I am Lin Xiao. Not long after graduating from the Institute of Ancient Relic Conservation, I found myself working as a conservation assistant in a museum library. On this particular day, clad in a loose grey hoodie, I was weaving through the dense crowds of Dihua Street, heading toward my grandfather’s old studio to sort through his remaining belongings.

  As a paper conservator, the cacophony of the Lunar New Year Market felt like an assault on my senses. I pulled my shoulders in, trying to shield the canvas bag on my back from the surging tide of shoppers. Near the City God Temple, a sudden commotion—someone shouting "Thief!"—brought me to a jarring halt.

  In that moment, I saw something impossible.

  It was an unassuming man who looked entirely ordinary, yet his composure was utterly severed from the chaos around him. As the pickpocket stumbled blindly toward him, the man didn’t flinch. His right hand loosely gripped a long black umbrella; with a casual flick of his left hand, a slip of yellowed paper—seemingly possessed by a life of its own—pressed itself firmly against the back of the thief’s neck.

  I braced for a chaotic scuffle, only to catch my breath in the next heartbeat—what I saw was utterly beyond reason. The pickpocket didn't fall. Instead, it was as if time had been drained out of him. He froze in a grotesque stasis, mid-stride, even the terror on his face congealed into a fixed mask.

  My professional instincts as a conservator made me hyper-aware of textures. As the paper made contact, I caught a glint of blue—a metallic shimmer along its edges. For a fleeting moment, a piercing, high-frequency hiss—like an electromagnetic surge—cut through the roar of the crowd, causing the air to ripple with a subtle distortion, reminiscent of chemical solvent fumes.

  Was that... a Taoist priest? Can they actually use talismans to catch thieves? A wave of inexplicable bewilderment washed over me. But in the crush of the crowd, the man vanished in a blink. Pressed by the urgency of my grandfather's estate, I couldn't give chase. I only remembered those cold eyes looking down upon the world, and that black umbrella that never opened.

  Retreating into the quiet back alleys of Dihua Street, I returned to "Lin’s Bookbinding," the shop my grandfather had run his entire life.

  Hidden behind red brick walls, the space was narrow, deep, and dim. Stepping inside, the air was thick with the scent of aged paste, dried Xuan paper, and the musty fragrance of damp wood. This place had once been my sanctuary. Now, it was marked with red demolition stickers. Broken wires dangled from the ceiling, their rhythmic tap-tap against the plaster sounding like the withered nerves of the city itself.

  At the marble workbench, I brushed aside the clutter, my fingertips producing a soft rasp against the surface. This table had been my grandfather’s sole domain for restoring ancient texts, scarred with ink stains and blade marks of varying depths. In the faint light filtering through the window slats, I saw it—the bronze block he had always used as a paperweight.

  A rectangular slab of bronze, its surface etched with the fierce, gluttonous patterns of a Taotie. I used to think it was unnervingly heavy, almost indifferent. But today, as I reached out to grab it—determined not to let the demolition crew toss it out as scrap metal—a sudden, intense warmth surged through my fingers. It was a sense of familiarity so profound it felt like a connection of bloodlines.

  The sensation was too intimate. It gave me the haunting illusion that the object was breathing.

  I pulled an old flannel shirt of my grandfather’s from my bag, carefully swaddling the bronze block into a heavy bundle and cradling it against my chest.

  After tidying up Grandfather’s studio, I stepped back onto the street, clutching the wadded flannel bundle to my chest.

  Dihua Street was a chaotic tide of shoppers stocking up on dried goods. The cries of vendors, the haggling, and the heavy scent of deep-fried snacks coalesced in the damp, cold air. Emerging from the quiet of the bookbinding shop, the sheer intensity of this earthly clamor hit me with a wave of reluctance. I had never been fond of crowds; a conservator’s nature made me crave the stillness of a climate-controlled environment.

  The sky bruised over rapidly, the clouds thick and heavy like cotton soaked in black ink. I cursed my haste—in my rush to leave, I had forgotten the folding umbrella that usually never left my side.

  "I have to get to the MRT station before the sky opens up..." I murmured.

  To bypass the bottleneck of stalls ahead, I ducked into a narrow alley paved with washed granolithic flooring. The passage was eerily quiet, a parallel world existing mere meters away from the roar of the Lunar New Year market. I pushed forward on instinct, only to find the surroundings growing increasingly foreign. The red brick walls loomed taller, and the amber glow of the streetlamps was splintered into a thousand jagged shadows by the drizzling rain.

  Patter, patter.

  The rain intensified without warning, heavy droplets instantly drenching my hoodie.

  I quickened my pace, only to come to a jarring halt at the end of the alley—a dead end.

  Yet, amidst the desperate veil of rain, a singular building stood at the alley's terminus. It was a two-story heritage house in the Japanese-Western eclectic style; its deep green wooden window frames possessed a cool, reclusive elegance that felt detached from the world. A faint, amber light bled from the crack of the door, flickering against the falling rain.

  With the downpour worsening, I cast politeness aside. Gripping the unnervingly heavy bundle like a drowning soul grasping at driftwood, I ducked my head and lunged toward the heavy teak entrance.

  The moment I pushed the door open, the world seemed to freeze.

  A small wind chime at the entrance let out a crisp ding-ling, its resonance lingering unnaturally long in the air.

  I stood just inside the threshold, dripping and awkward, realizing I had stumbled into a clock shop. The interior wasn't the cluttered mess I expected. Instead, it was filled with a rhythmic, microscopic ticking—tick-tock, tick-tock—as if a thousand hearts were beating in perfect unison.

  In the deepest shadows of the shop stood a man. He hadn't turned on the main lights; only a brass task lamp cast a glow over the marble counter, stretching his silhouette into a long, thin shadow.

  "I’m sorry..." I wiped the rain from my face, my voice trembling in thin, brittle fragments. I didn't dare meet his eyes, keeping my gaze fixed on my soaked waterproof boots. "The rain is too heavy outside... Are you still open?"

  Subconsciously, I shifted the heavy bundle in my arms, pulling it a little higher.

  I didn't realize that the moment I pushed open the door, the "paperweight" that had slept for millennia within my grasp had sensed the energy flow inside this old house. It was emitting a faint, violet-crimson pulse, invisible to the naked eye. Simultaneously, a low thrum echoed from the massive clock in the depths of the shop—like the bottom string of an ancient cello being drawn—resonating perfectly with the heavy object in my arms.

  "It’s you..." The words escaped me, sounding jarringly abrupt in the stillness.

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  The man stepped slowly out from the shadows of the grandfather clock. That long-handled black umbrella was now leaning against the counter; its ribs were straight, its canopy impossibly dry, showing no trace of the torrential downpour outside. My heart quickened. My eyes instinctively swept over the marble workbench.

  There, a row of slender tweezers, precision probes, and several bottles of strangely colored, blurred-label solvents were arranged with surgical neatness. The sight hit me with a powerful sense of haunting familiarity. How similar was this to my own workbench in the museum’s basement? That obsession with detail, that zero-tolerance for damage—it caused my guard against this mysterious man to miraculously soften, just a fraction.

  "I’m sorry, I didn't mean to intrude..." I explained awkwardly, rainwater channeling down my hoodie. "I... I was just looking for a place to wait out the downpour."

  His gaze was piercing, lingering on the soaked flannel bundle for a long time. Even through the thick layers of fabric, he seemed to sense that restless, faint frequency attempting to sync with the earth’s pulse.

  "Many people lose their way in Dihua Street. Usually, this door only opens for those who need to 'align their time,'" the man spoke slowly, his voice raspy yet possessing a calming rhythm. He gestured toward a sliver of dark green patina peeking from the corner of the bundle. "Though the sign outside says 'Clock Shop,' I have some small acquaintance with the collection and restoration of antiquities."

  I froze, my grip loosening involuntarily.

  He turned, deliberating for a moment before retrieving another pour-over kettle from an antique wooden cabinet.

  "This rain won't be relenting anytime soon." He glanced at the blackened veil of rain outside, then turned back to me, a long-lost curiosity flickering in his eyes. "If you don't mind, have a cup of coffee. And while you're at it, perhaps I could take a look at... that thing in your arms that seems to be weighing you down?"

  I looked down at the bundle; the warm vibration was growing stronger by the second. After a moment's hesitation, I finally nodded and dragged my heavy steps toward the counter.

  The aroma of the coffee bloomed across the marble counter—a scent with a subtle, sharp bitterness, yet remarkably pure. It mingled with the shop’s lingering scent of aged machine oil and metallic dust, creating a strange, paradoxical sense of tranquility.

  He slid a white porcelain cup toward me. The black liquid inside remained as still as a frozen pond, its surface showing not a single ripple. Outside, a low, heavy rumble of thunder—boom-rumble—shook the very foundation of the old house, yet the coffee stayed as steady as a mirror. As I took the cup, my icy fingers flinched slightly from the sudden warmth of the rim. That heat crawled up my fingertips and settled into my shoulders, finally coaxing my rigid muscles to relax.

  "Thank you..." I murmured, but my eyes were irresistibly drawn to his hands.

  They didn't look like the hands of an ordinary middle-aged man. His fingers were long, steady to a degree that was almost unsettling. Behind the counter, he spread out a piece of deep-blue velvet with a motion so reverent it felt as if he were preparing to receive a fragile miracle.

  "Set it down," he said.

  I took a deep breath and began to unwrap the soaked flannel shirt. As the heavy, damp layers were peeled away, the bronze block finally revealed its full form upon the marble surface.

  Under the unique, starlight-warm glow of the "Momentary" Clock Shop, the artifact exerted a suffocating sense of gravity.

  It was a solid rectangular slab, roughly 30 centimeters long and 15 wide. It looked less like a vessel and more like a foundation stone meant for the base of an ancient temple—a "bronze brick" of sorts. Its surface was a chaotic map of history; years of being buried in damp earth had left it encrusted with thick, dark crimson and emerald-green patina. Along the sides, several lines of ancient script were etched with varying depths.

  "Is this... a late Western Zhou dynasty inscribed bronze brick?" He leaned in, his monocle catching the cold reflection of the task lamp.

  I pointed to the ferocious, distorted visage on the bronze surface. "I’ve researched this. The Taotie motif is characteristic of the late Western Zhou—those rugged, interlocking cloud-and-thunder patterns look like the craftsmanship from King Xuan’s reign. But the format is wrong. Western Zhou archaeology rarely yields 'bricks' of this scale; bronze was typically reserved as structural support only for royal palace foundations or massive sacrificial altars."

  The man retrieved a slender ox-bone probe from his drawer. Holding his breath, he navigated the tip along the edge of the Taotie’s protruding, cylindrical eyes. The moment the bone probe touched that faint, spectral violet shimmer, a microscopic hum vibrated through the air. I saw his gaze sharpen with a sudden, heavy gravity.

  "Something’s not right," he muttered, his brow furrowing as he adjusted his monocle. "Look at the depths of these patterns. While the piece-mold casting techniques of the late Western Zhou were sophisticated, you’d still expect to find minute traces of sand casting or cold-lap veins in these tight corners. But the lines on this brick... they are too 'clean.'"

  I leaned in. Under the magnification, the hair-thin thunder patterns weren't dry or textured like three-thousand-year-old hand-carved molds. Instead, their depths were as smooth as modern industrial laser engraving, devoid of the grit and friction one would expect from ancient craftsmanship.

  "And then there’s this patina," he continued, gesturing to several dark crimson patches on the surface. "It looks like cinnabar rust, but the red is too uniform. For a bronze buried for three millennia, the corrosion should be a 'mineralized crust'—layers of crystalized oxidation built up over eons like a second skin. The rust on this brick... it feels more like a camouflage. It’s as if it grew from within the metal, rather than being eroded by the environment."

  A cold hollow opened in my chest. "Are you saying... it’s a forgery?"

  "No. A forgery couldn't dream of reaching this level of sophistication," he shook his head, his tone shifting into something more cryptic. "The alloy proportions are bizarre. That faint violet glow under the light... it doesn't match any known Shang or Zhou dynasty formulas. Rather than calling it a fake, I'd say it’s more like... a 'genuine antiquity' that was deliberately disguised three thousand years ago."

  He traced the irregular textures with his fingertips, his eyes deepening with an unreadable thought. "In the realm of archaeology, bronze architectural components of this scale are exceedingly rare. Look at the Large Seal script inscribed here. The characters are blurred, yet their underlying structure is unnervingly precise. If you took this to the National Palace Museum for appraisal, the experts would argue for years—debating whether this was the cornerstone of some lost temple or a ritual vessel that was never meant to be discovered."

  "But I don’t think it’s just metal," I lowered my voice, my words trailing off with a hint of hesitation. "At the conservation lab, I’ve handled countless bronzes. They are dead, cold things. But this brick... sometimes I feel like the patina is shifting. When I get close, there’s this low-frequency hiss deep in my eardrums—ssshhh-ssshhh—like a million microscopic ants crawling beneath the metal skin."

  The man fell silent for a beat. Just as he was about to speak, a sudden, jarring noise shattered the rhythmic ticking of the shop.

  Beep-lee-lee—Beep-lee-lee—

  It was a monotonous, almost grating synthesized electronic ringtone. In a shop filled with antique horology and precision instruments, the sound was absurd, nearly comical.

  He stiffened slightly, reaching into the pocket of his oversized cargo pants and pulling out a heavily weathered Nokia 3310, its screen flickering with a dim green backlight.

  I stared at the "relic" in disbelief. In an era where smartphones have practically become external brains, seeing a man who could command talismans use a brick phone only capable of calls and Snake felt like a glitch in reality.

  He pressed the answer button, making no effort to hide the conversation.

  "Old Xie, speak."

  From the other end came an elderly man’s voice, anxious and low. Even without the speakerphone, the frantic tone was audible in the silent shop: "Old Joe, did something happen just now? There was a split-second blank. Also, you’ve got trouble. My people just got word—for some reason, our blind spot has been compromised. A few Illuminati agents have entered the Dihua Street sector. Judging by their perimeter, they’re coming for you. Do we need to intervene?"

  The man’s eyes turned ice-cold in an instant. He glanced back at the Taotie brick on the counter, which was now pulsing with a faint, violet-crimson glow.

  "I know. No need for your team for such a small matter. The spatial blind spot should be restored by now. I’ll head to the backup studio to lay low. Just remember to help me clean up the shop later." He hung up calmly, sliding the durable, untraceable phone back into his pocket.

  "Miss," he stood up, reaching for the impossibly dry black umbrella leaning against the counter. "Leave the coffee for now. Uninvited guests are here. We need to move."

  At that moment, three dark figures eclipsed the faint amber glow of the streetlamps outside the door. Dressed in cold, precisely tailored black suits, they advanced through the torrential rain. Their sense of lethal, calculated order was utterly discordant with the chaotic Lunar New Year atmosphere of Dihua Street.

  The lead agent tapped his earpiece. "Energy anomaly detected. Scans indicate one baseline human female and one high-dimensional entity inside. Presumed targets. Requesting permission to initiate capture procedure."

  A burst of piercing static—zzt-zzt—erupted in the earpiece, followed by a raspy voice that sounded like a beast tearing through its own throat. Distorted by a metallic tremor, it squeezed out two agonizing words:

  "Go... forth..."