Chapter 4: The Celestial Mechanism (Part 1)

The night watchman's clapper shattered Chang'an's predawn stillness. Shen Qinghuan awoke with her cheek pressed against dew-slick bluestone, a half-crushed lychee pit embedded in the tile seams—a cruel reminder that Yang Guifei's favorite fruit now symbolized her temporal displacement. The bamboo cane striking her back left no room for doubt: this was no VR simulation.

"Pei Xuanji! Rise!" The matron's screech echoed across the thirty kneeling maidservants. Qinghuan stared at her unfamiliar hands—silk sleeves embroidered with peony vines, the once crimson chastity mark now a shimmering serpent coiling toward her wrist.

As Empress Wu's entourage swept past, a pearl rolled from the imperial robes onto Qinghuan's trembling fingers. She nearly gasped—micro-engraved on its surface was "Lujiazui Exit C" in simplified Chinese characters.

The scent of rotting mulberries clung to the laundry courtyard. Qinghuan scrubbed damask undergarments, her reflection rippling in the well water—a girl of fifteen with a vermilion beauty mark between her brows. This body belonged to a disgraced official's daughter who'd drowned herself three nights prior, precisely when she'd fallen through time.

"Your chastity mark..." whispered A-Luo, her bunkmate. Qinghuan rolled up her sleeve—the serpent sigil now pulsed toward her elbow. Last night's clandestine trip to the Cold Palace had revealed cinnabar equations on rotting beams: HgS + O₂ → Hg + SO₂. The same mercury reaction from her father's journals.

"Pei Xuanji! Summoned to the Wardrobe Bureau!" The eunuch's rasp scattered sparrows. Qinghuan tucked away the jade amulet fragment from Consort Xu—its zirconium inlay glowed warm against her thigh.

Sixth-century winds carried cardamom and myrrh through vermilion corridors. Qinghuan trailed behind the matron, imagining her mother's face—would she weep or laugh knowing her daughter traded Shanghai's cubicles for Tang Dynasty splendor?

The Wardrobe Bureau reeked of panic. Twelve seamstresses wept over a ceremonial robe singed by candleflame—tomorrow's Heaven Worship required perfection. Qinghuan's nails dug into her palms. Modern nanotechnology couldn't help here, but the serpent sigil writhed across her vision, transforming charred silk into the Purple Forbidden Enclosure constellation.

"Peacock thread! Lapis powder! And... sulfur," she commanded. Gasps filled the chamber as she mixed ancient fire retardants. When the last pearl aligned with Dubhe, the robe billowed without wind. Three phoenix shadows danced across beams—the fabled "Triple Phoenix Omen" from history books.

Midnight rain pattered against paper windows. Qinghuan traced the zirconium inlay's facets, blood welling from her bitten lip. The jade fragment shimmered—Chang'an's map dissolved into Shanghai's skyline, Yanxi Gate morphing into the Shanghai Tower.

"Clever girl." A one-eyed eunuch materialized by her pallet, reeking of corpse agarwood—the stench from Chen Guodong's amulets. His claw-like finger traced her sigil. "No one's broken the Cold Palace curse in thirty winters."

As he vanished into storm, copper windchimes chimed the Lujiazui subway's eerie melody.

Dawn mist clung to Empress Wu's chambers. Kneeling on Sogdian carpets, Qinghuan watched her reflection merge with the Empress's dragon-embroidered robes. Memorials on the sandalwood desk detailed bronze statues unearthed in Luoyang—seven figures facing east, palms etched with Shanghai Metro Line 2.

"Consort Xu traded thirty lifespans for your arrival." Empress Wu's gold-tipped nail scraped Qinghuan's sigil, resonating with her mother's WeChat notification vibration. "Make the armillary sphere point to Ziwei tonight."

Qinghuan's plea stuck in her throat. History recorded the Qianfu Feast celestial miracle, but her mind burned with visions of Lujiazui's seventh sacrificial node. "I need three pecks of millet, seven mermaid-oil lamps... and lead powder."

Moonlight silvered the Observatory's bronze armillary sphere. Qinghuan mixed lead powder with saltpeter, her father's voice echoing through millennia: "Cinnabar explodes with lead, ignites with sulfur." The gnomon's shadow carved her bittersweet smile—the Xianqing Era alchemy disaster was the key to Shanghai's modern curse.

When the first meteor streaked across Chang'an, Qinghuan scattered her mixture. Modern chemistry collided with Tang metaphysics in a dragon-shaped explosion. As courtiers shrieked "Heaven's Mandate," the jade fragment burned—within its zirconium facet, her