The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 776 Is this Mr. Shen even alive?
Shen Le, clutching the fragments of the pottery house, turned ninety degrees to the right, took two steps forward, then turned ninety degrees to the left, took three steps forward, and turned again…

Eyes fixed on a point in the void, feet moving up and down, one foot on the step, wobbling, then tripping over the railing, wobbling again...

He simply floated up, his feet stepping on the air, leaving a half-foot gap between his shoes and the ground, and he moved forward step by step.

It's only because this place is secluded and the parking lot is almost deserted that someone might happen to turn around and see it, then scream in terror.
"Ghost!"

"Shen Le, what's wrong?"

Upon seeing Shen Le's state, Gu Yulin quickly closed the car door and rushed over.

Shen Le, completely absorbed, walked twenty or thirty steps in the parking lot, then suddenly squatted down behind a bus. Holding the box containing the pottery shards in both hands, he almost threw it under the wheels.

"This vehicle... is strange. There are lights on it, and it keeps heading into the pottery house..."

Gu Yulin strained his eyes but couldn't see a single point of light. Only after closing his eyes, pressing his right index and middle fingers to his brow, and muttering something under his breath, did he open his eyes again and take a deep breath:

"This car...this car has spirit rings on it..."

Shen Le rolled her eyes at him, speechless. Hey, I'm a graduate student from one of the top two universities in China, my taste isn't that bad!
Despite rolling his eyes, he still took two steps closer and looked at the points of light with Gu Yulin. The points of light were bluish-white, scattered like stars, constantly trying to enter the pottery house, like a string of fireflies eager to return to their nest.

However, something seemed amiss with the pottery house; it couldn't meet their needs, causing the light to go in and out repeatedly, completely bewildered and frantically pacing around in circles...

"What's wrong with it?"

As Shen Le carried the pottery house away, the points of light relentlessly pursued him, circling him anxiously. Shen Le tried to communicate with the points of light using his spiritual power, but to no avail.

I sat down on the ground again, freeing my hands, and tried to hold a point of light in my palm to sense its needs, but to no avail.

I opened the box, placed my hands on the pottery shards, and tried to resonate with them and understand their needs, but I received no response...

"Forget it, I'll just call my colleagues." Gu Yulin sighed helplessly and started making calls to find more people.

Before long, colleagues from the local special affairs bureau rushed over in a panic. Upon seeing the bus, they immediately exclaimed, "Oh dear!"
"We finally found it! Thank you so much! We've been searching for this thing like crazy, thank goodness you found it..."

He hurriedly laid out various tables, incense burners, candles, and talismans. One by one, electronic candles were arranged around the large cart;
One by one, the talisman paper with adhesive backing was torn open on the spot and pasted onto the truck.

The roadblocks, which looked like cones, were red and white at first glance, and upon closer inspection, they were covered with layers of talismans, circling the truck a second time.
Then, they used a red rope adorned with countless talisman flags to hang another circle around the ice cream cone...

Gu Yulin kept bending over and standing up, bending over and standing up again, helping his colleague get everything done. Shen Le also wanted to help, but was stopped by both of them in unison:
"Don't touch it!"

"Stand back a bit!"

"The talisman is going to be burned!!!"

If this bus is a Class D anomaly, which an ordinary employee with equipment can handle, then Shen Le himself is a Class A... no, above Class A, there are four levels: Heaven, Earth, Profound, and Yellow. Shen Le is guaranteed to be a Class Earth anomaly.

The moment he stood there, the instruments started beeping and beeping incessantly, with no one knowing what was happening. All they knew was that he had single-handedly disrupted all the anomalies...

Shen Le had no choice but to hold his pottery box and stand back, and then back again, until he stood in a corner of the parking lot, watching the two people wander around in the distance.

They worked on it from dusk until late at night, long after the parking lot attendants had gone home, before finally managing to get the three layers of defense in place.

They switched on the electricity, lit the electronic candles and chanting machines, and lit candles and incense. Only then did they wave their whisks, tap their tokens, perform the Yu-style ritual, and move them back and forth across the large cart.

After a while, the bus suddenly roared, the engine blared, and the headlights, high beams, turn signals, and fog lights all came on at the same time. In the empty carriage, it seemed as if someone was running around...

"Give me a hand! Don't let it get away!"

The new Special Affairs Bureau employee screamed at the top of his lungs. The truck had already started, its tires spinning wildly, windows shattering one after another, and large gushes of blood gushed from the window edges, the gaps in the cargo compartment, and the floor…

Blood flowed outside the car, and the talismans pasted on the car body kept smoking, burning one after another.

With a loud crash, the bus slammed into the traffic cones, the ropes connecting the cones gleaming brightly, forcefully pushing it back...

"Hold on! Hold on!!!"

Gu Yulin's expression changed. He quickly moved to the back of the bus, placed his hands on the rope, and chanted the scriptures with all his might, channeling a stream of heat into the yellow rope.

Seeing the rope vibrating incessantly, taut and then snapping back, creaking and groaning, on the verge of breaking, Shen Le sighed and swiftly moved to stand in front of the car:

"Be good. Don't move around."

He drew a wooden sword and, through the rope, gently tapped it against the heavy front bumper of the car. A strange hissing sound followed, the headlights went out, the interior lights went out, and the engine stopped running…

All abnormalities on the entire bus have disappeared. The windows are intact, the exterior is clean and gleaming, and the interior is quiet; not a sound of footsteps can be heard, nor can a single person be seen moving about.

At first glance, it looks like a typical 49-seat bus found in parking lots, ready to be driven out to pick up passengers at any time—as docile as could be…

"Oh... thank you so much..."

The new Special Affairs Bureau employee was sweating profusely. He quickly added another talisman rope, pasted on a talisman paper, and then mumbled incessantly, lit incense, chanted scriptures, and performed a ritual.

After struggling for quite a while, the talisman in front of them spontaneously combusted without fire. Sparks of phosphorescence rose from the bus, fell into the smoke from the burning talisman, and were then enveloped by the smoke before plunging into the incense burner.

When the phosphorescence disappeared, the bus was a mangled mess, twisted and cracked, covered in rust. The windows were gone, the wheels were gone, the front was crumpled up, and the rearview mirrors and headlights were nowhere to be seen... In short, it looked like it had rolled seventeen or eighteen times down a cliff, been hoisted up, and then thrown into a junkyard, where it had been exposed to the elements for who knows how long.

"Phew, finally got it sorted out. Now I don't have to hear the alarm every day about where this thing spawns, and then rush there only to miss it..."

The local employee, his face and brow beaded with sweat, busily packed up the equipment, ice cream cones, talismans, and incense burner. Finally, he carried the incense burner, which looked ten times heavier, bending over as he placed it on the car.

"By the way, how did you find it?"

"Uh...we didn't find it, it came to us on its own..."

Shen Le, in the exact same posture, clutched the box of pottery shards, momentarily at a loss for words. Fortunately, Gu Yulin promptly picked up the conversation:
"Here's the thing, the ancient pottery in his box should have been fired around here. We came here to find the location of the ancient kiln and happened to come across this anomaly. —By the way, are there any ancient kiln sites around here?"

"Hey, you've come to the right person!" exclaimed a local employee who had rushed over to work, slapping his thigh.
“We know everything about this area, from the mountains and rivers to the gullies and hills. We know what happened here in ancient times and in modern times. We know where the Japanese devils committed atrocities and where the Tartars committed atrocities!”

"Come on, get in my car and come with me!"

This guy truly lived up to his reputation as a local bigwig; he knew what others knew, and he also knew what others didn't.

With a tap of the accelerator, the car sped off, the driver pointing left and right as he drove:
"There's a Southern Song Dynasty stele forest on this right... It's quite clean, there's not much there. After work, we like to rest there; it's very relaxing..."

"See that little hill over there? A nest of squirrels has taken it over. It's not a big swarm yet, but they're already quite good at burrowing. The fruit farmer who planted torreya on that hill was crying his eyes out, begging us for help..."

"Ah, wait a minute! There's a Yue Fei Temple up ahead. I'll stop here and move the incense burner into the temple!"

"Is there a Yue Fei Temple here too?" Shen Le asked curiously. Aren't there only Yue Fei temples by West Lake? There's one here too?
"Of course!" The other person nodded vigorously: "The incense is very popular. People come here to visit whenever they have free time, and they also bring their children to burn incense during festivals!"

He carried the heavy incense burner, shuffling laboriously step by step into the Yue Fei Temple. No one knew who was guarding the temple, but in the middle of the night, a small door was still open, as if they weren't worried about someone coming in to steal something.

Of course, no one would be so foolish as to steal from the Yue Fei Temple... right?

As the incense burner crossed the threshold, the special affairs bureau member seemed to have finally completed his mission. He squatted down while holding the incense burner, then knelt down, and the incense burner landed steadily on the ground.

A gust of wind swept by, and the incense ash in the burner fluttered up. Among the ash, dozens of bluish-white fluorescent points circled the burner twice, seemingly about to be thrown towards the pottery house in Shen Le's arms.

Before it even reached Shen Le, it couldn't withstand the suction and was finally swept towards the main hall, landing inside the large incense burner in the square at the entrance. The scattered specks seemed to be asleep, or perhaps slowly dissolving and disappearing.

"Phew...finally done..."

Seeing this, the members of the Special Affairs Bureau finally relaxed, put their hands together, and bowed to the main hall, then bowed again.

Shen Le followed him to finish bowing and then came out, listening to his sigh:
"Ah, these temples are so great! They save us so much trouble! Otherwise, we'd have to go back and chant sutras all night, and then we'd have to keep working tomorrow without anyone to cover our shifts, and no overtime pay!"

Shen Le genuinely sympathized with him. These days, life isn't easy for those who live off the government. Going to the grassroots level and fighting poverty requires so much sweat and effort; those who know understand.

Even the Special Affairs Bureau is swamped with work—he couldn't help but ask:
"What if there are no temples nearby? Or, what if there aren't any powerful enough temples, or temples that you're absolutely certain are effective?"

The Special Affairs Bureau employee had dark circles under his eyes and looked lifeless, clearly exhausted. Hearing Shen Le ask, he first clasped his hands together and bowed twice towards the Yue Fei Temple before turning around and lowering his voice:

"Generally speaking, there are always a few temples in a place that are more efficacious, or that have reliable practitioners presiding over them. We all know these places."

"If you're completely unfamiliar with the area and can't find it, don't worry, I'll tell you a completely reliable method!"

The car sped along, its wheels rolling rapidly as it traveled along the dark road. Suddenly, the driver slammed on the brakes, bringing it to a stop at a grand gate.

Looking through the gate, one sees green pines and cypresses, and red flags fluttering in the wind.

"This is it." The special affairs officer raised his hand in salute and said softly, as if afraid of disturbing the peace inside.
"If you encounter any insurmountable, difficult, or dangerous situation, just hide in here, and everything will be taken care of!"

Unfortunately, only here is there peace. Shen Le bowed along with him, carefully clutching the fragments of the pottery house, and continued to listen to his sighs:
"Sigh, the paths of the living and the dead are so complicated. If only there were local deities or city gods specifically in charge of these matters—unfortunately, after all these years, the city god temples are no longer effective..."

Perhaps there was another way? As those points of light rose naturally and fell into the pottery house in his arms, a glimmer of hope rose in Shen Le's heart.

He closed his eyes, feeling the resonance and longing of the pottery shards, sensing the place they yearned for:
"We're very close..." he said softly.
"It should be nearby, less than 10 kilometers away, no, maybe even less than 5 kilometers away..."

"How did you know?" The local guy was a little surprised and stepped on the gas, increasing the car's speed.
“That’s right, there’s an old kiln site up ahead, some from the Qing Dynasty, some even dating back to the Tang Dynasty. I don’t know if they’ve dug up any others—but if you’re looking for even older kilns, this should be the place.”

Shen Le felt that the pottery fragments in his arms had begun to vibrate with joy, eagerly wanting to regain their original power.

Indeed, there are certain rules governing the location of porcelain kilns, taking into account factors such as the terrain, water features, wind direction, and road access. In a large region, if a porcelain-making industry begins to develop, kilns often cluster in one area:
"I think I've found it. Thank you. Could you please pull over so I can confirm the exact location?"

He expressed his gratitude in a soft voice, then jumped off the car with the pottery hut in his arms and stepped into the mountains.

He walked further and further away, lower and lower, until gradually, his feet, knees, half his body, and finally his whole body disappeared into the ground.

"Uh……"

The local guy, his face pale and lips white, grabbed Gu Yulin:

"Who did you bring here? It's a living person, right?!"

(End of this chapter)