A great fire at the Yun family's teahouse in Bianjing leaves Yun Zhiyi, heir to the Snowfall Tea tradition, an orphan. Clinging to the charred tea cakes and fragments of blood porcelain left by her mother, she reopens the teahouse beneath an old locust tree, only to discover that her parents' unsolved case is tied to a fragmentary orchid tea token. The arrival of Pei Yanzhou of the Court of Judicial Review reveals the secret of the token's route into the Western Regions and sets Yun Zhiyi on a tea-trading journey across the northern deserts, the Western Regions, and Persia.
Along the way, she encounters the Hulan tribe, protectors of resurrection tea; a glaze artisan in Shule who knows the formula for tea-corroding powder; and Persian tea merchants bearing the hidden emblem of the Sacred Fire Cult. She also discovers that the serpent totem formed by piecing together the blood porcelain fragments is closely connected to the mystery of tea varieties mutating across different lands. The crisp freshness of Snowfall Tea and the rich smoothness of resurrection tea blend at her fingertips. They can both cure strange poisons and awaken memories long buried.
From icy tea fields on Lake Baikal to red sandstone tea stations on the Persian Gulf, from ancient desert tea varieties to the sea-soul tea of the Southern Seas, Yun Zhiyi wields tea as a blade and varieties as evidence, pursuing the truth amid the bells of camel caravans and the sound of waves. When the orchid on the tea token overlaps with the serpent emblem of the Sacred Fire Cult, she finally understands: the tea route is not merely a trade route, but a thread binding different civilizations together. And what her parents gave their lives to protect was never a particular tea plant, but the belief that tea's fragrance could cross mountains and seas.
I'm coming to report on the first floor.