threads of his past and present into the cicadas' song and the marks of ink. Beneath the shade of that locust tree, a story of the Juzi legacy and a boy's burning passion was about to begin, heralded by the crisp snap of an ink line. Please don't flame if it's not to your taste.
