My name is Chen Xu. I’m a cultural relic restorer.
When other people touch antiques, they can only tell if they’re real or fake. When I touch them, I can hear them cry.
A longevity lock let me experience a father’s desperate love as he switched a child. An imperial jade belt let me glimpse the truth behind Emperor Jianwen’s escape after setting his palace ablaze.
I thought I was merely a recorder of history, until the “History Purification Society” came looking for me. They said history was a tragedy that had to be brought to an end.
They wanted to destroy the Imperial Jade Seal and reset everything to zero.
But when I touched a fragment of the seal, I heard the wail of all Chinese civilization.
It was not a symbol of a dynasty, but a machine governed by causality, locking us onto a “safe” track.
Now, I have only one choice to make:
Should I repair this machine and let civilization repeat its cycle of tragedy?
Or... smash it with my own hands and gamble humanity’s future on the unknown, even if it might mean our destruction?
