The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 799 Repairing bamboo slips, magic is indeed powerful!
Shen Le felt that his practice time was too long, and he was anxious every day, fearing that the bamboo slips would not be able to wait, that the bamboo slips would rot, and that Dinosaur-kun was too tired to continue...

However, Professor Hu's graduate students were practically begging Shen Le to slow down, to just as slowly as possible. They were joking, they were already overwhelmed with bacterial cultures!
Bacterial isolation and culture, quantitative real-time PCR, DGGE, and Biolog-ECO plate...

Each of these technical methods is just a term, but each term represents an experiment conducted by researchers in the laboratory for three months, six months, or even longer.

In fact, the amount of research involved in writing a paper titled "A Preliminary Study on Microbial Diversity and Function During Water-Saturated Preservation" based on this batch of bamboo slips is enough to support a master's thesis!

Professor Hu mobilized all his graduate students, and even borrowed a few from other professors. Everyone worked together in different areas, and that's how they managed to finish the project before Shen Le retrieved the bamboo slips.

Of course, Shen Le provided generous experimental funding and stipends, and coupled with the professor's authority, even though the poor students were exhausted, they still managed to squeeze out time to earn this extra income, and incidentally, they could also publish a few papers.

What? You're saying someone has already written about this area?
The microbial analysis of the bamboo slips from the Laoguanshan Han Tomb has already been written, so is the preservation analysis of the Zoumalou bamboo slips worthless?
The Yunmeng Mountain bamboo slips are a new discovery. They are located in the foothills of the Taihang Mountains, north of the Qinling-Huaihe line. Their microbial community must be different from that in the south, making them very valuable for research!

So Shen Le practiced desperately, and the students also worked tirelessly on their research.

Shen Le was carefully retrieving the bamboo slips one by one and soaking them in glass test tubes filled with deionized water, preserving them from light. Meanwhile, research conclusions and a mature sterilization and preservation method were immediately provided.
A total of 97 bacterial strains belonging to 12 genera and 18 species were isolated from the bamboo slip soaking solution.

Among them, *Cupriavidus*, *Bacillus*, and *Pseudomonas* can degrade cellulose, posing a great threat to the preservation of bamboo slips.

Then, based on previous research, the students conducted a large number of sterilization experiments and demonstrated the effects of the agents on bamboo slips and lacquer films.

The conclusion is that the four antifungal and sterilizing agents—bactericide, fungicide, benzalkonium chloride, and isothiazolinone—are highly effective at killing bacteria and have no effect on bamboo slips or lacquer films.

"So, you just need to drip the medicine in; the concentration is already prepared!"

Professor Hu placed the medicine and the paper directly in front of Shen Le. Shen Le didn't immediately accept this approach, which was practically like being fed. Instead, she frowned and stared at the waterlogged bamboo strips in the sink.

"Um……"

"how?"

"Let me think about it..."

Shen Le didn't disbelieve in the results achieved at the school; he simply hoped there could be more direct methods.

Moreover, all preservatives and sterilizers are chemical agents, which may require washing and removal later.

Even if the experimental result is "no effect on the bamboo slips and lacquer film", the washing and cleaning process may still cause mechanical or chemical effects on the bamboo slips.

Shen Le hoped to use a more delicate and precise method to deal with it, for example, magic or something...

"Cleaning Technique!"

"Cleaning Technique!"

"Cleansing technique..."

One spell after another was cast. The slime around the bamboo strips was removed, the visible white residue on the bamboo strips was removed, the brown and black mold spots on the bamboo strips were removed, and even the black and brown dirt on the bamboo strips was removed.

The magic gently swept across the bamboo strips, cleansing away anything that shouldn't have been there. Then, Shen Le watched helplessly as the bamboo strips in front of him collapsed, collapsed...

"Teacher! Why did this thing collapse?!"

Professor Hu was dragged over from next door. He glanced at the room and exclaimed, "Eh?"
How did you get like this?

"I used magic..."

Shen Le demonstrated the process to Professor Hu, and then, following his instructions, demonstrated step by step how to remove various attachments.

Although he couldn't see clearly, or even discern the light and fluctuations of the spell's activation, Professor Hu still figured out exactly where the problem lay. He confidently pointed to the bamboo strip in the test tube:
"Did you lock everything inside it into dirt and grime?"

"what?"

"Get back to your studies." Professor Hu rattled off a list of book and paper titles:

"In water-saturated bamboo slips, a large amount of cellulose in the bamboo and wood tissue has been broken down. Inside the cells, the supporting structures are mostly hydrolyzed parts. You've cleaned them all out..."

"what!"

Shen Le suddenly realized. He had already reviewed these points of knowledge before repairing Yun Kun! The deterioration principles and repair methods of water-saturated bamboo slips and water-saturated wooden artifacts largely share commonalities!

How come you've forgotten everything by now?
"No rush. Practice is fine, but these bamboo slips still need to be processed. Come on, there's some work to be done!"

Professor Hu tossed a huge stack of forms to Shen Le. Just looking at the table of contents, Shen Le felt like he'd been struck by lightning:
Carbon-14 dating of bamboo slips;

Identification of bamboo slip material species;

Microstructural analysis of bamboo slips;

Chemical composition analysis of bamboo;

Bamboo moisture content determination;
Analysis of iron ion content in bamboo slips;

Analysis of red pigment on bamboo slips;
Taking photos of bamboo slips...

Taking photos was a huge undertaking. Every single bamboo slip, whether it had writing on it or not, had to be photographed. If there was writing on both sides, then it had to be photographed twice.

Shen Le fiddled with the camera in his hands with a worried expression:
"This is an infrared camera? It's completely different from the ones I've used before..."

"It's already pretty good, be content." Professor Hu shrugged.

"In the past, we used ordinary cameras to take pictures. The bamboo slips first had to be decolorized, then soaked in water, and then the picture had to be taken immediately after the water was absorbed. After the picture was taken, water was sprayed on them immediately."

Without water, it will dry out, deform, oxidize, and darken; with water, it will reflect light and become unphotographable. Only now, with infrared imaging, would it require five or six people to handle a single round of photography!

Under the professor's guidance, Shen Le selected blank sections of bamboo slips, cut out small samples, and conducted carbon-14 dating, microscopic observation, and electron microscopic observation...

After conducting seven or eight experiments in quick succession, I was dizzy and my mind was completely blank; all the random spells and techniques had been forgotten. And these were the very experiments that had to be done, none of them could be omitted—

Each and every one of them is irreplaceable by any magic!
Ah, doing research is so tiring...

Even with just a small piece of bamboo strip, a week had already passed by the time I finished these experiments and took photos whenever I had a spare moment.

Professor Hu, holding the photos taken by the infrared camera, happily went to do his own research, while Shen Le could only squat down in front of the bamboo strips he had obtained from the Dragon Palace, practicing his skills with the bamboo strips over and over again:

"Cleanse!" "Cleanse—"

Be careful and try to control the cleaning process. The cleaning technique should be applied close to the surface of the bamboo strip to remove all the mold and dirt. However, it should not penetrate into the bamboo strip, not even a little bit!

So what should we do with those bacteria? We can't just clean up the bacteria on the outside of the bamboo strips and ignore the bacteria inside, can we?

Or... how about we go all out?
Shen Le took a deep breath and opened the results of the bacterial identification of the bamboo slip soaking solution that his junior classmates had sent him, which Professor Hu had sent him.

Open a research paper, search, search, until you find a colony image, micrograph, and scanning electron microscope image of a bacterium, then frantically search for characteristics corresponding to this bacterium, and memorize them all:

"Cleansing technique—kill all of that kind of bacteria in the bamboo strips and soaking solution in front of me!"

An almost invisible ray of light flew from his fingertips, rolling across the bamboo strips and the glass tube containing them.

Shen Le breathed a slight sigh of relief, changed to a different bamboo strip, and tried again. After three consecutive attempts, she marked the glass tube, switched to another paper, and continued researching, memorizing, and studying.

Good news, the spells were successfully cast—whether they are effective remains to be seen.

The bad news is that not all papers contain detailed images, or images detailed enough to identify all the information about the bacterial species.

After diligently "killing" seven or eight kinds of bacteria, Shen Le finally stopped and ran to find Professor Hu:
"...That's roughly what happened. Teacher, could you please find a few more junior students to come over and redo the bacterial culture?"

I really don't know how to do this... I'll pay the allowance! The same as before!

Professor Hu was dumbfounded, looking Shen Le up and down as if he were examining a monster, or as if a giant bacterial scanning electron microscope image had appeared on Shen Le's face.

"You...you brat...Fine, I'll go catch someone else, but don't suddenly give me missions again! You know everyone's busy!"

Shen Le could only chuckle. As a student himself, he knew all too well how much effort it took to achieve anything at such a top-tier school.

Leaving aside his fieldwork, when he was at school, he would stay in the lab until eight or nine o'clock at night, that was practically his daily routine. Without doing that, he couldn't expect to publish a good paper or produce any good results.

In this case, if the supervisor suddenly throws a new project at you, it's like adding insult to injury—

Working until 8 or 9 pm every day turned into working until 11 or 12 pm, or working until 10 or 11 pm every day, and working six days a week turned into working seven days a week...

Even with a substantial monetary reward, sometimes it's not about the money anymore...

Fortunately, Professor Hu had enough influence. The students he summoned, though exhausted and on the verge of collapse, still reluctantly conducted the bacterial culture experiment.

"no!"

"no!"

"Still no, Shen Le, your trick is amazing! Your cleaning technique can actually target and remove certain bacteria! Come on, give us a hand—"

"Hey, wait a minute! Teacher, wait a minute! Finish this batch of bamboo slips first! Give me a complete list of all the bacteria that need to be removed, and I'll get it all done in one go!"

This task was relatively easy to complete. Although the students who had previously been in charge of bacterial culture were full of resentment, they still dutifully retrieved the original data, organized it one by one, and sent it over.

Shen Le was responsible for holding the documents and facing the hundreds or thousands of bamboo slips in front of him, casting spells on each one to clean away the bacteria inside.
"Phew, phew... It should be done by now..."

He didn't dare cast spells over a large area, so he could only clean them up one by one, casting spells on each one individually. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally finished cleaning up all the bacteria and let out a long sigh of relief.

Ah, finally it's done...

"Yes, you've finally got it sorted out." Professor Hu sauntered over to look at him, shaking his head and sighing.

"Such a large batch of bamboo slips should, in theory, require the entire research institute working day and night for one or two months to finish—and that doesn't even include the time spent slowly cleaning, rinsing, and changing the water. You kid..."

He shook his head, put his hands behind his back, and slowly walked out. Shen Le looked at the rows of safes in front of him and felt a slight weight lift from his shoulders, as if a part of a heavy burden had finally been lifted.

However, the more delicate and demanding tasks, requiring even more patience and skill, were yet to come:
"What? You want to cover each bamboo slip with a 0.2mm thick glass strip?"

"Should we use white thread to bind the glass strips and bamboo slips together?"

"Then they are moved out one by one and freeze-dried in a vacuum?"

Shen Le picked up a water-soaked bamboo strip brought from the Dragon Palace and began practicing.

He held his breath, trying to attach the smooth, brittle, and thin glass strip, which he dared not even hold, to the damp and fragile bamboo strip.

However, with just a little force, the bamboo strips not only didn't deform, but they actually broke apart.
The glass sheet was too thin and stiff to fit properly.

After much effort, I managed to get them all together, and then tried to tie them with silk thread. But the thread either wouldn't hold them together at all, or it would just break the bamboo strips in two...

Professor Hu had no good advice on this. He could only tell Shen Le:

“The strength of each type of water-soaked bamboo slip is different. The appropriate force depends on experience; you can only try it slowly…”

Let's give it a try, but when should we go?

After ruining 50 bamboo strips in a row, Shen Le was extremely frustrated and almost wanted to smash things on the spot. "I'm not trying anymore, I'll take the shortcut!"
Anyway, it's not like he didn't surpass it!
Shen Le grabbed a bottle of special nutrient solution for hydroponics and dripped it into a glass tube containing bamboo strips.

Watching the translucent green liquid disperse in the deionized water, he took a deep breath and placed his hands lightly on top of the bamboo strips:

"Grow!"

"Grow!"

"Grow, grow, grow!"

A vibrant green light illuminated the test tube. This was a spell he was already familiar with, one that had brought the dead back to life countless times, restoring vitality and elasticity to fragile, decaying wooden scabbards and leather belts.

At this time, it naturally took effect. The extremely faint trace of life inside the bamboo strip was carefully stimulated by him, and soon, at a speed visible to the naked eye, it showed a hint of green!
When the light faded, what lay inside the glass tube was no longer a water-soaked bamboo strip that would crumble at the slightest touch, but a fresh bamboo strip with a vibrant green color and a tough texture, as if it had just been cut down.

Shen Le excitedly poured it out. A light tap with his fingers produced a crisp sound, and bending it forcefully revealed its good elasticity.

With this level of strength, it's not afraid of anything you do!

"It's a success!" Shen Le's face lit up:
As expected, magic is really powerful! One growth spell and all those fragile, waterlogged bamboo slips have grown back!

(End of this chapter)