Dark Pattern

Ji Chen, a cultural relic restorer, has a special ability-when he touches ancient relics, he can see the memory fragments attached to them. Interpol Zhou Lin is burdened with the unsolved mystery of his father's "suicide" twenty years ago. A murder case in the museum intertwined the fate of the two people: intern Zhang Ming was killed, holding Ji Chen's work notes tightly in his hand, and the stolen celadon vase from the Song Dynasty happened to be paired with the one restored by Ji Chen. The two were forced to join forces to investigate, and found that their fathers, Ji Mingchuan and Zhou Zhenguo, had been silenced for tracing the same cultural relics smuggling network. From the hidden patterns on the bottom of celadon bottles to the accounts hidden in blood-patterned inkstones, to the Khitan secret texts in the empty coffins of the Liao Dynasty, and the 500-year-old secret scrolls woven into the cloth by the "Seaming Society" in the Ming Dynasty, Ji Chen and Zhou Lin gradually revealed a secret transmission system that spans time and space - some people use porcelain to hide maps, some use inkstones to store account books, some use coffins as messengers, and some use needlework to weave secret scrolls. Generations of "guardians" have passed on the truth to future generations at the cost of their lives. In the Blood Inkstone Case, they uncovered complete evidence of the crime of high-ranking official Lu Beiming; in the Empty Coffin Case, Shen Henian handed over the Liao Dynasty sacred relics that his family had guarded for twenty-seven generations, saying "The line is here" before his death; in the Twins Case, they tracked to the Shuanghuan Fort in Taihang Mountain and the Changchun Pavilion, and found all the secret documents sealed by the last messenger Zhao Xiulan. The four cases were peeled off layer by layer, and finally a private secret transmission network that had been operating for hundreds of years was completely restored. Ji Chen uses "empathy with touching objects" to understand the memory of artifacts, and Zhou Lin uses criminal investigation reasoning to verify each clue. The two went from antagonism to trust, from partners to irreplaceable existences in each other's lives - Ji Chen taught Zhou Rin to "stay", and Zhou Rin taught Ji Chen to "depart". All the dark patterns will finally see the light of day, and all the guardians will finally be comforted. And those things that were once regarded as cracks glow with new light due to the stitching like gold. The story ends with a "take a break" conversation. The two drive side by side through the summer streets, and the new line is still waiting further away. --- "Every thing is passed down not only by its shape, but also by its intention. If the intention is there, the spirit of the thing will not be destroyed even though it is broken." Intention: The artifacts convey secrets, the blood carries the ambition, the gold repair heals the heart, and the thread runs through the millennium.