In the final years of the Northern Song, Shen Moqing, a lame kiln artisan from Ruzhou, gets caught up in corruption at the imperial kilns and a plot by the Liao, all for the sake of recreating a peerless sky-blue glaze. Fleeing for his life, he travels from the Yellow River to the South China Sea, firing pottery over bones, shattering tribute porcelain, and kindling a blazing inferno. When the Jurchen cavalry tramples Bianjing, he finally understands: true sky-blue does not lie beneath the glaze. It rises on its own where there is no glaze at all.
