chapter 4

The Empress asked me to return *Geese Among Reeds* to the storehouse and keep it safe.

Kunning Palace’s storehouse held countless precious antiques. Some were gifts from the Emperor, while others had come from the Empress’s family.

Because of my restoration skills, she often sent me there to fetch old paintings, calligraphy, and artifacts. In the end, she simply gave me permission to enter whenever I wished.

After carefully putting away *Geese Among Reeds*, I noticed an exquisite wooden case gathering dust in one corner. Curiosity got the better of me. I opened it—and stared.

Wrapped in red cloth was a white-glazed yuhuchun vase.

Its body was thin and pure white, its glaze lustrous and translucent. It had a flared mouth, a slender neck, a pendulous belly, and a neat circular foot. Pale as congealed cream, it possessed a quiet elegance.

Unfortunately, it had suffered a blow. A piece was missing from the rim, and hairline cracks were creeping from the mouth toward the body.

At university, my adviser had once taken me to help a museum prepare for an exhibition. The show’s centerpiece was a white-glazed porcelain vase webbed with nearly invisible cracks.

“It may look fine now,” my adviser had said, “but if it isn’t restored soon, those cracks will spread deeper.

“Within a few years, the vase will collapse into a heap of shards.”

After some thought, I carefully gathered the case into my arms.

…

“You want to restore it?” The Empress set down the shears she had been using to trim flowers and looked at the vase with nostalgia.

Lizhi told me it had a remarkable history.

Before she became Empress, Shen Chenxiang had been the Shen clan’s eldest legitimate daughter. At fourteen, still unmarried, she was already celebrated throughout the capital for her beauty and talent.

At her coming-of-age ceremony, she performed the Bent-Waist Dance with Flying Sleeves. Wide sleeves, a fitted waist, and a long skirt trailing over the floor; gauze robes billowing in the wind, silk sleeves weaving through the air.

That day, a crimson flower ornament had adorned Shen Chenxiang’s brow. She danced with the white-glazed yuhuchun vase in her arms, two summer lotuses of different heights nestled inside, both on the verge of blooming.

She had looked like Guanyin carved from white jade—too sacred to meet with a direct gaze.

“More than ten years have passed in the blink of an eye,” the Empress murmured, lowering her lashes.

Porcelain demanded stricter restoration conditions than painting or calligraphy. The Empress set aside an unused side hall in Kunning Palace for my work, and I approached the task with great excitement.

At university, undergraduates rarely got to handle genuine antiques. We might repair a few modern paintings, but actual relics were far beyond our reach.

Now that transmigration had given me the chance to restore porcelain made with lost techniques, I naturally refused to let it pass.

I began researching how to repair the vase.

Sometimes the Empress came to watch. She was always quiet, sitting with a book and only occasionally raising her eyes to me. Her presence brought me peace and made it easier to lose myself in the work.

At times I explained my methods aloud.

“Porcelain stapling uses flat, diamond-shaped metal clamps to bind a crack.

“Kintsugi fills missing sections with lacquer mixed with gold…”

I rambled, and she listened.

When a breeze happened to pass, bamboo rustled beyond the lattice windows. The scene felt untouched by time.

Sadly, those tranquil days did not last.

The bastard Emperor started coming too.

It was as if he had discovered a new amusement. Whenever the Empress visited the side hall, he followed her to watch me repair porcelain.

I sat on pins and needles whenever he was present.

Once he noticed, he found it even more entertaining. His restless hands constantly reached for my tools—fiddling with my diamond drill one day and kneading my porcelain filler the next.

When he tired of that, he propped his chin on one hand and stared at me without blinking.

It made my skin crawl. I felt like a toy the bastard Emperor had found to relieve his boredom.