Chapter 1: Light in a Broken Bowl

Chen Yan woke up choking on the smell of rancid cooking oil.

Half an old newspaper was pressed against his face, the ink smudging his cheek, the chill biting deep. He didn't know how long he'd been passed out; half his face felt numb, and bits of paper clung to the corner of his mouth. He propped himself up on his elbows. Before him was a dense sprawl of market stalls—rusty coins, fake jade bracelets, and lidless zisha teapots laid out on plastic sheets. The vendors squatted on small stools, smoking. The embers glowed and faded, gray wisps of smoke swirling in the morning light before being torn away by the wind. Faded sunshades stretched overhead, their frayed edges fluttering, casting flickering patches of light onto shards of porcelain. In the distance, someone was tapping bronze with a small hammer—*ding, ding, ding*—mixing with the loud haggling of the crowd. It was a frantic, hollow kind of energy. This was Antique Street, but he wasn't supposed to be here. One moment he had been in a workshop applying gold leaf to a Song Dynasty Qingbai bowl; a sudden tremor in his wrist, and the world had gone black. His memories felt like two separate ropes twisted together: one was his own, the other utterly foreign. He was now the son of Chen Shouzhuo, a porcelain repairman. His mother had died young, and he and his father ran a repair shop at the end of the street, living in absolute poverty. He pressed his fingers to his temples, feeling a rhythmic throb. Two different lives were colliding in his head, neither willing to back down. He tried to silently recite his name, but two different names danced on his tongue—one familiar, one strange—and neither felt solid.

"Awake, are we?" A fat-faced vendor squatted over, waving three red hundred-yuan bills. "You crashed into my stall earlier and smashed a pair of vases. Three hundred bucks. I've taken the money, so we're square."

Chen Yan looked down. There was indeed a coarse porcelain vase shattered in two at his feet, the break fresh and the white core jarring. But the clay was as loose as dried mud; a flick of his fingernail sent a shower of powder flying. This was "three-for-ten-yuan" trash. His throat felt dry. As he opened his mouth to speak, the vendor's face darkened, his voice rising. "The idiot son of a repairman breaks something and now he wants to play dumb? Your old man's tricks might fool some people, but they won't fool me!"

The surrounding vendors looked over, some smirking, others shaking their heads. Chen Yan felt his pockets. Empty. Three hundred yuan was his father's medication money for the month. He knew he was outmatched—he couldn't out-talk a seasoned street shark. Gritting his teeth, he shuffled toward a corner. The vendor snorted, stuffed the money into his waistband, and turned to hail a customer, his fleshy back wobbling as he muttered under his breath.

The corner was a heap of unwanted junk: a legless incense burner, chipped plates, blackened bronze locks. Chen Yan squatted there, a heavy weight pressing on his chest. He wiped his face, leaving streaks of gray dust and ink across his skin. While rummaging blindly, his fingertips brushed against a bowl.

A celadon bowl, about the size of a palm, with a clean chip missing from the rim. The glaze was a dusty gray, covered in grime; it looked like nothing more than garbage. For some reason, he picked it up—perhaps the instincts of a repairman's son were faster than his brain. The bottom of the bowl rested in his palm; it was cool, heavy, and the body felt substantial. The jagged edge of the chip dug into the web of his thumb, snapping him into focus.

He stared at the bowl, his eyes stinging.

Three seconds.

A layer of something shimmered into view. It wasn't light or mist, but a complete bowl—translucent, hovering just above his palm. The rim was perfectly round, the curve sweeping from the lip down to the foot, the glaze a pale, ethereal green, like the sky after a rain. Where the physical bowl was chipped, a piercing red light flared on the phantom image, making his eyelids twitch.

Chen Yan's hand shook; he nearly dropped the bowl. He blinked, but the phantom remained, rotating to show the bottom. Inside the foot-ring was a series of fine spiral marks left from the throwing process. The physical bowl was missing this section.

His breathing slowed. The focus of a craftsman overrode his terror. He rotated the bowl, and the phantom followed, the highlighted gap locked in the exact same position. Then, a few lines of text floated beside the image. They weren't in any known language, yet they echoed in his mind like a whisper:

【Missing List: One rim shard, one body shard. Total missing: two pieces.】

【Rim Shard: Three-finger length, curved edge, grayish-green glaze, 2mm thickness.】

【Body Shard: Nail-sized, contains one kiln crack.】

【Source Shards Location: Within ten meters.】

Ten meters. Chen Yan looked up. Ten meters covered half the street's stalls—all those plastic sheets, cardboard boxes, and burlap sacks. His palms began to sweat. As the bowl became slippery, he quickly shifted his grip, locking the foot-ring between his knuckles.

"Well, well." A voice pressed down from above. The fat-faced vendor had wandered back, arms crossed, looking down at him. "The repairman's idiot son thinks he can appraise porcelain? That piece of junk has been rotting in the corner for three years and nobody wanted it. You treating it like a treasure?"

Chen Yan didn't say a word, pulling the bowl closer to his chest.

"Fifty." The vendor held out his hand. "If you really love it, fifty and it's yours. Don't complain about the price; I'm the only one on this street with a bowl."

Fifty. Chen Yan knew he was being extorted. If it were actually valuable, it wouldn't have sat there for three years; if it were truly trash, it wouldn't be worth fifty. He fished out the last crumpled fifty-yuan bill from his pocket—the medicine money. He rubbed the edge of the bill with his thumb. The paper was soft from sweat, the corners curling. In his previous life, he had repaired hundreds of bowls, and not once had he seen something like this. He didn't know what had happened to him, but he knew the two missing pieces were within ten meters, buried in this junk.

He handed over the money. The vendor paused, checked the bill against the light, and stuffed it in his pocket, still sneering. "Fine, fools have their luck. When your old man asks, don't say I ripped you off—you're the one who insisted on buying it."

Chen Yan stood up, his knees numb. He didn't leave; instead, he drifted toward the stall to his left. The "within ten meters" text faded, but the direction remained.

The left stall was a pile of porcelain shards sold by the pound, five yuan per jin. The vendor was an old woman nodding off. Her head bobbed, her snoring rising and falling in rhythm with the street noise. Chen Yan squatted down, digging his fingers into the pile, flipping through the pieces one by one. Green, white, brown—mostly kiln failures and rejects with sharp, stinging edges. He searched meticulously, rubbing his fingertips along every edge as if taking a patient's pulse. On the seventh piece, he stopped.

A nail-sized piece of celadon, grayish-green glaze, with a curved crack along the edge. He held it up to the light; the body was thick and the glaze thin, a perfect match for the bowl in his arms. On the phantom image, the red dot on the body dimmed.

His hand trembled slightly. He didn't pocket it immediately but searched a bit more. The old woman woke up, squinting at him. "Young man, what are you picking through? Five yuan a pound, weigh it when you're done."

"Ma'am," Chen Yan's voice was tight, "can I... just buy this one piece?"

The old woman glanced at the shard and waved him off. "Just take it. It's so small the scale wouldn't even register it."

After thanking her, Chen Yan clenched the shard in his palm. The tension in his chest was nearly unbearable—one piece left. The rim shard: three-finger length, curved edge. Within ten meters, where could it be?

He looked across the street. Under a blue canopy, a figure in a gray jacket was hunched over a cardboard box, moving slowly, stopping every few seconds to stretch his back. Chen Yan recognized him: Zhou Dehai, the junk collector. He was an old acquaintance of his father's, a grumpy old man who spent his days cursing and pushing a rickshaw piled high with scrap. His father had warned him that Old Zhou had a foul temper and was best avoided.

But the ten-meter radius happened to encompass Zhou Dehai's rickshaw.

Chen Yan crossed the street. The fat vendor's voice trailed after him: "Hey, kid! You can't fix that bowl! Sell it back to me for ten bucks later, I'll use it as a flowerpot!"

He didn't look back. He pressed the bowl tight against his ribs; the rim dug in, causing a dull ache.

The pain felt grounding.

Zhou Dehai's rickshaw was parked by the canopy, the bed a chaotic mess of scrap metal topped with a chipped porcelain basin. The old man was squatting by the vehicle, scrubbing a bronze lock with a rag. He spat on the ground. "Rusted to hell and they still call it a treasure. Blind idiots."

Chen Yan stopped. Before he could speak, Zhou Dehai looked up and started barking. "Well, if it isn't Chen Shouzhuo's boy. Did you eat all the gold leaf your father used for his work? Look at your face—you've got the same look your old man had when he gambled away the family fortune."

"Uncle Zhou," Chen Yan stepped forward, holding out the bowl. "Could you take a look at this for me?"

Zhou Dehai sneered. "Look at what? A chipped bowl. People wouldn't even pick this up off the street. Did your father teach you to fix porcelain but forget to teach you how to spot junk?"

"I'm not appraising it," Chen Yan said. "I just want to know if the missing piece of this bowl is on your rickshaw."

Zhou Dehai stopped scrubbing. He looked up, his eyes narrowing as he scanned Chen Yan's face. Suddenly, he threw the rag into the bed and stood up. He wasn't tall, but he had an imposing presence. "What did you just say, kid?"

Chen Yan didn't flinch. The bowl in his arms felt warm, and the red dot on the phantom rim was pointing directly at the rickshaw, glowing blindingly bright.

"I said," he squeezed the words out through a dry throat, "this bowl is missing a piece. Three fingers long, curved edge. I think you have it."

Zhou Dehai stared at him for a full five seconds. Then, he suddenly grinned, his face folding into a map of wrinkles. He reached out and smacked Chen Yan on the back of the head. "Not bad, kid. You've got a sharp eye. Better than your father." The blow wasn't light; Chen Yan's ears rang, but he didn't move.

The old man bent over and started rummaging through the scrap, the metal clattering loudly. He reached the bottom and pulled out a palm-sized piece of celadon, holding it up to Chen Yan. "Picked this up from the west side yesterday. Found it in a basket of shards. The glaze looked decent, so I kept it. Is this the one?"

Chen Yan looked down.

Three fingers long, curved edge, grayish-green glaze. The red dot on the phantom rim vanished instantly. The entire phantom bowl flashed for a second, the gap closing, the rim becoming perfectly round and smooth, as if it had just come out of the kiln.

As he reached out to take the piece, the moment his fingertips touched it, pale words appeared in his mind:

【Source shards collected. Complete Form progress: 2 of 2.】

【Repairable.】

Chen Yan looked up, clutching the shard. The slanted sunlight made the rickshaw gleam and illuminated the old man's mischievous face. Zhou Dehai crossed his arms, looking at him with a mix of curiosity, surprise, and something else he couldn't quite name.

"Uncle Zhou," Chen Yan said, his voice steadier than before, "do you have any other porcelain shards on this truck?"

Zhou Dehai raised an eyebrow. "What, you want to go scavenging now?"

Chen Yan didn't answer. He looked down at the bowl in his arms. The phantom had vanished, but he remembered the spiral marks on the foot-ring and that rain-sky green. He knew this bowl could be fixed, and he knew that within ten meters of this street, this wouldn't be the only bowl he could see.

He looked deeper into the street. Stall after stall, the hum of voices, the flapping of plastic sheets in the wind. A sunshade billowed, a patch of light dancing at his feet before settling. In those heaps of unwanted junk, who knew how many chipped bowls, cracked plates, and broken furnaces were waiting to be found?

"I do," Chen Yan said.