The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 731 I haven't even made a move yet, where are you dragging me to?

Shen Le smiled awkwardly, a little embarrassed.

He didn't want the teacher's blood pressure to rise—especially since this teacher was over fifty, looked very robust, with a waist-to-hip ratio definitely over 0.9, possibly even over 1.0—

In other words, considering his age, gender, and body type, he is very likely to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and various cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.

If he gets too angry and collapses with a snap, Shen Le can certainly cast healing spells indefinitely, but he really has no idea whether those healing spells can heal a stroke…

"Hey, Professor Li, calm down, calm down—anyway, this thing isn't suitable for a museum anyway. My goal is to restore it to its original state as much as possible, not to restore it to meet exhibition standards."

Could you please check this out for me, add some clay or something, refire it, and see if you can patch up the cracks?

Professor Li gradually relaxed and glared fiercely at Shen Le. He thought to himself, "Forget it, private restoration and professional museum restoration are two completely different fields."
Professional restoration of museum exhibits emphasizes reversibility and preserving as much of their original appearance as possible.

Therefore, in the porcelain and pottery in the museum, you can clearly see the white background that has been repaired with plaster, and you can even see the cracks in the fragments.
Private restorations, on the other hand, prioritize aesthetics. They aim for a flawless finish, appearing completely new without any defects.
Alternatively, one could create something artistic, transforming the repair marks into artistic ones. For example, the metal staples used for mending porcelain could be shaped into flowers, lotus leaves, or carp.
For example, the gold lacquer used in kintsugi (the art of repairing porcelain) is used to outline branches, vines, and flowers on the porcelain, which then spiral and entwine around the entire piece.

Of course, "firing a new piece of porcelain and then piecing it together with the damaged part of the porcelain to be repaired to make it look more complete" is also a good idea.

The problem is, how much clay or porcelain powder needs to be added to restore the hardness and solidity of pottery that has been soaked in the seabed for a long time and corroded by salt to its porous state? This is a specialized question.

Moreover, this isn't a question of museum-specific restoration, so Professor Li didn't know the answer, nor had he researched it.

He didn't have the time or the funds to research topics that wouldn't lead to published papers...

"Theoretically it's feasible, but in practice, you'll have to try it yourself." He carefully chose his words to give Shen Le this advice:
"Of course, it would be best to do some experiments and fire a few batches. That should give you a feel for it. — You know how to fire pottery, right?"

She couldn't make pottery, only porcelain. Shen Le proudly puffed out her chest, but the next moment, it quickly collapsed:
"Then, I'll go see where I can buy some salvaged pottery to do some experiments. I'll need your help to review the experimental plans and such."

Professor Li waved him away. What use is it to have him with the experimental plan? Go find someone in Jingdezhen!
In Jingdezhen, the professors who study and restore ancient porcelain are truly accomplished. They have researched and developed firing methods for all kinds of kilns, including Chai kiln, Ge kiln, Jun kiln, and Ding kiln.

If a student wins the teacher's favor and learns just one secret recipe, he can at least become an engineer or a technical expert in a porcelain factory, easily earning hundreds of thousands of yuan a year...

Shen Le smiled and left. He would definitely go to Jingdezhen, but not anytime soon.

During this period, Mr. Zhao received countless orders from the Special Affairs Bureau, operating at full capacity and busy firing porcelain towers every day. The world was spinning from firing, with several kilns rising and falling, and plumes of smoke rising and falling day after day.

Between being busy and bored, I would send Shen Le a message every few days:
"You've really put me in a terrible situation!"

"Where have you been? Come and work! Help me with the work! Don't try to dump all the work on me!"

"Are you trying to kill me with work? So many porcelain towers, it'll take me a hundred years to burn them! A hundred years!!!"

Before the porcelain tower firing work is completed, at least before the first phase of the task is finished, Shen Le will absolutely not walk into a trap.

Anyway, he has a small electric furnace, which can adjust the firing temperature and time, so he can slowly conduct experiments. He doesn't have to bite the bullet and live under someone else's roof.

Now, the problem he needs to face is:

"Should we just fire it directly? Or should we remove the demonic energy that's clinging to it? Or perhaps we should use earth-elemental magic to directly infuse it with earth-elemental essence to strengthen it? -- Forget it, let's just get a batch of pottery for experiments!"

In fact, salvaged pottery is not as easy to obtain as salvaged porcelain, which is readily available in abundance and can be found simply by taking a stroll through a night market.

As Professor Li mentioned before: when pottery was all the rage, maritime trade wasn't very common. By the time maritime trade became popular, pottery was no longer a high-value commodity.

Even if sailors bring some jars and pots with them when they go out to sea, the proportion is very small, almost a drop in the ocean among the vast number of salvaged porcelain.

Shen Le wandered around the night market several times without success. After thinking for a moment, she called Yun Kun and asked it to come pick her up.

"Take me to find some sea monsters! Have them do me a favor and retrieve some underwater pottery, even just shards—preferably pieces that have been stored for a long time and have been imbued with demonic energy!"

Shen Le now has quite a lot of connections within the Siren community—no, the Siren network—so he doesn't need to hang himself on the old sea turtle of the South China Sea.

He threw out a request, and in just three days, he collected seven or eight boxes of various broken pottery bowls, broken pottery bottles, broken pottery jars, and all sorts of broken pottery shards.

Shen Le finished the cleaning and desalination work in a whirlwind, bid farewell to the teachers at the shipwreck museum, and returned to Zhuxi Town to begin his work:
"Ah, having lots of stuff is great! We can experiment all we want, burn one, smash another, no problem. Burn, burn, burn! Keep burning!"

It's not advisable to start immediately, since although Shen Le has fired porcelain, he has never fired pottery by hand.

He worked diligently, starting by kneading clay, using a potter's wheel, making pottery, and firing it in the kiln. Fortunately, he had experience and a feel for firing porcelain; he only needed to control the moisture level of the clay, and the rest wasn't too difficult.
He didn't even need to test the temperature repeatedly; he just needed to check some papers and press a few buttons, and the electric furnace would automatically control the temperature.

I was lucky; I only failed twice, and then everything went smoothly. Every time I opened a furnace, it was a success.

Three furnaces were lit, and a pile of firewood was burned that could only be described as "rustic and naive." It was so bad that it couldn't even be used to hold noodles, so it had to be moved to the vases and pots used for growing flowers. Shen Le rubbed his hands together, eager to get started, and devoted himself wholeheartedly to the restoration work.
He divided all the pottery into two parts, trying to ensure that each part contained pottery pieces that were similar in appearance and had similar degrees of damage.

Then, two methods were used to repair it:

Group A: Use a cleansing spell to remove as much demonic energy as possible. Group B: Do not use a cleansing spell; simply burn the original object.

As for whether the demonic energy on it will turn it into a spirit or something after it's been repaired, well, at worst we can just smash it!

"So... how do you fill it with clay?" Shen Le held up a piece of broken pottery, looking it over from all angles. Compared to wood, pottery and porcelain are relatively dense materials; even if left unattended, they won't suddenly fall apart.
According to the common restoration methods used in the cultural relic restoration profession, generally speaking, only gluing is done, and the holes inside that have been corroded by seawater are not considered for filling.

As for the cracks on the surface of the pottery, they are filled with old pottery powder and fish glue, with the main approach being to fill them if possible and leave them as is if they cannot be filled; nobody wants to go to unnecessary trouble.

As for reinforcing it or something, that's just wishful thinking on Shen Le's part. Professor Li couldn't persuade him otherwise, so he simply let it roam free...

Since they were free-range, there was no one to consult. Shen Le examined the ceramic shards several times, then quickly placed an order for a bunch of dental equipment.

I bought all sorts of electric dental drills, both fast and slow, high-speed tungsten carbide burs, dental probes, hoe-shaped scalers, sickle-shaped scalers, and stain removers.

This thing is so useful!

It is hard, able to drill through teeth, and thus able to drill through pottery shards; it is also fine, with a small tip that will not enlarge the gaps in the pottery, and can make the smallest hole that Shen Le needs.

Moreover, the handheld dental drill is ergonomically designed, so it's stable in your hand and you can drill wherever you want!
Uh... the only problem is...

Shen Le started the drill, and listening to the buzzing sound and the terrible sound of the drill hitting the ceramic shards, he felt his teeth ache.

He tilted his head slightly, looked at the ceiling, opened his mouth wide and then quickly closed it, murmuring:
"Thank goodness I wasn't the one lying in the dental chair receiving treatment... Going to the dentist is truly the most terrifying torture in the world..."

If he were pinned down on a dental chair, and a dentist were poking and prodding him with a drill, a stick, or whatever, he would confess to everything!
Say whatever you're told!
He burned down the Summer Palace!

He patiently drilled several holes in the cracks of the pottery shard, filled them with fine powder made from old pottery shards, and then coated them with a layer of clay.

It is then placed into the electric furnace and fired again according to the pre-set program:
"...It cracked...Was it too hot? Or should I have wetted it beforehand? Or should I have wrapped it with more clay?"

Unable to find a solution, he tried every possible approach. After repeated experiments, he finally found the right temperature and time to ensure the pottery shards were fired successfully without cracking.

However, after the firing was completed and the sample was re-inserted into the CT scanner for an X-ray, Shen Le still shook his head:

"This won't work. Only the drilled areas have seen an increase in density; the areas that were corroded by seawater have lost density, and there's no way to restore it..."

Do we have to drill holes everywhere?
That is impossible!

Since that's impossible, the only option left is to use magic. Shen Le sighed and tried again:
He selected three similar pottery shards. The first shard was covered with old pottery powder. He used his mental energy to envelop the extremely fine pottery powder and infused it into the pottery shard:

It was very convenient to pour it into the cracks; almost as soon as the thought came to mind, the clay powder would fall in and fill the cracks completely.
However, getting the clay powder into the pores inside the pottery is extremely difficult.

Shen Le was covered in sweat, having carried the clay powder one grain at a time, and was already feeling dizzy after just stuffing in a small pinch of it.
After all, this kind of transport involves almost a spatial transformation, not just a simple relocation. He couldn't very well drill holes in the inside of the pottery shards and then forcefully stuff them in, could he?

The second piece used sifted clay mixed with deionized water, instead of the old clay powder. This time it was similar to the last, and even a little more complicated:
The water used to mix the clay will clog the holes, so it requires extra strength to carry it in...

Upon reaching the third piece, Shen Le finally breathed a slight sigh of relief. He was back in his comfort zone! He could handle it without involving matter, simply using magic!

Shen Lezhen carefully took out the selected pottery shard and placed it on a pile of things that looked like trash, but weren't much better than trash.

That was a pile of ceramic pebbles, used for planting flowers. Two yuan could buy one liter, and six yuan could buy five liters. Shen Le piled them in a small vat to absorb the earth elemental energy.

Shen Le placed the pottery shard on the surface, concentrated slightly, and used his mental energy to manipulate the pottery particles below. With a few gestures, a layer of hazy yellow light rose from the pottery particles and disappeared into the pottery shard.

Shen Le grabbed and released several times in succession, then used his mental energy to observe, and nodded in satisfaction:
"Hmm, it should be full by now. Should we stop here, or put it in the stove to burn?"

When in doubt, one consults instruments. Shen Le weighed the pottery shard, measured its density, and even performed a CT scan. However, the result left him still undecided:
"Forget it, if we're not sure, let's do a comparison. Let's not burn this area, but burn another one and see the effect?"

The effect was actually quite good; or rather, the pottery shards, infused with magic, withstood the test and did not crack directly.

However, on a spiritual level, it was quite heartbreaking. No matter how much Shen Le reduced the fluctuations of his magic, he could still feel the earth element power he had gathered shining on the pottery shard like a torch.

Even after the demonic energy was cleared away and replaced by this earth elemental power, faint spiritual energy still lingered on it.

"If left unattended, in a few decades or centuries, this thing might really become sentient, right?"

Shen Le silently speculated, locking it in a box, intending to smash it all up and fire it in the kiln again after this restoration work was completed.
Powerful flames can often extinguish newly emerging spirituality.

In contrast, those pottery shards filled with content, even if they were moved and filled with magic, had almost no spirituality, which made people feel very at ease.

Shen Le carefully collected the pottery shards, then treated the shards imbued with demonic energy using the same method. Finally, he let out a long sigh:

"Looks like I still can't be lazy..."

It's decided, we'll still use the most cumbersome and laborious method:

The clay, along with water, is moved into the pottery pores. After that, it is fired again to ensure the best bonding.

After all these fragments are repaired, we'll try to temporarily piece them together and use their resonance to find the other fragments scattered outside.

"Hey, hey, hey, what do you want? I haven't even made a move yet, where are you dragging me?"

(End of this chapter)