The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 565: The old professor’s love and guidance are so heavy!
Fortunately, the Special Affairs Bureau personnel came out quickly. And as soon as they came out, they rushed to the things in Shen Le's hand:

"Mr. Shen, come this way! Come this way!"

"We have prepared a separate research room! It has an isolation array installed! You can safely leave the things you found in there!"

"The laboratory has one-way glass, detection equipment, and cameras, which allow experts to observe through the magic circle... They can see very clearly! It will not affect the professors' judgment!"

Shen Le happily walked in holding the box. Great, he was worried that the experts were only wearing protective instruments and could not completely isolate themselves from the impact of the helmets, so they were easily affected!

"You guys are very skilled at handling this!"

He was surrounded by three members of the Special Affairs Bureau in a triangle formation, intentionally or unintentionally separating them from the professors who were staring at their helmets with shining eyes. Shen Le chatted with them curiously:
"Does this happen a lot?"

"Of course!" The baby-faced, short-haired girl walking on the left side of Shen Le in the triangle formation raised her head proudly:

"Dunhuang, and even the entire northwest, are areas where we must focus our vigilance and deploy all our forces! This area is even more important than the southeast coast!"

"how is this possible?"

Shen Le didn't like to hear this.

The southeast coast is so important! In the small town of Zhuxi alone, several people were released, not to mention the nearby Magic City Special Affairs Bureau, which was heavily guarded!
Compared to the northwest, the last time he came to Dunhuang, he had a big fight at the solar power station, and the Special Affairs Bureau came slowly afterwards.

In Zhuxi Town, people arrived within five minutes after calling the police!

"Ah... this is just because we have a large area and few people..." The short-haired girl's baby face instantly turned red, and she explained with gestures:
"The southeast coast is densely populated! If non-human beings cause trouble, it is easy to cause harm, so we have to send a lot of people to watch over it! The northwest is where big guys are often raised!"

The corner of Shen Le's mouth twitched. What do you mean by a big guy?

Can't we use words that are a little closer to normal life?

"In the southeast, the Central Plains, and even near Chang'an, the population is dense, and all kinds of strange things have been cleared out over and over again like a dragnet."

On the right, the middle-aged man slowly added to his colleague's story. He looked at the girl with a look of pity and admiration:
“Moreover, so many cultivation sects have also established effective defense methods against various strange things in the Central Plains.

However, the west is vast and sparsely populated, and there is a lack of manpower. An old monster can hide for thousands of years without being discovered... Not to mention, this place often hides things that are not of our kind..."

Shen Le sighed and nodded silently. He had seen things that were not of his kind. One of the two groups fighting and killing in the sandstorm must have met this definition.

And these guys are probably more murderous, and the damage they cause will also be greater?
"We're here." Shen Le walked in from an alley on the left side of the research institute, turned three corners in a row, and entered a high wall. Finally, he saw the research laboratory standing in the middle.

The entire laboratory covers a very large area and is filled with a wide variety of instruments and equipment. Shen Le took a quick glance and could see most of the instruments he was familiar with.

He carefully put down the box in his hand and took out a piece of metal that looked like a helmet. Suddenly, an excited voice came from the microphone in the corner of the room:

"Hello? Hello! Can you hear me? Xiao Shen, this helmet you found is very valuable for research! - Can you leave it here so we can restore it together?"

Shen Le: “…”

No way, you want whatever you like, right?

"Xiao Shen, you are not in the armor repair business, you probably don't know the weight of this thing."

Next to the microphone, on the screen used for communication, a professor was visibly excited. He waved his hands and his cheeks flushed:

"Until now, ancient armor unearthed in China has always been rare, especially those from the Tang and Song dynasties and before - privately keeping armor is a capital crime!"

Oh. Shen Le understood immediately. Most people would never touch armor, and those who could touch it would not keep it privately.

For example, dig a hole in the mountains, dig a pit underground, bury it, etc. One set, two sets, there is no point. If you bury too much, are you trying to rebel?
If you want to exterminate all nine clans, just say so!
"Until now, most of our research on armor has been through records, murals, and sculptures. There are very few real objects, very few!" The old professor on the other side of the microphone was really worried:
"It is a great fortune for the entire archaeological field to be able to unearth this piece! Xiao Shen, can you…"

"drop--"

A sharp sound interrupted his talk. Shen Le took the probe off the helmet and turned to look at the screen:
"This professor..."

"My surname is Bai."

"Professor Bai, you have also seen it. The detector is sounding the alarm. The spiritual energy contained in this helmet is far beyond the level that non-practitioners can access..."

Without him saying anything, the data from the detector was quickly displayed on the screen opposite.

Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands. The rightmost digit is a green light, the middle one is a yellow light, and starting from three digits, all are red lights.

On the detector screen, a long row of red numbers kept jumping...

"Ah...uh..."

There was a dead silence. Behind Professor Bai, two professors with gray hair and three or four young and middle-aged professors stood next to each other, as if they had used up all their strength to avoid getting into the screen.

People can't teach people, but things can teach people once. These researchers also went through several nightmares, hallucinations, and serious illnesses and were hospitalized before they accepted their fate and learned to abide by the rules of the Special Affairs Bureau...

"Then...Xiao Shen..."

Professor Bai panted for a long time and then sighed:
"You're planning on repairing this helmet, right?"

"That's for sure!"

"Then you have to repair it carefully! Repair it carefully! If there is anything you don't understand or are unsure about, feel free to ask us. We are here to provide technical support at any time!"

"Thank you, teachers!" Shen Le bowed slightly in gratitude. Then, Professor Bai couldn't wait to give instructions:

"Don't rush to start repairing it! Scan it first! Record it first! Record all its images and features, and compare and study them. Only start when you are confident!"

Without their guidance, Shen Le was also very familiar with the steps of this repair. He first set up the scanner, adjusted it to the fine scanning mode, aimed it at the helmet, and recorded it carefully bit by bit;

Then, prepare the X-ray diffractometer and CT machine, and start them one by one;
Finally, I found a drawing board, clamped a piece of white paper, and began to copy stroke by stroke:
Although the instruments will spit out the results, only what you see with your own eyes and draw with your own hands can be imprinted in your heart.

Then, only the things you remember can be compared with various materials to find out the original appearance of the item to be repaired...

"Oops, it's crooked again..."

"Oops, it's off again..."

“Why do the things I draw always look wrong?”

Shen Le crumpled up one ball of paper, then another. To be honest, he was not a graduate of the art exam, so of course he could not be admitted to the cultural relics restoration major at their university.

The result of his hard work after entering university was that his painting skills were basically acceptable when it came to drawing houses, carvings on window frames, gargoyles on eaves, etc., but he was not so good at anything more detailed.

Especially now, Shen Le had to grasp the most important features of this helmet that had been hammered flat and had blurred and dim patterns. He always felt that he was not good enough...

【I come! 】

With a slight shake of his wrist, the dice-sized ancient house jumped up, rolled to the ground, and expanded to a one-foot square.

In the tiny house, a figure in a skirt fluttered and flew out. The farther away from the ancient house, the bigger the figure became, and gradually it became as tall as the whole body.

It floated to Shen Le, touched another drawing board, clamped a piece of white paper, raised its long sleeves slightly, and rolled up the drawing paper and started painting.

Light and dark, front and side, thick and thin, everything was handled with ease. Shen Le's jaw dropped as he watched from the side:
"Hey, when did you learn this? I thought you only knew how to paint Chinese paintings!"

[What's so difficult about this? If you have a foundation in Chinese painting, shouldn't learning sketching be a piece of cake? There are so many teaching videos online! ]

Luoqun turned slightly, facing him for a moment, then turned away again, as if glancing at him lightly. With just this one turn, her graceful and charming figure made Shen Le feel a fragrant breeze blowing on his face:

[Besides, even Chinese painting requires a draft. Who can't draw a draft with an eyebrow pencil? ]

Okay, okay. Shen Le spread his hands and continued to work on his own draft. Outside the restoration room, a group of professors exclaimed in admiration:
"How can such a thing happen..."

"With these assistants helping with the work, it's no wonder that we don't need to help..."

"Yes, a beautiful woman with red sleeves. We old guys don't need it..." "Wait, there are only clothes but no people. Can this also be considered a beautiful woman with red sleeves?"

"At least it has sleeves, right? It has sleeves and it's pretty, so why doesn't it count?"

"Alas, according to the standards of the Special Affairs Bureau, we cannot approach such beings, as it will have a negative impact on us..."

Everyone looked at it for a while, shook their heads and sighed, then dispersed to do their own work.

Shen Le was left walking back and forth holding the helmet. He took photos and scanned them, and then did a CT scan. He went through all the preliminary research that could be done.

Finally, I walked out of the laboratory with a thick stack of information and went to ask the old professors for advice:

"Teacher, look at this helmet. I always feel that the shape doesn't look like the style of the Central Plains. It has a bit of the flavor of Tibet... Is my perception wrong, or is this helmet actually used by the Tibetans?"

"Oh, oh." Professor Bai flipped through the documents Shen Le brought over one by one, his eyes focused. After a long while, he stood up and walked to the bookcase, and took down two large volumes:
"The helmets of that time were originally quite unrestrained in shape. Look, this is a warrior figurine with a tiger helmet unearthed from a Tang tomb. The tiger head has a ferocious face, two horns sticking out of its head, a wide nose and a big mouth, and its eyes are wide open..."

He very skillfully flipped through several pages in succession and bookmarked each one so that Shen Le could take it home and read it:

"Of course, the shape of the warrior terracotta warrior helmets may not be the same as the real helmets, so they can only be used as a reference.

Moreover, these warrior figurines mainly appeared in the early and middle Tang dynasties, and may be from a different period than your helmet..."

Shen Le looked at the album carefully and nodded silently. To be honest, it is hard to say which of the helmets of these clay and pottery figurines is more unrestrained compared with the helmet styles of the Silk Road countries and the Tibetan region:

Perhaps after all, it is a statue, and it is placed in a tomb, so there is no need to consider the production process, cost, protective power and other issues. As long as it is as scary as possible, the craftsmen can let themselves go?

He looked at the atlas with a little doubt, silently wondering whether the records of these clay figurines were reliable. Professor Bai seemed to see his thoughts and skillfully opened another book:

"However, the murals and warrior figurines do correspond to reality. Take a look at Mr. Yang Hong's book "Ancient Chinese Armor", and the armor specimens shown in the Tang Dynasty armor type table..."

He flipped through the pages one by one, and five different helmet forms appeared one by one.

Although the first two types of helmets have ear protectors on both sides, the ear protectors are vertically downward. Starting from the third type, ear protectors with both sides rolled up appeared.
The fourth type is particularly outstanding, while the fifth type is based on the statue of the God King in Cave 194 of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, showing the typical style of helmets after the mid-Tang Dynasty:
"From the early Tang Dynasty to the middle Tang Dynasty and close to the Five Dynasties, we can see obvious development and changes. This helmet you brought..."

Shen Le kept nodding his head while comparing the photos in his hand. You can't tell much from a single photo, but when you put it on the book, you can see the corresponding form:

"You can definitely see the earmuffs are curled up...but..."

"However, the earmuffs can be made into this shape because of the great progress in smelting technology. If the steel is not flexible enough, it cannot be rolled up." The old professor smiled:
"The iron smelting technology of Tubo at that time was not as good as ours. So you said that this helmet was used by Tubo people. It cannot be ruled out - after all, it is normal to pick up equipment on the battlefield - but the probability is not high."

Shen Le finally breathed a sigh of relief. Although this helmet was left to him by Sha Bao, and he could feel what Tang Jun was thinking, but what if?
What if after all the trouble we find out that the person is from Tibet? Wouldn’t that be disgusting?
He took the pile of information home and read it over and over again. He read it all night long, and then picked up the pen to draw the helmet pattern. The pattern he drew was completely different:
The entire helmet, from a metal plate that was smashed into a lump, turned into a complete three-dimensional shape.

The metal plate is slightly downward at the center of the eyebrows, presenting a soft wavy arc that just protects the forehead; the ear protection parts on both sides are rolled outwards;
As for the top of the helmet, there is a long ridge protruding upward, and the top is broken, as if there must be some ornament that was broken off on the battlefield or over the course of a long period of time.

It is not possible to verify it for the time being, so Shen Le just drew a high line here and put a question mark:
Wait until the helmet is restored, or the entire set of armor is restored, and you have a clear idea of the style of the helmet, then add the decorations!
The helmet that had been CT scanned was once again placed under the X-ray diffractometer and spectrometer, and scanned carefully round by round. This time, Shen Le scanned out more things:
"Silver atoms can be seen on it, so it should be decorated with silver flakes - no, there is also mercury remaining in the same place, so it should be silver-plated, processed in a silver-plated way."

"The spectrum of the broken part is a little different. We can take a sample and spray it with luminol reagent. I suspect there is human blood on it, but I don't know if it can be used for DNA testing.

Also, theoretically there should be blood on the surface of the helmet, so you can spray it. Tsk, how can you spray the reagent on a damaged and rusty helmet without damaging the helmet itself?"

"There should be soft padding on the edge and inside of the helmet? Maybe there are ropes or something to facilitate fixing it?"

"That's normal. Without these things, how can you wear a helmet? Modern helmets have linings." Professor Bai naturally instructed him:

"Don't rush to repair it. Take samples first and take out these remaining items for inspection. Find as many as you can!"

How do we take samples from this?

This thing has been buried in the desert for thousands of years!

Shen Le felt his forehead buzzing. The old professor laughed and threw another stack of information over:
"Here, take a look. This is an iron armor unearthed from a Han Dynasty tomb in the northern suburbs of Chang'an in 1991. The original materials and copies of the materials are all here - take a closer look to see how they did the research!"

Shen Le held the documents in both hands, and the wall immediately sank. At the top of the documents was a paper published in a journal, which was only fourteen pages long.
However, following the index of the paper, I kept flipping through the information, and the information became richer to a certain extent. When it was first unearthed, the pile of soil looked a bit strange;
When the earth was dug up, a pile of rusted fragments were found buried in the soil.
Then we clean up all the loose pieces, separate them one by one according to their types, count their numbers, and weigh them;
Then, record the connected nail pieces that retain the combination relationship, as well as the remaining stitching traces on the nail pieces...

“You can tell from this…”

Shen Le felt like his eyes were about to stick to the photo. The rust marks on the nail plate were very heavy, very heavy, and it looked fragile and bumpy just by looking at it;

When our predecessors at that time identified the traces of silk decoration and braided ribbon decoration, they were probably about to stick the eyes onto the nail plates, right?

He carefully examined the pages and photos one by one. The armors dug out from the Han tombs can be roughly divided into eight forms and 12 categories, with a total of 2857 pieces.

Senior scholars were very rigorous and made detailed records, measurements, weights, and photos of each form category. By putting the photos together, you can roughly see the difference in decoration:
"Well... after watching it for a while, I can probably make a judgment..."

Simply put, the gold and silver sheets are pasted, and there are traces of gold and silver left on the armor plates - after all, gold and silver are not so easily corroded;
For the iron sheet with silk, the corrosion on the surface is relatively light and smooth;
It is decorated with ribbons, and you can see traces of twisted threads...

"I see! Professor, is there anything real that I can look at so I can better understand it?"

"No." Professor Bai spread his hands. "This set of armor was unearthed in Chang'an, and the museum should also be in Chang'an - I don't know if it has been loaned out for exhibition.

Anyway, very few of these things have been unearthed, and we don’t have them here!”

Okay...okay.

Shen Le was torn between "looking for favors and connections to go and take a look at the actual armor and then come back to repair his own" and "directly studying the armor in his hands".

In the end, my personality prevailed. I decided to be self-reliant first, and then ask for help if it didn't work:

He sat back in front of the helmet, closed his eyes, and slowly extended his mental power. Inch by inch, minute by minute, he carefully sensed the helmet and every bit of power on it:
Metal Element… Metal Element… or the power of Metal Element… This is a little different, but it is also the power of Metal Element.

Wait, in some places in the holes on the edge of the helmet, I can feel power that is not the metal element. Is this the sample I want to take?

Is it silk, cotton, or something else?
Sometimes, hemp rope may be used to connect the nail plates together!

Shen Le sat in front of his helmet, motionless. To others, he seemed to have been in a daze for two hours.

After being in a daze, I suddenly jumped up like a rabbit and pounced on the computer. I clicked on the 3D scanning image and started to annotate it bit by bit:
There's something different here!

There is something here that is not armor!

There's...protein here?

The hole here has slight signs of wear and tear, and the material is different from other places... So, the rope is threaded through here?

Shen Le was busy for an hour, marking all the parts he sensed, and then placed them under the instrument to examine them bit by bit.

Spectrometer, diffractometer, magnifier, microscope...

After two days of hard work, he was finally ready to start taking samples. As soon as he picked up the tweezers, the old professor's voice came again:
"Don't just take it out like that! Make a stand, fix it, and put it under the microscope—

Use a small brush to brush it little by little! Use a fine needle to pick it out little by little! After brushing and picking, use the smallest vacuum cleaner to vacuum it, and finally use tweezers to pick it out! "

Oh, after all, they are engaged in the restoration of ancient buildings, so they are extravagant.

The unearthed armor requires such delicate restoration work that if it is a little rough, it will damage the armor itself!
Shen Le: “…”

OK, OK... I didn't expect to have to make a shelf... Fortunately, making a shelf is easy, and the research institute has enough materials...

Shen Le was ready to go. Before he started, two clay figurines jumped out and expertly cut bamboo strips, tied them together, applied plaster, and shaped them.

All the actions were exactly the same as when Shen Le restored the clay figurines, first setting up the frame and then applying the clay, except that he saved the trouble of applying coarse and fine clay layer by layer.

Seeing the smooth and flowing movements, Shen Le couldn't help but sigh:
"If you can regain your spirituality faster, you can even cultivate yourself, and I won't have to do the work..."

The two clay figurines turned a deaf ear to them. After wrapping the helmets with plaster, they even knew to cover them with a layer of plastic wrap to prevent the plaster from contaminating the helmets before they left.

Shen Le sighed, brought the helmet, carefully placed it on the shelf, and pushed the microscope over:

Get to work!
Our predecessors also restored the cultural relics little by little in this way!
(End of this chapter)