The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 576: At least half of the unidentified object is missing. How should we repair it?
Shen Le frowned and pieced the things in his hands together. He picked up a piece, put it down, picked up another piece, and put it down again.

He moved it here and there, changed the angle, turned it over, and shook his head:

"It doesn't feel right... It still doesn't feel right... It feels like I can't make it..."

Opposite the huge workbench, the bearded guest sat opposite him, looking at Shen Le with a very tolerant gaze, as if he was looking at his newly-minted but indeed talented student.

Of course, this kind of tolerance also has a prerequisite: what Shen Le is putting together in his hands is not the original metal piece that jumped out of the soil, but a batch of replicas.

Yes, in order to meet Shen Le's demand of "working wherever he goes", Huang Yutong decorated a row of laboratories in his room.

There are two houses on both sides, and the left side is renovated as a residence for guests to stay in. It can easily accommodate dozens or even hundreds of people.

On the right side, the houses of several dozen meters were all renovated into laboratories. There was a long alley between them, so there was no need to worry about any noise. If necessary, they could just blow it up and abandon this area.

In the laboratory, a room is filled with safe deposit boxes that can maintain constant temperature and humidity and isolate oxygen, and all the items found are placed in them;
One room contains commonly used small instruments, such as scanners, handheld x-ray diffractometers, etc.;

A room with a huge workbench surrounded by various tools for Shen Le to operate...

Naturally, all the metal pieces that automatically jumped out of the soil were sent to the laboratory by Shen Le, who scanned them one by one and made into 3D structures one by one.

After the scan, the data was imported into the 3D printer nearby, which printed out a replica for Shen Le to play with.

The printer Shen Le bought was a high-end product that could print in multiple colors. Although the colors were still different from those of the metal sheets, they were quite similar...

"It's normal to fail to make it, but it's rare to make it in one go."

The bearded guest looked at Shen Le calmly and comforted him softly:
"It is normal for a cultural relic to be 50% missing when it is dug out of the soil. It is not uncommon for it to be 70% missing. Even if it is 80% missing, although it is more difficult, it can still be pieced together."

"I know……"

Shen Le continued to look worried. As a cultural relic restorer, how could he not know?

Even if he was engaged in the restoration of ancient buildings, could he not have heard the daily wailing and complaints of the people next door who were engaged in the restoration of porcelain, bronze, calligraphy, painting and fabrics?

The cultural relics dug out from the soil are not only damaged, but also dull, sticky, and deformed. At first glance, it is impossible to tell what they are.

Just like the Phoenix Coronet of Empress Xiao of Emperor Yang of Sui, when it was unearthed, that mass of... well...

Then, after being researched, verified, and skillfully restored by experts, it finally became radiant and exceptionally beautiful.

The replicas piled in front of Shen Le now were the ones that had not been restored. They were dry, shriveled, wrinkled, and had large parts that were missing and flattened.

If you want to figure out what these things were, you need not only a strong imagination, but also a deep understanding of these cultural relics...

"Teacher Zhang, look at this pile of things. What were they supposed to be?"

Shen Le moved it here and there, tried hard to put it together, and after nearly two hours of struggling, he finally stopped.

He looked up helplessly at the bearded man opposite him and asked sincerely:
"I think it should be a part of the armor, but I can't figure out what it is..."

These things have strange shapes and are uneven. Each piece looks crooked. They are completely different from the regular-shaped helmet armor plates unearthed before.

Moreover, Shen Le searched for a long time but couldn't find any holes on it, nor any traces of ropes being passed through or tightened. He really couldn't figure it out!

"Oh, if you can't think of it, you can work your way back from the structure of the armor itself." Without thinking, the bearded guest took a piece of paper from the side and started drawing:

"You see, generally speaking, armor consists of several parts. Helmet, earmuffs, neck guard -

The ear and neck guards are sometimes attached to the helmet, but the helmet you repaired is, so you can ignore it;”

Shen Le nodded. The helmet he had repaired had iron plates hanging from the back of his head to his shoulders, obviously covering the neck as well.

It is a bit heavy and it hurts a lot when it rubs against the neck, but it provides good protection for the back and sides of the neck.

"Then there is the body armor, which is divided into several parts, such as shoulder guard, armor, shin guard, etc. Finally, there are combat boots, which are generally black leather boots.

The metal piece you found is uneven and looks more decorative than defensive, so such parts should appear in..."

"Ah!" Shen Le suddenly realized. He stroked the replica in his hand, back and forth, his eyes shining:

"It's either the shoulder ornament, the throat of the shoulder armor, or the heart ornament in the middle of the breastplate! That's why it's so uneven. It was originally a sculpture!"

"Yes." The bearded guest smiled in approval. He stared closely at the replica in Shen Le's hand, trying to hide his envy:

“It was supposed to be three-dimensional, but now it’s squashed and flattened, so you can’t imagine what it looks like.

You can take it for a CT scan to see the folding lines inside, and then slowly restore it based on the lines..."

"I understand! Thank you, Teacher Zhang!"

Shen Le quickly stood up, bowed, and ran to the next door. The bearded guest was left looking at his back from afar, sighing:

"Ugh……"

I only regret that I am not a cultivator and have no resistance to the fluctuations of spiritual energy. Without resistance, I cannot get close to these cultural relics, I cannot touch them with my own hands, and can only watch them from afar through the screen to satisfy my craving.

Obviously, Shen Le's level of armor repair was far inferior to his, and he could only give remote guidance, watching Shen Le fumble around...

Shen Le did not feel that he was clumsy. He rushed back to the storage room, carefully took out the metal pieces, and according to Professor Zhang's instructions, he put them into the CT machine one by one and scanned them one by one.

After the scan, I stared at the 3D restored image with various hidden injuries and lines, which was restored by the CT machine, and continued to struggle:
"So how did they end up like this...?"

He thought about it over and over again, until his brain was about to explode, but he still couldn't come to a conclusion. After a long while, he raised his hand and patted his head, then stood up and returned to the workbench, his hands flying:

I dug up a large piece of plasticine and began to knead it carefully according to the 3D reconstruction image. I kneaded out a piece that was similar, and then tried to press it back to its original shape:
"This isn't right... this isn't right either... this isn't right either... this isn't right either... this... oops! It's broken!"

The stickiness of plasticine is also limited, and it will break... You can't pinch it indefinitely. This is not a piece of metal that can be knocked and twisted...

So I want to try to restore it. Should I find a piece of metal and start working on it?

No, no, no, that's too stupid... How about getting a thin gold sheet, or a thin silver sheet, thin enough that I can pinch it with both hands using my internal strength?

Or, restore it on the computer?

Shen Le stared at the plasticine in his hand in a daze. There was a bang beside him, and the bearded guest had already brought his computer over and clicked on the screen:

"Before you start repairing, I suggest you read through all the atlases and memorize them. Make sure you have a clear idea of what's going on and can draw from the air. Imagination also needs a foundation..."

Shen Le lamented. He had already received a large number of atlases from the old professor at the Dunhuang Institute, and he even placed an order to buy a large number of them himself, which were now piled up in the study room of the house.

These books, these picture albums, are huge, very thick, and very expensive. The print run is very small, usually 300 to 500 copies, and it would be a miracle if there were 1,000 copies.

Ordinary people can’t buy it without some connections, and even if they can, they can’t afford it.

Either the money is purchased by the unit's information room or library, or it is reimbursed by the unit, or it is reimbursed by research funds. In short, very few people pay out of their own pockets.

Fortunately, he could buy it and afford it. However, being able to buy it and being able to afford it does not mean that “buying it means you have read it” or “reading it means you have memorized it”!

"I understand. I'll continue reading..."

Shen Le swayed and staggered, drifting towards the study like a wandering soul, and disappeared. He ran into the room, took down the picture books one by one, and began to read them frantically.

The fragrance was lingering around me. Lanzhuang, Luoqun, Hongyingyi, Zhong Xiaomei's clay figurines, and the little ones who were interested in developing in this area were all studying hard:

The most amazing thing is that the two clay figurines are still dressing each other up. You make a plaster armor on me, and I make one on you...

The bearded guest looked at Shen Le's back and shook his head. He returned to his bedroom, turned on his computer, and began to recite and remember:

These mountains and seas of picture albums, murals, statues, and terracotta figurines are not something you can memorize just by looking at them once or twice.

Even if you memorize it all, you will forget it after a while. You must review it from time to time to deepen your memory.

Well, it’s already pretty good. At least those who are engaged in the restoration of cultural relics spend most of their time “reviewing” them.

Unlike those in the medical field, who have been working for thirty years, they have been working like a dog for forty years, desperately trying to "learn new things".

We need to read new industry consensus, new guidelines, new papers, and learn and practice new surgical techniques...

What? You ask why you need to study for 40 years when you have to work for 30 years? Isn't there still re-employment after retirement? If you are only 70 years old, re-employment will be too tiring for you? The 90-year-old man in the hospital next door is still working as a specialist. The hospital just issued a notice for him:

Because the old man is old and his body can't bear it, he won't put the plus sign anymore...

Yes, just don’t put the plus sign, you still need to watch the normal appointment!
He was quiet and tried hard to read the information. Shen Le wanted to swallow the book directly, or make a brain-computer interface to input the information directly into his brain, so that the chip could automatically call and compare.

Grunting and grumbling, I got up early the next morning and continued to work with the old professors, continuing to dig at the pile of stones:

Digging!

Digging!

Planing stones!
Planing stones!
Move the stones one by one, brush the soil one by one, dig out various things from it, take pictures, take samples, put them in bags, and label them...

Broken bones need to be bagged, ashes need to be bagged, unknown fragments need to be bagged, even feces need to be bagged——

"Why not take it away? Feces are very valuable artifacts. We can get a lot of information, such as what humans ate at the time... It's a pity that so little of it has been preserved!"

As the old professor answered, he used a small brush to brush out a lump of dust from the ash pile...

Carefully brush out the shape, carefully scoop it up with a small shovel, and put it into a sealed box, trying hard not to let its shape be distorted or dispersed in the slightest.

From beginning to end, his eyes were focused and his technique was meticulous. Shen Le squatted beside him, his mouth twitching:

Even though he knew the importance of this thing in theory, and even though it had been weathered for thousands of years and no longer had any taste, every fiber of his being was still desperately resisting it:

Why should I see this!

Why should I squat beside and watch the professor take action!

I'm willing to pay a huge sum of money for a pair of titanium alloy dog eyes that have never seen anything!

There was no way Shen Le could turn back time. But soon, a loud cry came from the other side of the ridge, saving his shaky spirit:
"Here! A tomb was found here!"

Shen Le jumped up and ran to the other side. Although the tomb was a bit weird, it was still much better than the pile of shit!

He climbed over the ridge and rushed to the other side of the mountainside. On the hillside, three students surrounded a professor, crawling on the ground and moving stones bit by bit:
Shen Le glanced over their shoulders and understood why they were sure that this should be a tomb.

The ground had obviously been trimmed, with the stones piled into a regular shape as much as possible. Even after being covered by sand, a rough cone could be seen, with a small rectangular tomb underneath.

In the part they dug up, a stone half buried in the soil was gradually revealing patterns. Without even looking closely, Shen Le could tell that this stone was most likely an epitaph.

The pattern on it is a series of continuous squares!
"The public was a brave man from Longxi, who joined the army at a young age..." As more and more of the epitaph was revealed, Professor Yu stopped, squinted his eyes, and began to try to recognize the words on it.

He held a magnifying glass in one hand and carefully observed the patterns on the square stone. In the other hand, he held a small rubber ball and squeezed it to blow away the sand on it:
"Guarding the border... I can't see this word clearly... Zai... Alas, from Longxi to here, the best half of my life has been spent in Hotan..."

This tombstone is not very big, only three feet square, but the stone is very fine. Shen Le was still unsure, and Old Huang came over, sniffed it, and couldn't help but whispered in admiration:
"Hetian jade! Even if the quality is not very good, it is still Hetian jade! Using this as a tombstone is really...really..."

His throat rolled a few times, and he stared at the stone for a long time. Then he made up his mind, stomped his feet, turned around and ran away.

Shen Le watched him leave and sighed quietly:
Compared to the jade quality of this stone, the spiritual energy condensed in it is what attracts monsters the most, right?
Perhaps it was the spirit of the mountains and rivers, or perhaps it was the sincere mourning of the comrades, which remained on this piece of jade. Over the years, it attracted nearby spirits and turned into a piece of beautiful jade that made monsters fall in love.

Like Lao Huang, he doesn't have to do anything. He just needs to hold the stone in the moonlight and practice for a hundred or eighty years. His cultivation will soar up a level and he will instantly reach the level of a thousand-year-old demon.

Of course, the prerequisite is that he took the stone away without being discovered, stopped, or beaten to death... How is that possible?

This is a memorial to the soldiers and also a medal of the soldiers!

Professor Yu did not sense Old Huang's emotional fluctuations, nor did he even feel the power condensed on this epitaph. He just concentrated on reading the words on it:
"When the arrows are exhausted and the bow is broken, the broken blade is still wielded; the sun falls and the stars fall, and they will eventually fall into the dust... Alas..."

The fight lasted until the last moment!
However, which of the warriors here did not fight to the last moment?
"Teacher, this looks like a cenotaph."

The old professor touched the epitaph word by word and sighed softly. A student beside him whispered:
"We looked around and it seems there are no remains, not even a single ..."

Shen Le closed his eyes silently. When he arrived here just now, he had a feeling that the earth had outlined the shape of a tomb for him...

The tomb was very small, so small that it couldn't even fit a coffin or even a normal-sized adult.

However, he still hoped that there was something in this tomb, and that the fallen soldiers' comrades could at least get something back... But it turned out that there was nothing...
"Teacher, there is a little broken nail fragment here..."
"There's a piece of fabric here, I can't tell what it is..."

"This... arrow?"

"Is this a broken sword? It's broken too badly..."

Shen Le looked over and could only sigh. The four towns of Anxi had always been in a state of lack of resources, especially after the An-Shi Rebellion, when they were isolated from Chang'an and received almost no human or material resources.

If you are stationed in a beacon tower like this, you will probably need to use every bit of supplies you have available very carefully.

The piece of metal that was said to be the broken sword looked like it was only half the length of a finger. It was too small to be made into a knife...

Perhaps, only such a small fragment can be regarded as a souvenir and placed in a cenotaph?
The students squatted beside the artifacts, fully armed with masks and gloves, fearing that their saliva would spray on them and contaminate them.
They worked together to take photos, retrieve items, seal them, and record them, one by one, as they moved the items from the cenotaph. After moving layer by layer to the bottom, they finally made a big discovery:
"There's a box here! The contents of the box should be valuables!"

"I hope it's a letter from home!"

"It would be best if it was a letter from home!"

"A reward document will do!"

The students whispered to each other, crouched at the edge of the pit, and carried the box out of the tomb with both hands. Professor Yu stared at them without blinking, and kept giving instructions:
"Be gentle! Be steady! Don't open the lid! Don't open the lid here - hey -"

The members of the archaeological team, even if they are students, have rich experience and certainly will not act rashly at this time.

However, the box had been buried in the tomb for more than a thousand years, so it was not very stable. With a slight push, the lid of the box rose up by itself, leaving the bottom of the box below.

A piece of yellowed, brittle silk with words written in thick ink on it appeared in front of everyone:

"This year, the millet in Hehuang is ripe... I know that my tribe has moved to Yutian... Sanlang was only four years old when he left, but now he can draw a five-dou bow..."

The war lasted for three months, and a letter from home was worth ten thousand pieces of gold. For the soldiers stationed in Khotan for many years, the war lasted for more than three months.
How could a soldier not treasure this letter from home as if it were his life after traveling thousands of miles across a sandbank?
Shen Le seemed to be able to cross over a thousand years and saw this soldier put the precious family letter in a box and press it under his pillow.

Only when I was in the most difficult and lonely times would I watch it again and again under the cold moon in the desert, by the bonfire...

Every time I read it, my heart to guard the border becomes stronger:
Hold on, hold on! Hold on until the shift change, hold on until you return home - you must bring honor to your family, you must stand out, at the very least, you must not bring shame to your family!

He stayed here until he died in battle.

He never returned home.

"it's a pity……"

Shen Le closed his eyes, exerted his mental power, and lightly brushed across the silk.

The scent on the silk was so faint that it was almost non-existent. It was completely different from the scent on the helmet and the piece of metal he had dug out here, and they couldn't match each other at all.
In other words, the owner of the silk and the owner of the helmet are not the same person, and the owner of the silk did not leave any spiritual traces.

This is also normal. Over the past thousands of years, countless people have come and gone, but only a few can condense spiritual traces. This requires the right time, place and people, as well as a little bit of luck...

He walked around the beacon tower, closing his eyes from time to time to feel the feedback from the earth.

There weren't many traces left in this area, but there weren't few either. There were dozens of tombs alone, densely packed together.
According to the working efficiency of the archaeological team, the work cannot be completed in ten days or half a month. Even in two months, they can only roughly determine the area of cultural relics and dig a few 5*5 meter exploration squares for a rough excavation.

Shen Le couldn't accompany him forever, and Professor Yu and his friends were embarrassed to ask him to accompany them all the time. After three days, when they learned that all the metal pieces he was looking for had been found, they simply drove him away:

"Go and fix that piece of metal! It's still early for us! We need to apply for manpower, machinery, and a large number of people to come and help so as not to delay your work!

——When you have repaired this batch of things, maybe you can give us some directions next time?"

Shen Le could only pack up the old house and turn back under the reluctant gazes of his students.

He first went to visit Yun Kun and learned that Yun Kun was still training endlessly. The researchers still had not figured out the threshold of the space changes during the missile's flight.

I went back to the old house and took a walk around. I was happy to see that the surrounding area had become a tourist street. There were fitness and yoga studios run by cat demons, paper figurine shops run by paper craftsmen, and all kinds of things.

Finally, he went back to the research institute and stared blankly at the pile of metal fragments in front of him:
"So will you be so kind as to tell me what you were?—or, at least, what you were like, that would be all right!"

(End of this chapter)