A Thousand Kiln Designs

Risk your life for porcelain, one kiln, one year of life!

To save his mother, the young Lin Ci signs a deadly pact with an evil kiln god's seal: every time he fires porcelain, he burns away his own life! Traveling through time and space, he recreates lost techniques. A partridge-feather glaze brings the threat of death; a Tenmoku tea bowl stirs a silicon-based civilization; blood-red Jun ware faces a merciless trial. When his mother coughs blood onto the clay, the piece emerges as a rare rose-purple treasure, and the mystery of his birth explodes into the open! His enemies steal the treasure, and he loses a loved one forever. He fires a thousand kilns as an offering, freezes time, and takes his revenge! Amid the embers, blood marks on his wrist intertwine with silicon scars, and he carries a fragment of the Heaven-Mending Scroll. His next stop: the haunted kiln of Qingzhou.

The next piece he fires must be for the Grim Reaper!