Antique restorer Wen Shi receives terrible news and rushes back to Luhua Ferry, where she inherits the Wen Family Restoration Shop her grandmother left behind.
On the eve of her sudden death, her grandmother mailed her a pinewood box, leaving behind just one cold warning: Don’t open it. Wait patiently.
Fifteen years later, the box is finally opened. A leather notebook lies quietly at the bottom, its pages filled with hand-drawn diagrams recording hidden clues concealed in secret compartments of old wooden furniture and behind the panels of bronze mirrors.
The lock on the restoration shop bears fresh pry marks, someone is lurking on the riverbank, and the townsfolk refuse to discuss what happened in the winter of 2011.
Granny Chen brings in a Republic-era vanity mirror and repeatedly warns her that the frame can be repaired, but the back panel must never be taken apart.
Police officer Fang Jue visits to file a report and tactfully advises her not to persist in investigating old case files.
Drawing on the powers of observation she developed through restoring woodwork, Wen Shi picks up clues in cracks, patina, and rust.
As she investigates layer by layer, she gradually realizes that her grandmother did not die of a sudden illness at all.
An old case sealed away for fifteen years, and one secret-laden antique after another.
Someone in the shadows is closing in, determined to keep the truth from coming to light.
Wood can be repaired, but broken hearts are harder to mend.
Every crime hidden in the gaps between mortise and tenon will eventually come to the surface.
