“The fire recognizes its master.”
When she first uttered this ancient potter’s saying in front of a modern kiln, the soul that had come from a thousand years ago finally found peace.
Lu Qingci, heir to the finest kiln in the land, died in a mysterious kiln transformation.
When she opened her eyes again, she had become Lu Qingqing, an apprentice at a struggling ceramics studio in a modern city, burdened with debt and clumsy with her craft.
Faced with a strange, dazzling world and a succession of cold faces that called her “useless” and “outdated,” she silently tied on her clay-smeared apron and reached for the rough lump of clay on the potter’s wheel.
She sold her first piece for fifty thousand yuan, paying off the debt that had been closing in on her.
The buyer was Gu Yan, a legend in the design world, renowned for his cool severity and exacting standards.
Everyone thought it was just a fleeting act of charity from an aloof tycoon,
until he knocked on the door of her shabby studio late one night, only to ask:
“Did you add ash from an old wall to get that iridescence in the glaze?”
He brought her commissions, resources, and a ticket into the world of elite art.
She taught him how earth breathes, how fire behaves, and the “bone structure” and “quiet spirit” that every piece should possess.
He saved her livelihood from the brink,
and she revived his inspiration from the wasteland.
But when traces of her ancient rival surfaced in the modern world, and her origins became the art scene’s most tantalizing mystery, Lu Qingci had to answer one question: After transmigrating across a thousand years, had she come here as a lone soul seeking refuge, or to fulfill a long-promised revival of an art that spanned time itself?
