He glanced at the digital monitor on his wall, which displayed a high-resolution scan of the ancestor he so clearly despised. He looked at the image of General Gao Wei with a cold, detached boredom, completely unaware that the "dead man" was the very reason his own heart gave a strange, rhythmic thud—a ghostly, biological echo—the moment he looked at the woman standing before him.
"Lin Jue, give her the NDA," Lu Wei commanded, turning his back to her to stare out the floor-to-ceiling window. "But before she signs, she needs to understand the specific conditions of this contract. I don't care how many masterpieces you've saved, Miss Su. In this office, my word is the only history that matters."
Lin Jue hesitated, glancing between his boss's rigid back and Yilin's pale face, sensing a tension in the room that felt less like an interview and more like a battlefield.
Lu Wei didn't turn around. He remained a silhouette against the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the modern skyline as if he were surveying a conquered territory. Behind him, Lin Jue placed a heavy, matte-black folder on the mahogany desk with a soft, clinical thud.
"Open it, Miss Su," Lu Wei commanded, his voice a cold, decisive frequency.
Yilin's fingers brushed the cool leather of the folder. Inside was a document thicker than any contract she had ever signed. The letters NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT were embossed in a silver font that looked as sharp as a blade.
"That document is the only thing keeping you in this room," Wei continued, finally turning to face her. He didn't sit; he leaned against the edge of his desk, crossing his arms. The movement caused his dark fringe to shift, once again teasing the shadow of a hidden mark on his brow.
"The Great Yan collection is not public property. It is my property. Some of these pieces have never been cataloged by the Ministry of Culture. They don't exist to the world, and they certainly don't exist to the press."
He stepped closer, his presence once again suffocating, cutting off the air in the room.
"Condition one: Absolute Secrecy. You will not take photos. You will not keep a personal journal of your findings. You will not discuss the 'emotional weight' of these pieces with your colleagues. If a single detail about the condition of the Great Yan relics leaves this building, I will not just fire you. I'll sue you into the stone age and make sure you never touch a piece of art again. I'll blacklist you from every museum on the planet."
Yilin felt the phantom heat in her chest flare—a sharp, stinging protest. "I am a professional, Mr. Lu. I respect the integrity of the work."
"I don't care about your respect. I care about your silence," he snapped, his eyes narrowing into slivers of obsidian.
"Condition two: Night Access Only. The restoration lab for this project is in the sub-basement. You will work from 8:00 PM to 4:00 AM. I don't want you seen by the daytime staff, and I don't want your... 'sensibilities' disrupting the museum's flow."
Lin Jue winced slightly at the harshness, but Lu Wei wasn't finished.
"And the most important rule," Wei said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous vibration that made the hair on Yilin's arms stand up.
"You're here to fix things. Period. You glue the pieces back together, you clean the dust, and you keep your head down. If you start talking about 'ghosts' or tell me the artifacts are 'speaking' to you—if you bring any of that mystical junk I saw in the gallery into my office—you're gone."
He leaned down, his face inches from hers. The scent of sandalwood and cold rain was so overpowering it felt like a physical weight, triggering a jagged flash of iron and smoke in her mind.
"Do we have a deal, Miss Su? Or is this job a bit too 'intense' for someone who cries at paintings?"
Yilin looked at the pen Lin Jue was holding out. Her heart gave a strange, rhythmic thud—a heavy, echoing beat. Across from her, Lu Wei felt the exact same thud in his own chest, though he masked it behind a wall of ice. She felt like she was signing her life over to the enemy, but she couldn't pull away.
Yilin stared at the heavy, matte-black folder, the silver ink of the NDA shimmering like a blade under the office lights. She felt the weight of Lu Wei's gaze—a cold, physical pressure that made the phantom heat in her chest pulse with a rhythmic, aching thud.
She cleared her throat, her voice steadying as she looked up from the contract. "I understand the secrecy, Mr. Lu. But my expertise is specifically in high-resonance artifacts. To do my job properly, I need to know the status of the primary piece. The Dragon's Eye—is it part of the first phase?"
The moment the name left her lips, the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
Lu Wei's expression didn't just harden; it turned to granite. He pushed off the edge of his desk, his height suddenly looming over her like a shadow from the Northern Wei portrait.
"Let's get one thing straight, Miss Su," he interrupted, his voice a low, dangerous vibration that cut her off mid-sentence. "I don't pay you to ask questions, and I certainly don't pay you to chase legends. Your 'expertise' is a tool I've rented. Nothing more."
He paced a short, predatory line across the mahogany floor, his charcoal coat fluttering. "You will follow my orders to the letter. You don't touch, look at, or even think about an artifact unless it is sitting on your workbench with my written instruction attached to it."
He gestured sharply toward the corner of the office where three heavy, iron-bound wooden crates sat, looking out of place against the modern decor.
"You start with those three crates. Nothing more, nothing less," he stated, his tone shifting into the icy frequency of an ultimatum. "They contain ceremonial shards and minor bronze-work. That is your world now. If I catch you wandering toward the high-security vaults or 'scouting' for legendary gems, I won't just void this contract—I'll have you escorted out by security before you can grab your coat."
"I understand, Mr. Lu," she whispered, picking up the pen.
"Good," he snapped, leaning down so close she could smell the sandalwood and cold rain once more. "Then sign. Lin Jue will show you to the sub-basement. Don't be late for your first shift. 8:00 PM sharp. If the sun is up, you shouldn't be here."
The walk away from the museum felt like escaping a vacuum. The moment those heavy bronze doors hissed shut, Yilin finally let out the breath she'd been holding, her lungs stinging as she pulled in the humid city air.
She stood on the wide marble steps, her legs actually shaking. The afternoon sun was pale, but compared to the sterile, freezing graveyard of Lu Wei's office, it felt like a furnace. She pressed a hand to the center of her chest, right against her heartbeat. It was thudding hard, a heavy, rhythmic ache that felt like it was still trying to sync up with the man she'd just left behind.
"Suffocating," she muttered, her voice lost in the roar of the afternoon traffic.
In her five years as a top-tier freelancer, Yilin had been treated like a surgeon. Curators in Kyoto and Paris usually spoke to her in whispers, offering her expensive tea and months of quiet to "connect" with the pieces. But Lu Wei? He treated her like a hired hand he didn't even trust with a hammer.
He was militantly strict, turning history into a series of gag orders and cold ultimatums. Walking into his world felt like stepping onto thin ice over a very deep, very dark lake.
With a few hours to kill before her 8:00 PM "sentence" began, Yilin headed three blocks over to a boutique coffee shop tucked away in a cobblestone alley.
The Gilded Bean was a quiet world of dark oak and brass, smelling of rich, burnt sugar and expensive beans. She collapsed into a leather armchair in the far corner, desperate to shake the taste of "iron and smoke" from the back of her throat.
"Double espresso," she told the barista, her voice still a little tight. "And a lemon tart. Extra tart."
As she waited, she opened her sketchbook, but her pen just hovered over the paper. Her mind kept looping back to that office—to the way Lu Wei had crowded her space, and the way that dark fringe of hair had been so perfectly placed to guard his left eyebrow.
Why is he so defensive? she wondered, staring blankly at the street. Most collectors bragged about their ancestors, but Lu Wei spoke of General Gao Wei like he was a mess that needed to be cleaned up.
She took a long, bitter sip of the coffee. Through the window, the sun was starting to drop behind the skyscrapers, stretching long, jagged shadows across the pavement. They looked exactly like the shadows in the Northern Wei portrait.
She pulled out the matte-black folder. Her signature at the bottom looked small and shaky. She was officially a ghost in Lu Wei's machine now.
"Three crates," she whispered to herself, her jaw tightening. "Nothing more, nothing less."
But even as she tried to force herself to relax, her thumb traced a circle on the wood of the table—the exact size and shape of the Dragon's Eye.
At exactly 7:55 PM, Yilin stood at the museum's service entrance—a heavy steel door hidden in the shadows of the loading dock. The city was glowing with neon now, but this corner of the building was pitch black.
The door buzzed and swung open. Lin Jue was waiting, his face washed out by the blue light of a security tablet. He looked exhausted, his professional "secretary" mask slipping just enough to show a flicker of genuine worry.
"You're on time, Miss Su," he said, handing her a heavy ring of magnetic keycards and a box of black nitrile gloves. "Mr. Lu is already upstairs in his private suite. He's... rigid about his nightly routine. As long as you stay in the sub-basement, you won't cross paths."
He paused as they stepped into the service elevator, his voice dropping so low it was almost lost in the hum of the machinery.
The elevator jolted, dropping deep into the bowels of the building. When the doors finally opened, the air hit her—cold, smelling of ozone, chemicals, and the unmistakable, heavy scent of a thousand years of dust.