Young mechanical engineer and archaeology enthusiast Ling Hao had always believed that the spark of craftsmanship, passed between past and present, could ignite ideas beyond their time. A bronze lump he had “rescued” from a corner of an antique market took days of painstaking work, testing the patience and skill of the mechanical engineering graduate student. At last, under precision instruments, the final stubborn layer of encrusted rust quietly flaked away. A deep blue-green sheen emerged, revealing the object in all its glory.
It was a small bronze pot, no taller than a fist. Its body was round, its lines smooth yet archaic, and its surface was covered in extraordinarily intricate patterns: neither dragon nor phoenix, neither cloud nor thunder. They were fantastically strange geometric tendrils, seemingly containing some profound mathematical rhythm, or perhaps tiny talismanic runes that continually appeared and vanished. They shimmered faintly in the light, dazzling the eye and captivating the mind.
Holding his beloved little bronze pot, Ling Hao turned it over and over in the glow of his screen, admiring it and running his fingers across its mysterious patterns.
Suddenly, a sharp pain stung his fingertip! One of the sharp-edged patterns seemed to have cut his skin. A bright red drop of blood welled up and landed on the pot. As if dropped onto hot iron, it was absorbed instantly. The next moment, light burst forth, swallowing his vision! Amid the blinding radiance, Ling Hao felt an irresistible force seize his whole body, as though he had been hurled into a bizarre, swirling vortex. The world spun around him, and his consciousness was torn away in an instant…
Ling Hao groaned and opened his eyes. A low wooden ceiling came into view, plain and unfamiliar. The only familiar thing was the red-and-white fan emblem on the wall. Was that… the Uchiha clan crest?
