The sunshine at three o'clock in the afternoon was sifted into fine golden flakes by the sycamore leaves in the old streets and alleys, and lazily sprinkled on the old wooden floor of "Qingluan Zhai".
There was a strange smell mixed with sawdust, dust and some kind of special glue floating in the air. For Shen Qingluan, this was a smell that could calm his mind.
She was wearing a pair of frameless goggles, holding a chisel as thin as an ox hair between her fingertips, and was concentrating on patching up the gold thread on a fragment of azure glazed porcelain from the Ming Dynasty.
Under the high-magnification lamp on the workbench, her wrists were steady and her movements were as gentle as feathers brushing over the water. Every stroke was extremely precise.
