When the fireworks of Bianjing had faded, she awoke in front of a screen a thousand years later. This time, she would make a lost civilization shine before the entire age in a breathtaking glimpse.
Gu Jinglan had never imagined she would be “reborn” this way.
There was no dramatic fainting spell, no earth-shattering moment of transmigration, only dreams that haunted her for three months straight: flames leaping into the sky, a broken zither string, and the final backward glance of a woman dressed in a Song-dynasty beizi who looked exactly like her.
By day, she was a little-known streamer in 2023, broadcasting tea ceremonies from a cramped rental apartment to a handful of viewers. But her body remembered things it shouldn’t: the precise angle of her wrist as she prepared tea, the pressure of her fingertips on the strings as she played the zither, the rhythm of her skirts swaying as she walked. All of it was etched into her muscle memory like a birthmark.
Then, at a used-book stall, she found a volume titled An Illustrated Guide to Song-Dynasty Life. Tucked inside was a singed ginkgo-leaf bookmark, its back bearing a name written in elegant small script: “Jinglan.”
The floodgates of memory crashed open.
In an unknown corner of the twenty-first century, the soul of a noblewoman from ancient times quietly awoke.
