The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 579 Shoulder Swallowing What kind of gem do you want as the lion's eye? Just tell me!

"This one... won't work."

"This one... won't work either."

"This one... still not okay? You don't like it? You don't want it?"

Shen Le lay on the table, picking up turquoise stones with tweezers and bringing them to the side of Jiantun, to the position of the beast's eye. He carefully felt the fluctuations coming from Jiantun and muttered:

"You still don't want this... What kind do you want? I've already visited all the jewelry markets nearby!"

From Dunhuang to Urumqi, and then to every major city along the Silk Road.

The Special Affairs Bureau and local dignitaries acted as guarantors, and they found jewelers and antique dealers to borrow the turquoise they had, so that Shen Le could choose:
Don’t buy one that is not big enough, don’t buy one without spiritual fluctuations, and don’t buy one that has fluctuations that are too dark, bloody, sinister, and tragic.

The remaining ones were placed one by one at the position of the beast's eye to see if they could match the entire shoulder swallow and the two original turquoises:

However, I walked along the Silk Road and looked everywhere I could, but couldn't find any. The stones I got were either dyed with magnesite, or pressed with mineral powder, or the quality was not good enough.

Really pure natural stones, many of which are not old enough, for example, in the past ten years, the goods in Shiyan that Shen Le could see did not fluctuate at all...

Shen Le had tried to settle for the second best option, which was to find a piece of turquoise that he thought was suitable and directly inlay it in. He had done this seven or eight times.

Each time, the result is exactly the same:
On the first day, I paid for it with all my heart, carved it with great effort, and set it in with great care;

When I got up the next day, I saw that the pit in the animal's eye was clean and there was nothing on it.

Looking down, I saw a small piece of mineral powder scattered on the table, which was far less than the size of the turquoise...

"You... you don't like it, just throw it to me! Gems of this grade are still a bit expensive!" Shen Le was furious:
"Why did you shatter it? Besides, there's more to it than just shattering it. If it's alive, I want to see the person. If it's dead, I want to see the body. Where's the body?!"

The beast's eyes did not shake or flash, but remained quiet, pretending to be just an ordinary stone.

Shen Le sighed and checked the surveillance video. He saw that during the night shift, the turquoise he had just embedded broke into three or five petals with a crack and fell to the ground.

Then, small balls of light flew up from the gravel and fell into the original beast's eyes, as if they were being eaten by two thousand-year-old turquoise stones...

Shen Le: “…”

Well, okay... I've traveled all over the Silk Road, but there's not one that satisfies you. Do you want me to go to the plateau to find one for you?

Wait!
Wait till I'm done!

Shen Le took his time, step by step. To find turquoise, he had to travel to different cities, deal with different people, and try each stone one by one.

During the travel and waiting time, you can spend your spare time on processing the shoulder thimble. For example, you can carve the lines of lion hair on the front of the shoulder thimble.

Carving is actually easier than hammering.

At least, that's what Shen Le thought.

The hammering is done outwards, and the pattern produced is reversed. You need spatial imagination to see it clearly. Even with the help of Lanzhuang, you need to slowly adapt to the coordination of hands and eyes.
Carving is carving inwards. Every line is under your own eyes and hands. What you see is what you get.

Not to mention, Shen Le had some experience in carving wood and jade before, and now he just replaced the wood with silver sheets.

Hook, drop, string, dot, various techniques, after Lu Yuanwai taught him once, he basically knew them by heart:
The real trouble is the fine processing. For example, on the edge of the shoulder, among the twisted hairs, tiny gold beads are welded:
"This bead is too small! The diameter is less than 0.5 mm, no, definitely less than 0.3 mm, and probably less than 0.1 mm. How is this gold bead made?"

Shen Le lay beside Jian Tun and looked at it carefully. The diameter of this gold bead was probably obtained by pulling the gold wire to its thinnest length, cutting it into sections, and then grinding the edges into a ball shape.

But it is not possible. After cutting, it will only be a cylinder and cannot be turned into a spherical shape. The processing precision in ancient times could not be that high!

"There is a trick to this." Mr. Lu leisurely took out a small straight-cylinder pot with high walls, which looked like an enamel pot.

Put a porcelain bowl upside down and pour in fine charcoal, so that a thick layer of black charcoal forms on the bottom of the pot and another layer accumulates on the surface of the porcelain bowl.

Then, he picked up a few gold pieces, weighed out about ten grams, and burned them with an acetylene torch, burning them into liquid gold in a crucible in one go:

"Look! There are four ways to make gold beads. This is the first one, the bead-splashing method!"

He held the crucible with tongs and slowly poured water in. The liquid gold hit the porcelain bowl and immediately splashed everywhere, turning into golden beads.
When the golden liquid was poured out, golden beads of different sizes fell into the charcoal, just like the black night sky inlaid with stars.

"gorgeous……"

Shen Le praised softly. Beside him, Mr. Lu was also silent for a long time, as if he was intoxicated by this rare and beautiful scene.

After a while, Shen Le came to his senses with a start:

"Wait! These gold beads are of different sizes and irregular shapes. It will be too troublesome to weld and inlay them with such gold beads!"

"Yes, so this is just the first method." Mr. Lu shrugged, took away the crucible, and swept the charcoal with a brush, carefully sifted it, and then collected the gold beads on the sieve:

“The splashing method is to pour the gold into charcoal, and the frying method is to throw the gold liquid into water or oil, letting it splash and form small gold beads.

——This method is fast and produces a high yield of gold beads, but it has one disadvantage: it is difficult to control whether the gold is condensed into a round shape, and the size of the gold beads is uncontrollable. So…"

He took out another crucible, poured a thick layer of charcoal into it, and then carefully and as evenly as possible sprinkled the gold threads cut into small pieces into the charcoal.

A layer of charcoal, a layer of gold wire, another layer of charcoal, and another layer of gold wire. After laying four layers, carefully lift the crucible and put it into the heating furnace:
"Come, let's take a look at the bead method. The bead method is to cut the gold wire into small pieces, put it into a crucible filled with charcoal powder, and heat it to melt the gold into particles.

Now we have an electric stove, so we don’t have to cook it slowly. Let’s set the timer: 1000 degrees for 10 minutes. Okay, then we just have to wait!”

Ten minutes was not a long time. Shen Le followed him to chisel a few lines and tried welding. The furnace reported that heating was completed.

Next, Shen Le watched Mr. Lu pour out the unidentified object in the crucible, smash it, wash it, and sift it to get some black beads covered with carbon powder.

Then use a blowtorch to burn off the carbon powder on the beads, and you will get a piece of golden beads.

Of course, there are also many unidentified objects mixed in, such as a pool of gold cakes, and a bunch of twisted and deformed things.

However, most of them are still gold beads, and they are relatively uniform in size and relatively round:
"The bead absorption method is to allow the gold wire to absorb and form beads after being melted. The advantage of this method is that it can produce round beads of uniform size;

The weakness is that if you want to get such round beads, you can’t produce too many gold beads at a time, and the distance between each section of gold wire must be as large as possible…”

Shen Le lowered his head and scraped the sieve. With the same raw materials, the number of gold beads that met the requirements was indeed more than if they were just randomly poured into the charcoal.

However, there are still many defective products, large and small, interconnected, or in piles, and we can only hope to recycle them.

Moreover, these gold beads are a bit bumpy when observed by themselves, probably the result of being physically squeezed by the charcoal...

"Not satisfied. That's right. Come, let's look at the last method, the bead blowing method. The gold beads blown out by the bead blowing method are the best among the four classical methods. They are beautiful and clean..."

Mr. Lu picked up another piece of gold wire. This time, he used an acetylene torch to burn the wire continuously. He watched as the end of the wire slowly glowed, turned red, and a drop of liquid condensed, teetering on the verge of falling:

Then, he grabbed a thin tube, held it with his left hand, pointed it at the end of the gold wire, held the ball at the other end of the tube with his right hand, and squeezed it hard.

A stream of air spurted out, and the drop of liquid at the end of the golden thread was immediately blown off and fell onto the water surface below.

Mr. Lu explained the key points of the action while squeezing the ball. When a small pool of golden beads condensed in the water bowl below, he stepped aside and handed the ball to Shen Le:

"Come on, you blow it. It's very simple. Just grasp the timing. The other work of fixing the gold wire and heating the gold wire has been done..."

Yes, it's all done. The heat from the acetylene torch is enough to melt the gold wire. It's very simple, and it burns quickly and cleanly.

If it were in ancient times, goldsmiths would need to burn gold wire over charcoal fire and it would not be so easy to burn it to the right temperature.

If you want to make the gold liquid fall by itself, or blow it down with a blowpipe, there is no such convenient ball to pinch, you can only hold the thin tube in your mouth and blow it...

Even if it is still the same method, the advancement of science and technology has brought great convenience to the current processing technology! Shen Le sighed silently. He followed Mr. Lu's instructions, pinched, pinched, and pinched again, and blew out hundreds of gold beads.

Next, for welding, there is no need to mess with the soldering flux. Just use the tip of the tweezers to pick up a gold bead, apply it to the surface of the shoulder and solder it upwards.

Shen Le's mental power made it easy to move a small golden bead, and then he extracted a little bit of gold power and filled it between them, allowing them to connect well together:
"Perfect!"

The surface of the shoulder swallow was chiseled, the gold beads were made, and the welding was completed. Two majestic lions were already standing side by side on Shen Le's workbench, and only two eyeballs were needed to complete the repair.

Shen Le walked around it clockwise, then counterclockwise. For a moment, he didn't even dare to reach out and touch it:

"I've set the turquoise for you. You won't turn into a real lion, will you? You won't jump out and bite me? ... If you promise not to bite me, will you blink your eyes or wag your tail?"

Jiantunli ignored him. It was obvious that no matter whether it would come alive after the eyes were installed, at least, it would not come alive before the eyes were installed:

Even the dragon painted on the wall would not break through the wall with a thunderclap and fly away, leaving only a broken wall for the monks before the two eyes were painted.

Shen Le listened for a long time but did not hear the lion's roar. He then used his mental power to slowly immerse it, feeling it bit by bit, but did not feel any strange fluctuations.

Even if I held it in meditation, trying to feel its vibrations, let it resonate with my own fragments, and point out the direction, I still didn't get an answer.

There is no choice but to pack up and go to the plateau!

"You are cruel! You are vicious! I will go to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to find eyes for you, okay!!!"

He packed his backpack fiercely and threw it on his body, then asked the Special Affairs Bureau to help drive:
"Let's go around the Tarim Basin first... I mean, let's go around Qiuci, Yutian, Shule, Yanqi, and the four towns of Anxi first!"

"...Wait a minute, I'll check where the four towns of Anxi are now..."

The guy in charge of driving gave Shen Le a dead look. There was nothing they could do. They were operatives, not archaeologists or history professionals.

Even if you have memorized these ancient and modern place names, it is not possible to immediately internalize them into common sense and plan a route map for your trip:

"Let me see...Yanqi is still called Yanqi, Qiuci is now called Kuche, Yutian is called Hotan after we went there, and Shule is called Kashgar...

Then, the most convenient way for us should be to go from Yanqi to Kuche, as the two are close to each other, and then drive west to Kashgar, and then go southeast back to Hotan..."

The desert is vast.

The off-road vehicle let out a powerful roar and ran at full speed on the road.

There is a desert on one side and a mountain range on the other. After running for an hour, the surrounding scenery did not change much, as if I was stuck in a vicious circle.

Shen Le held the suitcase and leaned against the back seat of the car, his eyes half open and half closed, as if he was asleep. All his attention was focused on communicating with the shoulder guard:

"There are no companions of yours here? No one who was once one with you? Nothing that can resonate with you?... Well, if there is nothing, there is nothing..."

There is none in Yanqi, none in Qiuci, and none in Shule.

When we arrived at Khotan, we turned the car inward and saw Professor Yu and his team still digging the earth. It was obvious that the archaeological project of the beacon tower was quite large and would not be completed in a short time.

Shen Le walked around the beacon tower for a long time, even going back and forth twice on the road from the beacon tower to HT City, but still didn't get an answer. He gritted his teeth:

"Let's go to the plateau!"

There are differences between plateaus. Shen Le didn't want to put too much pressure on himself at once, so he chose Qinghai as his first stop.

Qinghai is indeed a place rich in turquoise. Shen Le happily walked around the edge of the Ta'er Temple and found countless turquoise:

Inlaid on walls, inlaid on sculptures, inlaid on various jewelry, inlaid on knife handles and scabbards;
Placed on the counter, hung on people...

"How about it? Which piece do you like? As long as the target you like is not too troublesome, I can get it for you... But you can't eat it. You can't eat it before I let you eat it!"

Shen Le communicated with Jiantun silently. In this area, Jiantun's fluctuations also became stronger, as if it had just woken up, opened its eyes, and looked around at the world.

Although it is not yet able to express complex requirements, it can already convey some feelings and emotions:

"This way!"

"This way!"

"This way!"

Shen Le dragged his suitcase and slowly moved with the crowd. As soon as he reached the door, he was stopped:

"Sir, please leave your box for safekeeping - there is a safekeeping area over there!"

"Ah, but this luggage is very important and cannot leave my hands..."

"Sir, the temple has visiting rules! Please abide by them! You can bring a small backpack, but you really can't bring a suitcase!"

Shen Le sighed silently. He left the crowd, changed into a large mountaineering bag, and tried hard to stuff the shoulder armor and the box into it and packed it up.
When I got to the door again, I was stopped again:

"Sir, please store your bag..."

Okay, okay. Shen Le withdrew again, stuffed his two shoulders into Huang Yutong, and hung them on his wrists.

Their sense of touch was not that strong due to the ancient house. Fortunately, after sneaking into the temple, we were able to find a secluded place to take them out and hold them in our hands to observe them.

He walked slowly, along a long row of tall white towers, visiting them as he went. The upper part of the towers was pure white, slightly mottled in the snow.
In the lower part, vivid and majestic lions in various postures are sculpted on the bright cinnabar ground.

The mane, tail, floral decorations on the side, and even the small Buddha statues and pagodas on top of the tower, all have the unique blue-green color of turquoise, reflecting bright light on the tower.

No.

No.

Not here either.

These decorations were all good and exquisite, but they were not what Jiantun wanted. What attracted him was somewhere further away, deeper in the world...

But please don’t let it be a decoration on Buddha’s body!

No matter how much you ask for, I don’t have the ability to pick the gems from the Buddha’s head for you!
Shen Le walked forward cautiously, feeling anxious. He passed the Eight Ruyi Pagodas, circled outside, and then circled inside;
This solemn and magnificent palace, which was said to be built with 1300 taels of gold and taels of silver, had no place inside or outside that could resonate with Jiantun...

Next, the Small Golden Tile Courtyard, the Great Sutra Hall, and the Qishou Hall. Some are large, some are small and exquisite, some are solemn and sacred, and some are mysterious and profound.

Every place made Shen Le linger, and every place made Jian Tun greedily absorb the nearby air, but he could never point out a clear direction.

"Master, can we lower our demands a little?"

After walking through temple after temple with great difficulty, Shen Le collapsed on the side of the road, holding two packages and groaning:

"Do you really want me to walk from here to the Potala Palace?!"

The package in his arms vibrated. Then, Shen Le seemed to see two lions turning their heads at the same time, with blazing light shooting out of their two single eyes, pointing to the distance:
And the place where the two beams of light overlapped was probably, perhaps, possibly, the place he was looking for?

"Quick! Take me there!"

Shen Le jumped up and ran towards the guy from the Special Affairs Bureau. He rushed into the car, adjusted the shoulder in his arms, and pointed in a direction:

"Go that way! That way!!!"

(End of this chapter)