When graduate student Li Yan's fingertips touched the cracked ancient jade, the fire from the Xuande official kiln licked the steel frame of the modern greenhouse along the gap in time and space.
In his left hand, he held the three-yuan compass that could anchor the time of the Ming Dynasty, and in his right hand, he held a newly-grouted ear of corn - the palm of his hand was a mixture of mud from the two worlds, and in his eyes was the superimposed image of the porcelain blank from the official kiln and the new seedlings in the greenhouse.
From the mystery of the residual jade in Liulichang, to the heavenly code in the fire of Xuande kiln, to the paper-wrapped gunpowder he worked with Qi Jiguang on the Jiajing sea wall, he stepped on the road paved with corn roots and cracks in kiln bricks, letting the ingenuity of his ancestors crawl along the vines into the modern soil.
Hidden in the cracks of ancient jade is a more moving answer than time travel: the so-called legend is just to allow the seeds of each era to fall into the soil that understands it.
