The Strange Light of the Ancient Mirror

The bronze mirror glimmered with a faint green light under the lamp. I carefully wiped its surface with a soft cloth, and a bone-chilling cold seeped into my fingertips. This ancient mirror, which I had found among my grandfather's belongings, was about twenty centimeters in diameter. Its back was engraved with intricate cloud patterns and a set of strange symbols I had never seen before. As a graduate student in the history department at Peking University, I was no stranger to ancient artifacts, but there was something inexplicably unsettling about this bronze mirror.

"Chen Jin, are you studying that battered old mirror again?" My roommate, Lin Xiaoyu, looked up from her laptop with an exasperated expression. "Professor Li's midterm report for his special topics course on Tang history is tomorrow. How's your preparation going?"