She ripped off her tattered outer shirt, which was covered in mud and glaze, revealing another coarse cloth jacket underneath, equally worn but in a darker gray. This was what she had secretly prepared over the past few days.

She quickly tied the bundle to her back, her movements swift and efficient. Then, she went to the back wall. There were several broken baskets piled up there. She forcefully moved one of them, revealing a gap in the corner of the wall, barely the size of a dog hole, blocked by mud and straw.

Without the slightest hesitation, Jiang Chan crouched down like a snake and crawled out of the narrow hole using both hands and feet. Cold mud covered her body, and sharp stones grazed her elbows, but she paid no heed. Emerging from the hole, she found herself in a narrow, dead-end alleyway outside the workshop wall, piled high with garbage and emitting a foul stench.

She stood up without pausing, quickly assessed her surroundings, and, like a gray shadow, swiftly disappeared into the sparse, but leading-to-the-mountain, thicket of trees outside the wall, following the shadow of the wall. Her footsteps rustled softly on the fallen leaves and withered branches, the sound soon carried away by the wind.

She didn't turn around. Behind her, in the direction of the workshop, the fire seemed to be burning brighter, thick smoke billowed, and she could vaguely hear chaotic screams and cries, like the clamor of an apocalyptic collapse.

...

Three months later. In a medium-sized town several hundred miles from their hometown.

In the backyard of a small porcelain shop in the south of the city, sunlight streamed through the windows covered with Korean paper, dappling the clean, muddy ground.

The shop's old manager lifted the curtain separating the storeroom and stepped into the backyard, holding an empty teacup. From the front of the shop came the excited chatter of two young apprentices who had just returned from delivering goods. Their voices weren't loud, but they were clearly audible in the quiet backyard:

"Hey, have you heard? Something big has happened in that big town near our hometown, hundreds of miles away!"

"What's the big deal?"

"That 'Zhao's' workshop! It's gone! Utterly finished!"

"Huh? Zhao's? Such a big workshop, how could it just collapse like that?"

"Absolutely! I heard they were making tribute porcelain for the higher-ups, but the whole kiln of treasures cracked! Shattered to pieces! They really offended the master and the officials! But that's not the worst part! I heard that most of the warehouse was burned down, and all the stock inside was destroyed! What's even more bizarre is that their head manager, Zhao Kui, and the second manager, Steward Sun, somehow fell out and fought each other, resulting in several deaths! As a result, it was discovered that Zhao Kui embezzled wages, falsified accounts, and used inferior materials to cheat the master, and... he even had a murder charge against him! I heard there used to be an old craftsman at the kiln who refused to hand over any secret recipes, and he..."

"Wow! It's so dark?!"

"Of course! I heard that Zhao Kui was thrown into prison and all his property was confiscated! Manager Sun was also implicated and kicked out of the workshop. Nobody knows where he is now! Tsk tsk, such a big workshop, gone just like that! What a karmic retribution!"

Their voices carried a hint of sighs, but more so, the excitement of watching the spectacle...