The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 593 Shen Le Invests in a Project! —Wait, Shen Le finished the project himself…

"Oh, starting to play a jigsaw puzzle game?"

"How's the puzzle coming along?"

"Xiao Shen, do you need any help?"

Shen Le walked slowly among the crowd of people leaving get off work, and greeted each of his professors with a smile.

Yes, it's quite enjoyable to watch people work. It's even more enjoyable to see someone who is usually very rich and capable struggling in their area of ​​expertise.

Not to mention the much joy Shen Le brought them during his time at the Dunhuang Research Institute.

Not to mention that he is willing to spend money and has a sweet tongue, calling professors "teacher" and students "senior brother" and "junior brother";
Just the things he gets up to every few days are enough to keep everyone energized and looking forward to having fun every day!
Well, the female ghost dancing and the armored warriors hitting people are quite entertaining as long as they don't hit themselves on the head. Watching the live stream through a screen is much more interesting than watching a supernatural movie!
Regardless, you know you're watching a real scene, not something made up to fool people!
The problem Shen Le is currently facing happens to be one that the research institute can help with.

At the very least, anyone can do what Shen Le did: put the scanned metal fragments into a 3D printer to make copies, and then use those copies to do jigsaw puzzles.
If Shen Le were willing to give a bonus, even just two or three thousand, that would be enough to start a project and allow a master's student to make a small fortune!
"Ah, I do have something I need help with... Is there any senior or junior student who needs a paper? I have a direction here..." Shen Le smiled at them.

He had no clue how to piece together these gold belt buckle fragments on the first day and the second day, but on the third day, he has gradually started to get the hang of it.

In short, you can't treat these pieces like a jigsaw puzzle sold in a store; you can't expect each piece to connect with the others and eventually put together a complete puzzle.

With the mindset that "most of this thing is damaged, and each piece is probably different," we must carefully tidy it up, piece by piece, to reveal its original appearance:
Yes, he checked a lot of information, and found that no two existing gold or jade belt buckles are exactly the same.

If you're lucky, the pairs are symmetrical, and the largest one in the middle is different from the others, meaning that out of the 11 gold belt buckles, there are 6 different designs;

If you're a little unlucky, or the craftsman's skills are particularly advanced, or the person in charge of matching the rewards isn't too concerned, each gold belt buckle will look a little different from the others—

Since they're all dragon-patterned and square plaques, and they're already in your hands, and the weight of the gold hasn't decreased, what more could you possibly want?
Shen Le had been stuck on this problem for almost two days before finally figuring it out. Once he understood, he immediately found his direction:
"This puzzle is a bit complicated to do using my method... and I don't know how to fine-tune algorithms or anything. Are there any fellow students interested in helping me with a project?"

"Here I am!"

"Here I am!"

"My student!"

"Bronze ware, porcelain, murals," the three professors blurted out simultaneously, exchanging glances, clearly ready to debate.

A group of students spread out in a circle around their advisor, not wanting to get too close, yet not wanting to stray too far, each one straining to listen:
project!

There's a project!
A project funded by a major investor!

The sponsors don't care about authorship in papers; they can publish papers under their own names once they've done it!

This cushy job absolutely has to fall to me—professor, give me a push!
"Come on, Xiao Shen, let's find a quiet place to talk." Professor Bai glanced around, immediately put on a smile, and pulled Shen Le outside.

Less than 500 meters from the main gate of the research institute, there's a restaurant that serves Yanchi Tan sheep, a favorite among the old folks—

Unfortunately, lamb is quite expensive, and given the health of these professors, indulging in a large meal of lamb would require them to go on a vegetarian diet for at least three to five days.

It's rare to find someone like Shen Le who can eat a lot and has money. Hurry up! Take him out to eat!
A group of people went to the restaurant with a large entourage. Shen Le and the professors went into a private room, while the students—who were the professors' favorites—could only wait obediently outside.

After the guests and hosts took their seats, Professor Bai was the first to eagerly await:
"Xiao Shen, hurry up and tell us your ideas. What's the project's concept? What resources do we need to coordinate? Let's get it started right away!"

"Okay—" Shen Le brought up his phone's photo library, swiping his finger across several photos on the screen:
"Here's the thing, I've already photographed and scanned all the fragments. My idea is to design a fuzzy algorithm..."

Too much clarity is actually unusable. Ordinary algorithms will treat every single exposure point or uncleaned black spot in a photo as information, while only blur algorithms can handle it.

The designed algorithm inputs all these photos and scans, then carefully compares them, looking for similarities between the fragments...

"Let it try to compare and piece together which fragments originally belonged to the same piece and where they should be pieced together. The ultimate goal is to restore it."

"Well……"

The professors exchanged glances, their brows furrowed, and began to ponder deeply. A large, steaming bowl of mutton soup with spring water sat on the table, but no one reached for it; even Shen Le felt embarrassed to start eating.

After a moment, Professor Bai said in a low voice:
"Algorithms aren't something we're very good at. I remember seeing somewhere that a colleague did an algorithmic restoration project for an ancient painting?"

"Which school is it? Peking University? Which of the eight major art academies? Or Shanghai University? I don't think it's any of those..."

For a moment, the professors forgot about their food and pulled out their phones to search rapidly. After a while, Professor Xu, who specializes in porcelain restoration, sighed deeply:

"It's from Zhejiang University... really..."

His lips moved silently. Shen Le couldn't read lips, so he didn't know if he was scolding the students in his own major for not being up to par, or complaining that Zhejiang University was going too far in crossing over into other fields.

You're saying a paper has seven or eight authors, none of whom are from the field of cultural relic restoration; they're all from computer science, information technology, or electronic engineering. If this continues...

How are we artisans supposed to survive?

"Xiao Shen's research topic is excellent. Unfortunately, we're a small place and there are no experts in algorithm research; we simply can't afford to support them."

The professors huddled together and sighed for a while, but ultimately couldn't bear to part with him, and could only look at Shen Le with longing eyes:

"Xiao Shen, to work on this topic, we need to find people outside, and we need to find someone at Chang'an Jiaotong University soon. You..."

"No problem!" Shen Le waved his hand decisively.
"As long as it gets done, that's fine—how much funding is needed for the project?"

Money talks. Professor Bai has a student—his oldest PhD student—who has one more year to graduate and hopes to have a good dissertation to make it easier to find a job.
Professor Xu provided three contacts: one from Chang'an Jiaotong University, one from Tsinghua University, and one from Zhejiang University.

They're all professors; they should be able to make connections and find reliable students to work on projects together.

Professor Li… Professor Li, specializing in murals, confidently patted his chest:

"I can provide the resources! I can get the students working on the project to go to various museums to do on-site scanning! There must be a lot of original data needed for this project, right?"

The project was thus finalized. Shen Le tossed the documents aside and ignored them, burying himself in assembling the metal pieces.
Several professors, along with their students, ran around finding people, organizing meetings, and working on projects. With money and papers to draw upon, they quickly assembled a small group and threw themselves into it wholeheartedly.
Come on!
Try to speed things up!
What if we just get started here, and Shen Le has already finished repairing the entire belt, packed it up, and left? Even if he's willing to pay as promised, will the people who did the work here have the nerve to come over?
Moreover, Shen Le's restoration methods are different from others, making it difficult to estimate the time required. For example, the leather belt used to inlay the gold belt buckle; if other experts were to do it, it might take a whole day just to clean it.
If Shen Le were to clean it up...

"Cleaning Technique!"

"Cleaning Technique!"

"Cleaning Technique!"

It can be done in half a day at the slowest, and in half an hour at the fastest.

The professors estimated that the helmet would take at least a month to repair, but Shen Le only took less than half a month…

Instead, he searched high and low for two gemstones to be used for setting, traveling half of the Silk Road and a trip to the plateau, before finally finding the ones he liked.

His pickiness drew attention from the entire research institute. One could only marvel at how rich and capricious he was, a boss who didn't need to publish papers to graduate or find a job—he was doubly rich and capricious…

Professor Bai's student, an associate professor at Chang'an Jiaotong University who studies algorithms, and his two master's students plunged headlong into the project, working overtime with the momentum of 15 hours a day.

Shen Le himself, however, began to attempt to repair these fragments in a way that was completely incomprehensible to outsiders:
He pieced together the 3D printed fragments, creating three nearly complete pieces, but something still felt off.

Helpless, he sighed, sat down in front of the fragments, closed his eyes, and began to sense:
These fragments all have a similar aura, but if you focus your mental energy to the most subtle level, you can still sense slight differences.

Whether it's because they were buried together and became tainted over time, or because they were once from the same place, connected by a shared energy, or because they were once intertwined, they are still connected.

In short, some fragments have a slightly similar aura, while others are slightly different, but only slightly...

"This piece and this piece seem to be together..."

Shen Le kept his eyes closed and muttered to himself. With his voice, a small piece of metal began to float lightly to the left, moving to the side of another piece;
After a pause, another piece began to move downwards, eventually reaching a slightly triangular metal plate.

The two professors stared in disbelief at the screen:
"Is he... categorizing?"

"What exactly is used to classify them? Why can't we see it?"

"He didn't even use any instruments to measure it!"

"Wait! He moved that piece of debris again! So how did he determine that?"

Sweat beaded on Shen Le's forehead. A cool breeze from the air conditioner blew gently from the upper left, bringing a touch of coolness to the studio, but it couldn't quell the heat in his heart.

The differences in these scents are so subtle that one can easily fail to recognize them if one is not careful or loses focus even slightly.
Worse still, almost every fragment is a mixture of different auras. According to this standard, A and B are in one group, C and D in another; according to that standard, A and C are in one group, B and D in another…

To make matters worse, the little ones were still chattering away. A few wisps of light drifted from the small oil lamp, bobbing and crackling on the metal plate.
The little wooden puppet squatted on the table, occasionally sticking out a thread, trying to touch the metal plate, but Shen Le slapped it away;

Several women in flowing skirts fluttered around the table, their hair dancing in the wind, pointing and whispering!
[This is not right!]

[This film doesn't feel right either!]

I think this one is quite similar to the other...

Shen Le: "...Can you guys move away a bit? Can you please stop talking for a moment? I need to concentrate completely! You guys are driving me crazy!"

The group of little ones retreated sheepishly. Lan Zhuang flashed a few times with colorful light and tentatively suggested:

Or... why don't you ask them yourselves?

Okay, I'll ask then. Shen Le was really at her wit's end. Thinking that this was one direction, she extended a finger and very gently touched a fragment:
"Come on, tell me, which area is closest to you?"

A surge of heat gushed out. The fragments remained motionless, unresponsive.

Shen Le tried several times, swapping different fragments, but nothing worked. After thinking for a long time, he finally got up and went to fetch the already woven armor:
"Huh? What is he doing?"

On the other end of the camera, the professors were discussing amongst themselves:
"Would it be useful to bring the armor over?"

"The bottom is uneven, making it inconvenient to pick things up, right?"

"Wait, does he want these belt fragments to be closer to the armor?"

Shen Le struggled for a long time, using things to pad and pressing down, and finally managed to lay the armor out into a roughly flat surface.

He laid a cloth on top, then placed the tattered leather belt on top, and carefully used his mental power to move the metal fragments and lay the belt on top.

This time, the heat flow was continued, and after waiting patiently for a while, suddenly, the entire armor trembled slightly, as if waking from a deep dream.

A strange surge of heat rose up, enveloping the entire belt. Instantly, all the metal fragments froze, and simultaneously shifted at a slight angle—

"Huh? What's going on?" Shen Le was a little surprised.
"Is this communication? Exchange?... Listening?"

He had no idea what these things were doing. But in the end, the fragment he had focused his heat on fluttered its wings slightly, like a butterfly perched on his fingertip.

Then, the other fragments on the belt also began to vibrate gently:

Is this a spiritual resonance?
Or, did the vibrations from the fragments travel from the tabletop and affect other fragments?

Shen Le held his breath, focusing all his senses—sight, hearing, and mental acuity—to listen carefully and try to discern the meaning. After a long while, his brow relaxed, and he raised his hand to hook something:
A fragment he hadn't even pointed to before floated up and landed next to the fragment he had indicated...

"It's done! At this rate, it should be fixed in two days at most!"

"Wait!" The old professor's astonished voice came through the microphone:

"On our end, the algorithm program has only been revised to its third version, and it's not yet ready to be used!"

(End of this chapter)