The Jade Tempering Chronicles

“She was once the cherished jewel of Jiangnan’s finest imperial kiln, but in a single night, her family was destroyed.”

Shen Zhuo came from an illustrious porcelain-making family. Brilliant from childhood, she mastered the secrets of glaze. But a political conspiracy led to her father and brothers being falsely accused of collaborating with Japanese pirates and executed, while the women of the household were sent to the imperial music bureau as slaves.

“The nights in the imperial music bureau burned hotter than the kiln.”

She gritted her teeth and survived its hellish torment for two reasons: revenge, to expose Elder Xu’s collusion with the Japanese pirates; and to be reborn, reclaiming her life through her family’s ancestral porcelain-making craft.

During a great fire, she fled with half of a secret porcelain formula, accompanied by musician Liu Ying and the medical apprentice Lady Su. The three became fugitives, eventually reaching a kiln stronghold in southern Fujian.

“Only after clay enters the kiln do you learn whether it will become rubble or fine jade.”

Under an assumed name, she started by repairing broken bowls, gradually improving glaze formulas and founding the Starfire Kiln Workshop. She took in women abused by their husbands’ families and orphaned girls fleeing famine, creating the Flower Haven, a secluded refuge where women helped one another.

But the oppression of the local magnate, the Wansheng Kiln, the Japanese pirates’ blades, and the imperial warrant for her arrest followed her like shadows…

“If this world won’t let women stand on their own, I’ll fire a whole new world into being!”

When Japanese pirates’ iron hooves shattered the kiln stronghold, she made a daring gamble:

She combined porcelain with firearms to develop “Jade-Tempered Porcelain Weapons”!

From then on, her fate became intertwined with that of her country…

At court, she pleaded her case before the emperor, using her technology as a bargaining chip to clear the Shen family’s name