The snow in Yongxiang cannot cover up the smell of blood.
When I opened my eyes, I became a guard guarding the deepest part of the Forbidden City. This place is called Yong'an Lane, and the palace people privately call it "Ghost Lane" - the concubines who have fallen out of favor, the eunuchs who have been convicted, and the forgotten palace people all slowly rot here.
And I, a restorer who worked with antiquities in my previous life, saw "treasures" everywhere here.
It is not a hall full of gold and jade, but a broken piece of jewelry soaked in rouge, a fragment of scripture that has been completely eaten away by insects, and a lacquer box with mottled knife marks that was salvaged from the mud at the bottom of a well. In the eyes of others, these are all filth that should be burned with the dead; but in my eyes, every crack speaks, and every stain is a testimony.
I began to carefully collect these "ownerless things". Use what you have learned in your previous life to regenerate the broken hosta, restore the luster to the moldy woven gold, and put the broken porcelain pieces back together.
I thought this was just a humble way to make a living in troubled times.
Until one day, behind a bronze mirror I repaired, there appeared the secret pattern of the palace that should have been burned long ago.
Until late at night when I was on duty, I always heard regular tapping sounds on the wall in the same deserted courtyard - three long and two short, like some kind of secret message of dying people.
Until I discovered that the "rags" I had dealt with were actually being collected by mysterious people at high prices on the black market outside the palace, and the clues I traced all pointed to my hands that I shouldn't recognize them.
Now, those who gaze upon darkness are finally gazed upon by darkness.
There are no innocent people in the cold palace, including me - the night watchman who can make dead things speak.
