Jiang Wan, a post-90s cultural relic restorer working at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, unexpectedly gained the ability to glimpse the past whenever she touched an artifact. While restoring a fragment of the Tang Dynasty painting Guide Bodhisattva in Cave 17, she witnessed a secret message left by a painter before he was murdered. It pointed to a thousand-year-old time rift beneath the Mogao Caves.
To uncover the truth, she formed a temporary alliance with the heir to a mysterious family that guarded Dunhuang, geologist Xu Xingye, and Louis, a morally ambiguous overseas treasure hunter and Chinese-British cultural relic smuggler. Together, they ventured into the desert in search of a bronze compass hidden by Tang Dynasty relic hunters.
When the restored compass reopened the passage through time, they discovered that the rift concealed a vast black market for stolen artifacts. They also faced an ultimate choice: destroy the rift and eliminate the threat once and for all, or let it become an underground river for smuggling civilizations across time?
