The sea stretched in shimmering waves beneath a cloudless sky. It was another bright, clear, sunlit day.
In Eaglebeak Point, a coastal fishing village in the southern Boli Kingdom, the young Lin Ping woke groggily from sleep and discovered that his mother had already cooked their meal and gone out to work in the fields.
His younger brother and sister were riding bamboo hobbyhorses in the clearing outside, playing at war. Their noisy shouts carried into the house.
Lin Ping rolled out of bed, then suddenly felt something press against his waist. He took it out to look and found that it was the strange coin he had picked up on the beach more than a month ago.
"How strange. Just what is this thing?"
The day after finding it, he had gone to ask the most learned old gentleman in the village, but the man had never seen anything like it either.
In his youth, the old gentleman had kept accounts for a wealthy household in town and had even served as a dock supervisor. He guessed that it was a coin from a foreign country.
Yet however one looked at it, it seemed to be nothing more than an ordinary copper coin.
After briefly asking where it had come from and learning that Lin Ping had simply found it on the beach, with nothing else nearby, the old gentleman had said no more. Lin Ping had asked no further questions either, and soon put the matter out of his mind.
Though the fishing village was poor, a single copper coin was hardly worth worrying about. Lin Ping put it away, then heard someone calling outside.
"Off to gather on the shore! A-Ping, are you up yet? Come on!"
"I'm up! Wait for me!"
Lin Ping hurriedly slipped on