When the bronze ritual vessel decorated with a dragon-head pattern in the Shanghai Museum began to glow faintly in its display case, and a thousand-year-old echo rose from the depths of a dry well in an old courtyard beside Nanjing's Qinhuai River, a historical mystery spanning three thousand years quietly began to unfold...
Su Mingyuan, a PhD in archaeology, follows a mysterious text message into the Shanghai Museum's galleries late at night. There, he accidentally activates the “Mirror of the Past,” a reflection across time that reveals the secret history of King Zhou of Shang and Daji. Meanwhile, Shen Manqing, a young woman who has returned from overseas, crosses paths with Su Mingyuan because of a “phoenix pendant” left to her by her dying grandmother. The instant their two bronze fragments meet, they burst into golden light, pointing to the bloody secrets of the old Mei family courtyard in Nanjing before its fall in 1937.
From Shanghai to Nanjing, from modern museums to old homes from the Republic of China era, from a dry well by the Qinhuai River to a bronze coffin in an underground cavern, the two follow the trail of the “Dark Bird bloodline” and uncover a shocking history deliberately erased from the books: to suppress the calamity of the “Fallen-Star Dark Bird,” King Yi of Shang used the lives of ninety-nine members of the Dark Bird tribe to forge the “Seven Coffins Demon-Sealing Array,” sealing within it the “Divine Cauldron of the Nation,” a symbol of China's national destiny. The legendary “Mirror of the Past” and “Soul-Seizing Mirror,” said to “reflect the past,” became the prize of later generations: some sought to rewrite history, while others vowed to protect the truth.
When Liu Yin's conspiracy comes to light, and the “Dark Bird Sword Array” that has slumbered for a thousand years in the cavern and the authentic text of the Classic of Mountains and Seas are revealed, Su Mingyuan and Shen Manqing finally realize that they are the last descendants of the Dark Bird tribe. The blue mark that has continually seared his left eye is the key to awakening the “Heaven-Mandated Dark Bird.”
Amid the mists of history lie both the power of the Shang king...
