The Broken Golden Urn

On the eve of the birthday banquet at the Su residence, home to one of Jinling’s wealthiest families during the Yongxi era, an old purple-clay teapot from the family’s secret collection is quietly taken to a pawnshop in Wuyi Alley as collateral. When Liuguang, a lone boy with a supernatural ability, touches the pot, he suddenly glimpses a horrifying vision: two powerful nobles from prominent families playing chess in the Peony Pavilion, the board splintering as thunder cracks overhead, and a fleeting murderous glint in one man’s eyes. Even more alarming, a secret compartment inside the pot holds part of a letter concerning the theft of royal tribute from years ago. This unexpected discovery pulls Liuguang into the heart of a storm. The Su family’s elder and younger branches are locked in a bitter struggle over their inheritance. The eldest daughter, Su Wanmo, hides a startling obsession beneath her gentle demeanor, while Xie Zhibai, a young man from a respected scholarly family, seems detached from worldly affairs yet is mysteriously connected to the vision in the pot. The red-jade glass pendant Liuguang wears close to his body keeps warning him of danger, and the lame Daoist who abandoned him on a rainy night long ago returns to Jinling, singing ballads that foretell disaster. As clues to the old case gradually fall into place, Liuguang must navigate the competing forces around him, using his ability to sense the memories of objects to seek the truth through layers of confusion. He must uncover the secret behind the purple-clay teapot, which implicates two great families, and discover how his own strange origins relate to the turmoil. The once-impregnable families begin to show cracks, and everyone is caught in a whirlpool of fate, facing choices and sacrifices they cannot escape. This book is entirely fictional. Its characters, events, and setting are not based on historical fact.