Enchanted Skies

Chapter 2 Quantum Goddess of the Luo River

The restoration laser carved miniature rainbows across Su Wan's eyelashes. Clenching a gold-inlaid tweezers embedded with Hetian jade between her teeth, she attempted to peel half-melted neural catheters from beside Lin Shen's carotid artery. The silver filaments resembled flowing ribbons from “Eight-Seven Immortals Scroll”, yet disintegrated into crackle patterns mimicking Northern Song Ru ware upon air exposure.

"Your grandfather modified your peripheral nerves." Lin's Adam's apple grazed the Makara-patterned tweezers tip. "Otherwise you couldn't sustain quantum embroidery via 'Xiefang Stitches'." Indigo speckles seeped through his shirt—the same uncanny hue between patina and radiation from the “Manual of Extraordinary Mounting”.

Su's pearl hairpin suddenly pierced his supraclavicular fossa. The kingfisher-feather phoenix on its head began pecking at the speckles. "This is 'Artwork Diagnosis'," she rotated the jade Xuanji at the pin's end. "Su conservators always identify material pathologies before restoration." The pin emitted corrosion hisses reminiscent of Shang Dynasty bronze jue vessels, while the phoenix's eyes projected mortise-tenet structures from “Treatise on Architectural Methods”.

Holograms intertwined above them into X-ray composites of the Palace Museum's conservation ward. Lin saw miniature Ru ceramic shards lining his spine, each crackle pattern containing fragments of Van Gogh's “Starry Night”. Most shocking was the half-piece of mutton-fat jade thumb ring embedded in his seventh cervical vertebra—identical to what Su Wenlan wore when disappearing.

"You're cultivating artworks in human bodies?" Su's tweezers trembled for the first time, a lapse unseen even during her restoration of Yuan Dynasty Thousand-Hand Guanyin. Nano-tiles suddenly exuded ochre pigments from “A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains”, engulfing them in Wang Ximeng's azure fantasy. Distant alarms from MoMA New York echoed—they now existed in quantum superposition between Shanghai lab and “Travelers Among Mountains and Streams”.

Lin tore open his collar revealing a pocket watch with revolving “Xuanji Tu” palindrome poetry on its face: "Professor Jiang discovered three years ago that certain ancient artworks are essentially quantum projectors for higher-dimensional beings." He pressed the crown, the lab instantly transforming into Northern Song's Xiangguo Temple marketplace, vendor cries mingling with blockchain hash value fluctuations.

Su's peony birthmark burned. Her reflection in a bronze mirror showed fading complexion, morphing into Gu Kaizhi's depiction of Goddess Luò in “Nymph of the Luo River”. More terrifying was Lin—his irises split into movable-type characters from “Exploitation of the Works of Nature”, fingertips exuding gold-mercury amalgam used in bronze repairs.

"Don't touch that mercury!" She flung silkworm threads hidden in her qipao buttons—quantum-entanglement conductors woven via Ming Dynasty “Snow Maiden Embroidery Manual”. Upon binding Lin's wrist, the threads spontaneously formed “Mo Jing” optical law topologies, channeling amalgam back into the watch's twelve time record.

A 1930s telephone ring suddenly echoed. Screens displayed Louvre surveillance footage: Mona Lisa's pupils oozing the same azure-green pigment as Su's birthmark. Lin coughed violently, blood droplets containing microscopic “Qingming Scroll” grain boats.

"It's quantum art plague..." He wiped blood. "Professor Jiang warned...when neural cloud sync exceeds 70%..." Before he finished, Su's conservation case sprang open. Her grandfather's jade paperweight flew out, midair-writing luminous equations matching those on the Met's walls.

Stormwater inverted into the lab. In her final conscious moment, Su saw countless musicians from “Han Xizai's Night Banquet” pouring from Lin's wounds, strumming Tang Dynasty pipas that played binary-coded “Guangling San”.