The Kilns of Cizhou Illuminate Bianjing

Boom! A deafening blast tore through the night sky. An old kiln at the eastern end of Cizhou Kiln Village suddenly exploded, flames soaring as bricks and stones flew everywhere. Thick smoke and black ash billowed upward like an ink-dark epiphyllum blooming in an instant. The neighbors cried out in alarm. Some rushed for water, while others fled. “Zhao girl! Zhao girl’s still in there!” “She’s probably gone… That kiln blew up so badly. How could anyone survive?” “Alas, why did she have to change the glaze formula? A woman learning a craft was defying heaven from the start…” Amid the clamor, a figure slowly crawled out of the rubble. Her body was covered in soot, her hair singed and curled, her left arm mangled and bloody, and her clothes burned down to scraps. Yet her eyes, which should have been clouded by unbearable pain, were wide open, reflecting the leaping flames with a terrifying brightness. She wasn’t Zhao Ciniang. She was Lin Mo. Thirty-two years old, chief technician of the Cizhou Kiln Restoration Team at the Palace Museum. One moment, she had been analyzing the distribution of iron elements in a Northern Song Cizhou Kiln fragment decorated with black flowers on a white ground under a microscope. The next, a muffled boom, the world spinning, and she had fallen into this agonizing body. “Did I… transmigrate?” she murmured hoarsely.