The wind in the twelfth lunar month carries the unique coldness of the north, like countless thin ice needles, pricking the face and hands, causing pain in the bone marrow. Jiang Shuying opened her eyes suddenly, and what she saw was not the familiar incandescent lamp in the laboratory, nor the desk filled with documents from the Northern Song Dynasty, but a gray sky, with lead-colored clouds so low that they seemed to be pressing down, and everything around her seemed to be depressingly desolate.
