The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 682 Mr. Shen, you can't spoil the child like this!
A few days ago, Shen Le handed over the task of firing the porcelain sword to the porcelain demon Mr. Zhao, and happily went to the sea to play with Yun Kun.

A few days later, Shen Le, looking disheveled and carrying a large amount of data that the experts had hastily calculated—data that he couldn't understand at all and needed to skip to the conclusions—came back to Jingdezhen...

"Coming?"

Mr. Zhao stood in front of the kiln, turned his head, and waved to Shen Le with a smile.

With this movement, Shen Le saw the various glazed robes fluttering in the firelight, displaying different colors, some even becoming semi-flowing:
Shen Le strongly suspected that Mr. Zhao was using this robe as a test light to gauge the fire in the kiln, so that he could tell whether to add or reduce the fire by just glancing at the glaze on the robe...

Around me, a group of porcelain bowls, plates, vases, and figurines were busily running around. Some were carrying firewood, some were blowing air, and some plunged into the kiln, made a turn, and then came out gesturing.

About ten feet behind Mr. Zhao, a huge screen was hanging, where experts in the laboratory were constantly observing data and communicating quickly with Mr. Zhao through a loudspeaker.
“一号窑1号点位，温度1320度……2号点位，1327度……3号点位……”

Very good, everyone is working hard and has obviously adapted to this way of working with the help of low-level porcelain fairies.

Shen Le guessed that those experts were probably quite envious:
After all, being able to personally enter the kiln, experience the changes in temperature and atmosphere, and witness the transformation of the porcelain is much simpler than craning your neck outside to guess and then working backward from the result...

"coming……"

Shen Le nodded listlessly. He waved his hands, one holding a thick stack of documents, the other a USB drive containing the data.
"I'd like to fire some porcelain swords... Mr. Zhao, do you have any spare kilns that I could borrow?"

It's not that the Xing kiln kilns from the Taihang Mountains are bad, it's just that Mr. Zhao's kilns offer better value for money...

The kiln, various types of porcelain clay, glazes, hardware experts provided by the Special Affairs Bureau, on-site guidance from specialists, and the latest experimental special ceramic formulas—everything was readily available.

He could even place some orders with Mr. Zhao—no, use the Special Affairs Bureau's name to have them place some orders with Mr. Zhao, asking him to make a batch of porcelain swords for his own use…

"Yes! The one on the far left, it'll be out of the kiln soon, you can take it!"

Mr. Zhao was clearly in a very good mood, radiant and full of energy. A sharp sword aura emanated from his fingertips, causing Shen Le's fingers to instinctively recoil.

Mr. Zhao realized his oversight, smiled, let go, and took two steps back.
"Use all the porcelain clay, glaze, and pine firewood as you please, as if you were in your own home! Silver bottle and jade cup, you two come here and await Mr. Shen's instructions!"

The small white porcelain bottle from Xing kiln, which Shen Le had dealt with before, and a translucent white porcelain wine cup rolled over and rushed to Shen Le's feet.

Mr. Zhao pointed at Shen Ledao:
"If Mr. Shen needs anything, just give it to him directly. No need to ask for instructions. Just say it's my order! If he needs to communicate with experts, go and run errands for him too!"

"Well, please make yourself at home. I need to control the heat; one of the batches is at a crucial moment!"

He hurried towards another kiln, his eyes instantly brightened by the firelight. Shen Le smiled at him from afar, then found a spot to begin organizing her materials.
"I need... 100 kg of kaolin, 50 kg of quartz, 50 kg of feldspar... Find me a pottery-making room, and prepare saggers of the following dimensions..."

By the way, Mr. Zhao, what stage has your porcelain sword-making technique reached? Do you use a sagger, supports, or some other method?

Five days later, Shen Le fired the first batch of porcelain swords made from Xing kiln white porcelain and sent them to Yun Kun by fast horse.

Ten days later, based on Mr. Zhao's experiment, Shen Le fired a kiln full of porcelain swords, including ordinary white porcelain, Xing kiln translucent white porcelain, Dehua white porcelain, sweet white porcelain, Ding kiln white porcelain, and bone china.

Although the success rate was a bit low, at least two or three of each method were successful, allowing Yun Kun to try flying.

Fifteen days later, based on the formula provided by the experts, Shen Le fired a kiln of porcelain swords made of special ceramics...

"Still not working? Still can't fly?" Shen Le was at her wits' end while video chatting with Yun Kun.
"Yun Kun, don't always expect a one-time solution, or that a flying sword can accommodate your maximum size."

Let's try a smaller size first, even if it's just shrunk to a foot long. As long as we can fly quickly and escape, that's all that matters!

【It's only a foot long and very small! Its defense is very weak! It's extremely fragile!】 Yun Kun persisted:
[I want a big one! A big one! Shen Le, when are you going to forge a flying sword big enough?! I don't need one that can carry a fully-fledged form, at least the fifty-ton version, something with some attack power!]

According to the experts' calculations, for the fifty-ton version, I would have to forge a one-ton sword...

Shen Le had a splitting headache, but until he could think of a better solution, he could only grit his teeth and keep working.

The flying sword was made from three inches long to one foot long, then from one foot to three feet long, and then from three feet to the length of a 1.8-meter-long horse-slaying saber. It simply couldn't be made any longer.
Porcelain is different from ironware. For every piece of porcelain that doubles in length, the skill required to improve it more than doubles:
The porcelain blank must be made very evenly, without any part being tight and the other part loose, otherwise it will definitely crack.
When glazing, and when sending it into the kiln, you have to be very careful. If you shake it even slightly, it will deform on its own.
Even if it doesn't shake, when placed in a porcelain kiln, subjected to the heat of the flames and the flow of hot air, it still has to contend with its own weight. If not handled properly, it might bend over in the middle...

In fact, of the hundred flying swords Shen Le made, ninety-nine out of one-and-eight-meter-long ones failed in this way...

Even after this batch was sent over, Yun Kun was still not satisfied. There was no way around it; although the length and carrying capacity of the flying swords had increased, they were still far from meeting the standard required to withstand its weight.
Even if it shrinks to a length of around 25 tons, a rapid ascent, a high-speed descent, and a serpentine maneuver can cause the flying sword to crack open with a snap...

"We think it would be better to use multiple flying swords to form an array to carry the cloud kun for maneuvering."

After collecting a large amount of test information, the expert responsible for improving Yun Kun's mobility made a special trip to Jingdezhen to communicate with Shen Le in person:
"Just like fighter jets, a heavy fighter jet needs two engines and dozens of vectoring nozzles to maximize the aircraft's maneuverability."

"Currently, our design is roughly like this..."

He unfolded a blueprint, and Shen Le bent down to examine it closely. He could clearly see that fourteen flying sword positions were set up on the bow, sides of the hull, stern, sides of the rudder, and even on several masts of Yun Kun's ship.

Including the launch positions at the bow, stern, and both sides of the ship, in short, twenty-one flying swords would not be too few, and forty-nine flying swords would not be too many...

"Wait a minute, do you mean you want me to write a flight control program with this design? I really don't know how to do that!"

"Hehe, hehe..."

The expert's eyes darted around. The sword formation and such were the ideas of the experts from the Special Affairs Bureau, who were responsible for communicating with the various cultivation sects.

According to what he'd heard so far, the group researching the sword formation hadn't made any progress yet and was currently asking experts to write programs and using supercomputers for simulations. The messages from various sects were basically the same: "There's no such lineage," "The lineage exists, but no one has studied it for at least several hundred years," and "We are also re-researching and learning it..."

Shen Le sighed deeply, his right hand resting on his wrist, touching the still-unrepaired porcelain pagoda inside the shrunken, bead-like Huang Yutong:

If the porcelain tower is repaired, with its seven levels and forty-nine flying swords, and a central command system, it should be able to work together to support the cloud-like Kun, without needing to consider sword formations or flight control systems.

The forty-nine flying swords, under the unification of the Porcelain Tower, became one, and they knew from birth how to fly!
"Alright, I'll try my best again." Shen Le sighed helplessly and decided to find another way to change the formula and the flying sword design in order to try to meet Yun Kun's needs.

Alas, when special ceramics are mixed with high-quality metals, their original properties are easily altered, leading to unsuccessful firing.

In the kiln he fired before, several flying swords made of special ceramics were produced. It was only through the painstaking efforts of Mr. Zhao, experts from the Special Affairs Bureau, and experts from the Ceramics Institute that they were able to achieve this.

Even so, its performance in terms of hardness, toughness, spiritual energy conduction index, and spiritual energy conduction loss rate was unsatisfactory and did not meet the preset standards...

Materials science is a huge pit, an insurmountable pit, an incredibly deep pit!

The metallurgical branch has already produced a master of alloys. Now Mr. Zhao is going to devote himself to the research of special ceramics. Give him twenty years, I wonder if he can climb up the ranks?

"You want to help? That's great!" Mr. Zhao was extremely busy, and was overjoyed to see Shen Le volunteer.

"Come on, explain that sword technique to me again. It would be even better if you could show me the way through it..."

As you know about my background, I've never quite mastered sword techniques or the flow of Taibai Qi. I've failed at this stage several times while practicing swordsmanship..."

Shen Le held the sword in one hand and pressed the other hand against his back, breathing deeply and trying to resonate with him, attempting to teach him this sword technique.

Unfortunately, Mr. Zhao was essentially a piece of porcelain, lacking internal organs, and during the firing process, little metal energy entered him.

Unlike Li Xingtang, whose former master truly had such memories and had at least passed on some knowledge to him, and who also possessed a celestial sword, Li Xingtang was able to smoothly guide him into the path of cultivation.

Mr. Zhao himself did not have the qualifications or the assistance. Shen Le guided him through the process forty-nine times, and he only managed to succeed once out of ten attempts.

Shen Le felt helpless and embarrassed himself.
"Um... how about we call it a day? You can rest for a bit and come back tomorrow? I always feel that if I learn this sword technique, it will benefit my porcelain sword crafting..."

Now, when he forges a porcelain sword, he needs to work with an elder from a cultivation sect. He controls the heat, while the elder assists with refining techniques, so that the porcelain sword can "grow" the right veins.

If he can learn it himself and master it from start to finish, the efficiency of firing porcelain swords can be increased by at least 20%!

Having said that, Shen Le naturally worked diligently, guiding him through the sword technique every day. After practicing for a full half month and firing two kilns of porcelain swords, he finally managed to get Mr. Zhao to a decent level.

As for himself, he refused to spend any more time forging porcelain swords. Firstly, he hadn't made any breakthroughs in the sword-forging techniques; secondly, Mr. Zhao had quietly advised him:

"Don't spoil your child. You spoil him to this extent, giving him whatever he wants. Even if these flying swords are mass-produced, they can't withstand him using them one by one until they break. Let him practice more and master the skill of controlling flying swords!"

Shen Le thought it made sense, and he was indeed tired of firing the kiln, so he decisively stopped.

Firstly, we need to wait for Mr. Zhao's research progress to find the best and most suitable formula. Secondly, we need to try to find other porcelain kilns that originated from the Porcelain Tower and restore it as soon as possible.

Before embarking on his long journey, Shen Le had a flash of inspiration and used the hardware experts sent by the Special Affairs Bureau to reopen a kiln and fire the porcelain tower once more:
This time, he added a large amount of metal alloys to the glaze and the porcelain clay that binds the gaps between the porcelain tower and the porcelain sword.

Sitting upright at the kiln entrance, he used his own fire magic to ignite the spirit wood, inhaling and exhaling spiritual energy to regulate the fire and metal elements within the kiln.

Gradually, the glaze melted into porcelain glaze, and the metal essence seeped into the entire porcelain tower, completely bonding and wrapping the previously broken parts together.

Shen Le silently sensed with his mental power and discovered that the broken porcelain swords had finally settled into their positions and stopped shaking.

However, the internal energy and spirituality have not yet fully connected with the tower body, just like the outer skin and muscles have grown well, but the internal bones are still broken.

"It seems we have to continue refining it... We need to find the kiln from which it originated, fire it again, and absorb the power from the unseen world..."

Shen Le gave up completely and stopped trying to take shortcuts. After the kiln was opened, he held the copper sheet in his hand and hugged the porcelain tower, meditating once more and asking the porcelain tower to help him determine his location.

Thank goodness, this time, the Porcelain Tower finally gave the correct direction:

"Huh? Isn't this in Shu?"

Shen Le was quite surprised. This porcelain tower, and its siblings, were all unearthed in Sichuan. Given the inconvenience of transportation in ancient times, they must have been fired nearby.

However, the signals from the porcelain pagoda actually indicated that the location was near Chang'an, in the Zhongnan Mountain area—

"Alright, let's go take a look. Hopefully, we can find some clues—speaking of which, the previous one was about the mid-Sui Dynasty, maybe this time we'll see the Tang Dynasty?"

Shen Le packed his bags and headed for Chang'an. Climbing up and down the mountains, repeatedly checking his bearings, the terrain before him seemed increasingly familiar.

This place looks a bit like the valley where he learned swordsmanship from the monkey.

This deep pool is somewhat similar to the place where he learned swordsmanship from the old sword immortal!

Are there some connection between your two sects, one that connects the past and the future?
(End of this chapter)