The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 660 Immortal Master, why are you making me dig up a grave in the middle of the night?
"Is it bone meal?"

Shen Le blurted it out. The moment the three words left his lips, he suddenly shuddered, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

He had also considered the possibility of bone meal. This powder didn't resemble wood ash, titanium dioxide, calamine, gypsum, or any other white mineral powder he had ever touched.
The powder isn't very fine; it feels rough and prickly to the touch, and upon closer inspection, it appears to have a slightly scaly texture.
Of course, it also contains visible stone powder. There's nothing you can do about it; in ancient times, if you wanted to grind it up, it was impossible to avoid bringing some other things down with it.

Moreover, bone ash is not a very rare raw material. Looking back from later times, bone ash was mixed into the firing of gray porcelain and low-temperature lead-glazed pottery, such as Tang tri-color pottery and Ming and Qing glazed pottery.

Not to mention bone china, which contains more than 25% bone ash in the porcelain body, resulting in porcelain that is delicate, thin, and warm to the touch, like jade...

However, Shen Le did not immediately use bone meal for experiments, mainly for two reasons. First, bone meal was used to fire low-temperature lead-glazed pottery because it could not withstand very high temperatures:
Calcium phosphate is prone to decomposition under high temperature (above 1250°C) reducing atmosphere, which may cause the glaze to turn yellow, blister or produce pinholes, and make it impossible to fire a pure white glaze.

Secondly, Shen Le felt that the bone ash was too coarse. If it wasn't ground finely enough, it wouldn't be evenly ground during firing, and the reaction with other glazes wouldn't be perfect, resulting in patches of lumps...

But now, as Shen Le stared at the flickering green light inside the paper package and heard the endless wailing in his ears, he felt a chill run down his spine.

If the green light is the natural color of phosphorescence, then those wails, cries, and screams, if not deliberately created by the "immortal master" to frighten him, can only mean one thing:

"...Human bone powder..."

"This is your property, how would I know?" The young man flicked his sleeve again, and the sound and light effects in front of Shen Le immediately stopped, as if nothing had happened. He still had a packet of ordinary gray-white powder in his hand.

He breathed heavily for a few moments, blinked hard, and looked at the young man:

"So--"

"What else do you want?"

The "Immortal Master" frowned. Shen Le hesitated for a moment, then simply reached out his hand:

"Could you teach me a few immortal techniques? Like that eye-opening one from earlier, so I can find suitable bone powder—hey, hey, don't go!"

It was too late. The "Immortal Master" leaped up, transforming into a streak of white light, and shot out, disappearing from sight. Shen Le reached out to the sky, sighed futilely a few times, and could only helplessly lower his hand.

"You refuse to teach, huh? You want me to burn the stuff out, huh? Fine..."

This is what it's like to work for a client... If you want to apply for the next round of funding, the previous round has to be approved first... There's not much to say, just get to work!

Shen Le let out a long sigh of relief and rolled up his sleeves. Turning his head, he looked at the timid, hesitant laborers in the distance and raised his voice:
"What are you looking at? Those who are mixing the clay, hurry up and mix the clay; those who are pounding the materials, hurry up and pound the materials; those who are tidying up the firewood, hurry up and tidy up the firewood! If you delay the Immortal Master's business, be careful that the Immortal Master will be angry and wipe out our entire kiln!"

Okay... Shen Le couldn't say something like, "If the Immortal Master wants my head, I'll take yours first," but he could still use the Immortal Master as a threat to unleash an area-of-effect attack.

His urging made everyone move much faster; those pounding the materials made a loud "bang bang" sound, and those organizing the firewood ran uphill with their loads in their arms.

Shen Le sighed deeply, then selected a group of people to begin preparing bone meal. Chicken bones, duck bones, pork bones, lamb bones—collect everything that could be gathered.

Unfortunately, cow bones are hard to find, requiring more time and effort. Sigh, actually, Shen Le's first choice was cow bones; British bone china also uses cow bones as its material…

The collected bones are sorted and then burned at high temperatures to turn them into ash. In this process, the bones are degreased and degummed, and all organic matter is removed (this step doesn't need to be explained to the workers).

Then, crush them, grind them into the finest bone powder possible, mix them into the glaze, and begin the process of firing translucent porcelain again!

After arranging everything one by one, Shen Le stepped back a few paces and sat under the eaves. He closed his eyes and began to recall the young man's finger strike and the feeling of the clear energy flowing through his brow:

You won't teach me the incantations, you won't teach me the spells, I'll just simulate them myself!

I refuse to believe I can't learn it!
These bone meal... these bone meal, if they were just ordinary bone meal, you could burn anything you could find, then thank goodness.

If bone powder containing intense resentment, and possibly even remnants of souls, is necessary to make the Soul-Suppressing Figurine, this small packet in my hand may not be enough. I need to find a suitable substitute!
Shen Le focused her mind and calmed her breath, quietly regulating her breathing and gradually circulating the heat.

In the Porcelain Tower's memory, his control over heat flow was much worse than in reality; he stumbled and always failed to control it as he wished.

He had to manipulate it carefully, experimenting little by little, to simulate the spell in this environment. In particular, the heat flowing through his forehead—

This acupoint is extremely dangerous and fragile; if you're not careful, you'll have to start working all over again!
He tried again and again, until the workers collected enough bones, burned them to ashes, and crushed them into powder, but he still couldn't construct a complete spell.

There was no other way, so I got up and started making porcelain blanks, preparing glazes, glazing them one by one, and then putting them into the kiln to fire.
"The first row is chicken bone powder, the second row is duck bone powder, the third row is pork bone powder, the fourth row is lamb bone powder, the fifth row is mixed bone powder... and so on. Hopefully, we can fire it into translucent white porcelain. Let's start firing!"

The fire burned for another two days and two nights. After the fire was extinguished and the kiln cooled, and after two more days of anxious waiting, Shen Le was the first to rush in, eagerly picking up a saggar and quickly opening it:

"Phew... at least it's intact. The glaze and stuff aren't clear inside the kiln; you have to go outside to see..."

One by one, the saggars were opened, and one by one, the porcelain bowls, plates, and cups were carefully taken out and arranged around Shen Le.

After sleeping for a day and a night, Liangbo, whose illness had completely subsided, was even more excited and anxious than Shen Le. With trembling hands, he picked up each item to examine it:
"The glaze color is wrong."

"That's not right either."

"This one is a little off-center too."

"This one……"

wipe!
what happened!

Was my bone meal not burned thoroughly enough, or not ground finely enough? Should I crush it a little more and grind it finer?
Am I using the wrong type of bone meal? I should use cow bones, or some other kind of bone—I can't be forced to use human bones, can I?!
Is there something wrong with my fire control? With the same formula, different kiln temperatures and different oxidation-reduction atmospheres will result in different colors after firing!

Or perhaps... I've made a mistake by going down the path of bone meal? Is the recipe in the booklet just made up, or are there other secrets that need to be passed down by word of mouth?

In reality, the translucent white porcelain I researched clearly did not contain bone ash in its glaze formula!

It's not in the porcelain body formula! Nor has phosphorus been detected in the porcelain body!
Shen Le gritted his teeth and tried again and again. The first batch turned out yellowish; the second batch turned out grayish and had many bubbles.
The third firing resulted in a crack, producing a strange color that was neither quite blue nor quite gray...

"Sigh, the classes you skip will always need to be made up for tenfold or a hundredfold..."

Shen Le sighed deeply. Back in modern times, he hadn't properly learned from the kiln master, relying instead on his ability to observe the kiln's interior with his mental power to easily pass through.

The bitter consequences of his laziness back then now lie starkly before him, mocking him:
They didn't learn to read the color of the flames inside the kiln, nor the direction in which the flames flickered, and they didn't even learn to pull out a firelight to estimate the color and temperature inside the kiln.

Now it's all over. Without mental strength, without modern temperature control equipment like thermocouples, and without experienced mentors, I have to rely entirely on myself!
Shen Le sighed and began an endless trial and error process. He fired one kiln, failed, fired another, and failed again.

The gold and silk left behind by the "immortal master" turned into pine firewood and porcelain clay at a speed like water being released from a dam, and then into porcelain that did not meet the requirements.

If it weren't for the fired porcelain, which at least allowed him to recoup some of his losses, Shen Le would have had no choice but to abandon his job and go out to use his magical powers to swindle and cheat people, just to make some money...

After repeated experiments, a month and a half of hard work, and nearly ten kilns fired, they still couldn't get the glaze color that Shen Le wanted.

He wanted to try firing another batch, but the pine firewood was delayed. Instead, the foreman in charge of the firewood rushed up to him in a panic.

"Kiln owner, something terrible has happened! Down the mountain...down the mountain..."

What's down the mountain?

"The plague is rampant... people are dying everywhere, people are dying everywhere..."

He was trembling, his face pale, and he looked like he couldn't even stand. Shen Le took a deep breath, slapped him on the shoulder, and felt a warm current flow through his body:
"What plague? How many people have died?"

"No...don't know..."

Shen Le stomped her foot angrily. With the plague spreading, it was impossible to transport supplies as usual; there were clearly not enough people to cut down trees, transport timber, and dry wood.
However, what's more troublesome is that people coming down the mountain might spread the plague back up...

If even one-tenth of the kiln workers in this group fell ill, his work would be ruined!
"You! Go to the stream and take a bath right now! Wash yourself clean from head to toe!" He immediately pointed at the man and gave the order.

"Everyone who came with you, take a shower! Change all your clothes! Wash everything you've touched and everything you've walked on! Immediately!"

"Someone! Someone! Quickly build a stove, set up two more stoves, and from this moment on, everyone in the kiln is forbidden from drinking raw water or eating raw food. Every single fruit must be washed clean with hot water before eating!"

"Burn all the clothes you wear down the mountain, don't keep a single one! I'll give you new clothes right now!"

"Everyone must have their own separate drinking cups and eating bowls; no one is allowed to share them!"

Fortunately, this was a porcelain kiln, built in the mountains, with clear springs and streams nearby, and shaded by trees. Even if the miscellaneous wood was of different textures and sizes and could not be used for firing the kiln, there was no shortage of wood for boiling water;

Fortunately, this was a porcelain kiln, and Shen Le could afford to provide not only one set of tableware for each of them, but even ten sets of tableware for each of them.

He spent a great deal of effort restoring order, then anxiously observed the situation for five days, even forcing two hired workers who started having diarrhea on the night they went up the mountain to take a dose of white clay.

They were forced to drink until they wept bitterly, not for any other reason than that white stone resin was very expensive, more expensive than their entire fortune—

The worth of a strong man these days is no more than a bag of grain, while this tiny cup of white ochre, brought by a caravan from the distant south, is worth at least a bolt of fine silk!

Five days later, after confirming that the team was safe and sound, Shen Le personally led the team down the mountain to fetch a batch of pine firewood.

What I saw along the way was shocking. Although it wasn't quite "bones exposed in the wild, and not a rooster crowing for a thousand miles", every house was closed and every door was shut, avoiding strangers as if they were snakes or scorpions.

Smoke often rises in the countryside, it's unclear what's being burned, and corpses lie scattered on the ridges of fields and along paths, their families too exhausted to even collect them...

Shen Le led his team on a trek for ten days before finally collecting enough pine firewood. They then walked for another five days before returning to the mountain, rolling up their sleeves, and starting to fire the kiln again.

Flames rose, the refractory bricks on the outer wall of the kiln were heated to a bright red, white smoke billowed from the chimney, and hot gas swirled in the flue.

Shen Le kept his eyes glued to the flames in the kiln, not daring to relax for even a moment, until his eyes were bloodshot.

He had finally managed to extinguish the fire and was about to collapse into bed, intending to wait until he was well-rested and the kiln had cooled down before reopening it, when he suddenly felt a tap on his shoulder:
"After all this time, this is all you've managed to produce?"

"...Immortal Master?"

Shen Le turned her head blankly, her neck turning almost frame-by-frame, as slow as a PowerPoint presentation. The young man frowned in displeasure:
"It's been two months and we've only managed to produce the translucent white porcelain. When will the Soul-Suppressing Figurine be fired?"

"Ah, has the translucent white porcelain been fired yet?!"

Shen Le blinked twice, finally understanding what the other person was talking about. "No, I haven't even opened the kiln yet, the kiln hasn't even cooled down, how do you know it's fired?"
"I'm so sorry, the epidemic delayed things, otherwise I should have been here half a month ago—"

"You even know about plagues!" The young man grew increasingly enraged. With a wave of his hand, the kiln door collapsed automatically. With another wave, a long gust of wind swept into the kiln, then emerged carrying with it a blast of intense heat.
"If the Soul-Suppressing Figurines had been made earlier, this great plague wouldn't have happened!"

What?
How did this happen to me?!
Shen Le was somewhat unconvinced, but faced with this world that truly possessed immortal magic, he dared not refute it. He could only mutter under his breath:
"I experimented with bone meal formulas for a long time before I finally figured it out..."

“That kind of bone powder won’t do.” The young man glanced at the glaze booth and immediately shook his head.

"Why not use human bone powder? — Is it too dirty? Can't bring yourself to do it?!"

Shen Le endured it, barely managing to keep her face from contorting in pain. Seriously? Seriously? You want me to dig up a grave in the middle of the night?

This is too much!
The young man looked him over carefully, then suddenly grabbed his wrist and leaped into the air:

With a rise and fall, when the wind stopped, the two were already standing on the mass grave. The young man casually waved his hand:
"Come on, you pick out which bones are usable and take them all home!"

(End of this chapter)