Elena Santos is the most enigmatic restorer in the European art world. Her eyes, capable of discerning the finest color differences, now gaze upon a "half-beat" version of herself in the mirror. When she was shot in the chest in the Louvre's basement vault, the antique pocket watch on her wrist suddenly flipped backwards. Upon waking, she found herself back in her Madrid studio three months earlier, where a fax machine spouted a commission she had never accepted: a restoration of Leonardo da Vinci's lost sketch for "The Angel of Music." Reborn, Elena has acquired the uncanny ability to see the "marks of time." Every artifact is etched with golden lines, recording the secrets of those who have handled it. A 1793 French gold coin lets her hear the Titanic's whistle. The double markings on the bakery owner's body reveal a hidden identity. And in the antique mirror in her studio, there's always a "second-faster version of herself" sneering. As the restoration progresses, Elena discovers that "The Angel of Music" isn't a Renaissance work at all. The quantum symbols and time equations hidden within the painting point to a group of 15th-century scientists purged by the Church. Even more terrifying, all clues point to her dying before the same mirror in Venice in her first two reincarnations, and a third cycle has begun... When Lucas Claude of Interpol's Art Crimes Unit bursts into the studio with a gun, and when twelve mirrors in the bakery's basement, each reflecting a different death, shatter simultaneously, Elena must make a choice: continue as a "restorer," manipulated by various forces, or become a "time pattern pawnshop owner" who uncovers a six-century art scam?

Wen Ya, a top conservator at the British Museum, also operates as a secret Interpol agent known as "Nightingale." Three years ago, her father, a legendary conservator, died in a suspicious laboratory fire, leaving behind only fragmentary notebooks labeled "Ghost Gallery" and "Venice." When Leonardo da Vinci's lost manuscript, "The Flying Machine," suddenly resurfaces on the black market, Wen Ya infiltrates Venice to investigate, only to come face to face with the mysterious art collector Marcus Lane. This elegant British aristocrat, ostensibly the head of the "Ghost Gallery," actually carries a similar vengeful mission. From masked balls in Venice to underground auction houses in London, from the secret chambers of the Louvre to the ancient villages of Yunnan, the two gradually uncover a shocking conspiracy spanning three centuries: the "Medici Project." This organization, disguised as art smuggling, actually manipulates the dark underbelly of global politics and business. The deaths of both Wen Ya's and Marcus' fathers point to a common codename: "Red Cardinal."