This is going to be involved and complicated, be warned. I'll include screenshots to show you what you need to do, but even that isn't going to be much help if you don't understand why you're doing it. So just take it slow, save your game, and read on.

Two parts of the artifact move -- the outer ring (the mouse turns into an arrow in a circle) and the inner piece (the mouse turns into a hand). When you get the two pieces in the right spot, some of the teeth at the center of the inner piece will retract. When all the pieces retract, something interesting will happen (though it's not clear exactly what).

As Nancy said, you need both the comics you've been collecting and the journal you found in the gold mine (called "Jin's notebook" in your inventory) to figure out the right settings. Let's start with the comic.

On the very first page, you can see some odd figures drawn in the lower left panel; one looks like the astrological symbol for Aries, the other two are runes. So what?

Well, the blue outer ring of the artifact has the astrological symbols, and sure enough, there's Aries. So what do we do with the runes?

Go to Jin's notebook, and you'll see that he's labeled the different parts of the inner piece of the artifact with runes. The two runes we saw are located at the lower left and the upper right, see them?

Now we do as it says in the notebook. Move the inner piece (using the hand icon) until there are stars located at those two spots. In this case, the pointer on the inner piece will be pointing down and to the left.

Now move the outer right (using the circular arrow icon) until the Aries symbol comes near the arrow. If you have the inner piece in the right spot, two pins inside the inner piece will retract. Shazam! Only four more to go. (groan)

The five settings you're looking for can be found in the comic on pages 1, 3, 10, 12, and 13. The pages aren't numbered, though, so just count as you turn pages.

My strategy with this puzzle is to start with one star location and turn the inner wheel till I find a star in the right place. I then check the second star location to see if there's a star there. If there is, I turn the outer ring to the zodiac symbol. With any luck, it clicks and that one is done.

One last note: If you save halfway through and then restore, the artifact will totally reset and you'll have to start aaaaaaall over again. So better to just grit your teeth and get through it.

Here are the five settings you need. I'm not sure, but I think you might have to go in this order, which is the order they appeared in the comic.