The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 806 Dagger Grandpa, do you like this new body?
"Well……"

Professor Hu pushed up his reading glasses, squinted, and carefully examined the edge of the photo, focusing on the words that Shen Le had pointed out.

As he looked, he reached out and traced the unfamiliar characters in the air, stroke by stroke. His lips moved slightly, and he murmured softly to himself:
"Single-character? Compound character? Symbolic character? Phonetic character? Character combining form? Semantic character? Form and meaning? ... Variant characters? Variant characters?"

Shen Le, who had only studied the characters of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods superficially—in less than three lessons in total, and had mostly forgotten them—
"..."

He could understand what the professor was saying, but he couldn't connect it at all with the text on the screen...

Fortunately, he quickly regained his composure. The threshold for specialization is simply too high; the seven Warring States each had their own writing system, and the writing systems of each state were quite different.

Otherwise, Qin Shi Huang would not have needed to standardize writing and cart axles, sacrificing the scripts of the other six states to create the unified Chinese characters.

Faced with characters that were clearly not Qin Dynasty seal script, Professor Hu struggled for ten minutes but still couldn't figure out what they were...

The old professor decisively took out his phone, opened his contacts, and began making calls one by one:

"Hey, Lao Xu... could you please help me identify these words?"

"Hey, Old Zhang..."

"Hey, Lao Shen..."

He made seven or eight calls in quick succession before tossing the phone aside. Shen Le caught it hastily, and then heard Professor Hu say:

"Hey, help me send this email!"

Alright, alright... I'll do my best when needed...

Shen Le truly lacked connections with experts in Warring States period script; he could only rely on clinging to the professor's coattails...

He typed furiously, took screenshots of photos, dragged them into the sent items folder, and sent them out one by one. Out of respect, he couldn't send group emails—

Secretly sending it is also not allowed, otherwise the professors would forward it to each other, and eventually the secret would be exposed.

Before he could finish sending the message, his phone started vibrating incessantly, interrupting his work.

Shen Le glanced to the side and saw that Professor Hu had already picked up his phone. Just as the call connected, he heard a rapid-fire voice on the other end:
"Old Hu! Where did you get this thing? Where did you find it?!"

"—Do you have the original? Do you have a photo of the whole artifact? I'm telling you, don't keep it to yourself! The silk details in that photo are so obvious!!!"

Shen Le removed her hands from the keyboard and turned to look at Professor Hu. The professor chuckled confidently.

"Don't ask where the artifact came from yet. First, tell me what characters you recognized. If you're accurate, I'll send you photos later!"

"Wait for me! I'm on my way!!!"

With a bang, the phone was disconnected. Professor Hu smiled calmly:

"All done. With him handling this, the accuracy rate should be fine—what are you looking at me for? Keep sending emails!"

Shen Le obediently continued working. After sending the email, Professor Hu waved him impatiently.
"Go, go, go! Don't stay here! Hurry up and get your silk painting done—do the experiments if you need to, and fix what needs to be fixed! I'll call you if I need anything!"

Shen Le gave a slight bow, quickened her pace, and practically fled back to her lab. Behind her, Professor Hu watched the door close, nodding and smiling.

"Not bad, that's clever enough. Hmm, those shameless old bastards, we can't let them see the real artifacts! They'd really dare to steal them!"

The National Museum, in particular, snatches anything it sees and never returns it, leaving countless local museums crying out in despair!
Sure enough, less than an hour later, hurried footsteps began pounding in the hallway outside the door. Before even reaching the door, a rapid voice rang out:

"Old Hu! Where did you get this?! Let me see the original! Hurry! This is an incredible discovery—it's been written about in history books for thousands of years, are we finally going to find the original?!"

"Don't ask where the original is, just tell me what it is!"

The two old men, whose combined age was over one hundred and nearing one hundred and twenty, were talking animatedly.

Shen Le locked himself in the old house, keeping the door tightly shut, and even had Huang Yutong erase the traces of a door on the wall—

Then, apart from experienced cultivators, everyone who comes here will only see a white wall and will never be able to see what's inside.

He walked to the workbench, looked left and right, and hesitated:

Which one should we fix first?
Should we repair the broken dagger first, or the silk fabric first?
How should a broken dagger be repaired? After all, the front half of this thing—the tip half—is perfectly intact, without any rust or fragility. In other words, there's nothing that needs repairing.

The so-called repair means to replace half of the blade, possibly the handle, and maybe even the scabbard.
How to repair silk? Besides applying silk fibroin solution to reinforce the fabric's lines, what else is needed?
Shen Le hesitated for a long time, going back and forth between east and west, standing in front of the glass box containing the broken dagger for a while, and then standing in front of the storage cabinet containing the silk painting for a while, unable to make up her mind.

After thinking for a long time, I spread out a piece of paper and started drawing quickly:

What should the missing half of the blade of the broken dagger look like? Straight? Slightly curved? Long? Short and narrow?
Given the iron smelting and forging techniques of the Warring States period, what would it most likely have looked like?
—Wow, no wonder restoring the Venus de Milo was so difficult. I couldn't even finish repairing a section of the blade!

Shen Le drew twenty or thirty pictures in one go, but still couldn't convince himself, so he simply turned on his computer and started searching for a complete encyclopedia of swords from all over the world.

Search, download, print, compare with the broken dagger, select the part that is closest to the front of the broken dagger, and then complete its blade according to the pattern.

I drew dozens more diagrams, but I still felt something was wrong, something just wasn't right...

"Or, should I talk to it first and ask it what it thinks?"

Shen Le pondered for a moment, then moved the broken dagger, along with the tray, out of the storage box. He extended a finger and carefully touched the smooth blade of the broken dagger.

Take a deep breath, exhale deeply, and channel the warmth within your body, gradually moistening the surface of the broken dagger, attempting to permeate the blade:

"Please, please...please, please...at least try to communicate with me...Do you even remember what you used to be like, what you were like at the beginning...Waaah!"

He quickly withdrew his hand, put his finger in his mouth, and sucked on it. Once, twice, his mouth was filled with the taste of rust: even though his finger was just touching the blade, without actually touching the edge or tip, the powerful metallic energy from the dagger still managed to cut his finger.

This is not something that can be resolved with internal force. The Broken Dagger refused to communicate with him—it seems that only after it is truly repaired will there be any possibility of successful communication.

Okay, without communication, we don't know what it looks like, and the repair can't be successful. The repair fails, and we can't communicate...

Infinite loop...

Shen Le frowned, hands behind his back, and paced around the lab, then again. After pondering for a while, he suddenly stamped his foot:

"I've given up! Huang Yutong, do me a favor—be careful with fire, I need to get a dagger!"

Let's try our luck! From the dozens of drawings he produced, choose the most likely one, forge a dagger by hand, and then try it out with the broken dagger—

Maybe it will work?

Fortunately, the old house had almost everything, including steel, spirit metal, and spirit ore, so forging a dagger was not difficult.

Shen Le changed into a blacksmith's apron, rolled up his sleeves, turned on the electric furnace, and, using the knowledge he had learned while repairing Li Xingtang—the knowledge he had once used to forge the Tang Dynasty's Mo Dao—he swung his hammer:

when!
when!
Dangdangdangdangdang——

First, arrange all kinds of steel and spirit metal in a row, then place the broken dagger on them one by one, allowing it to sense these minerals and also to sense whether the broken dagger is satisfied with them.

Finally, select the piece that best satisfies the broken dagger, then burn it, forge it, burn it again, and forge it again.

Eighty for the big hammer, forty for the small hammer, I don't know if it reached five or six figures, finally, a brand new, gleaming silver dagger, steaming hot, lay flat on the heat-resistant mat:
"Here, try it and see if it suits your taste? Is it what you want? — Can you swallow it whole?"

Shen Le was extremely respectful—more respectful than when serving his own mentor—and took the newly forged dagger and placed it on the broken dagger.

The movements were extremely gentle and slow, as if afraid of hurting the broken dagger:
However, with a soft clang, thousands of golden rays flew out from the broken dagger, slicing horizontally and vertically, cutting the newly forged dagger below into a pile of steel pellets...

"Ah this..."

Shen Le's eyes widened. Even if he couldn't understand the language of the broken dagger, or even if he had absolutely no ability to communicate with spiritual objects, he could tell just by looking at it:

That broken dagger was extremely, utterly, and absolutely furious!
It rejected the new dagger, and even felt disgusted by being touched by that thing!
"All right……"

Shen Le sighed helplessly. This shape isn't right? This shape doesn't suit me?
...Otherwise, I'll send the 3D shape of the Broken Dagger to the Special Affairs Bureau and ask them to find someone to design and forge it, and send over a batch of daggers of various shapes so that the Broken Dagger can choose for itself.
Although he felt no shame in messing with the Special Affairs Bureau—after all, Shen Le wasn't refusing to pay him—he still felt that this wasn't the right path…

Or should I talk to the silk first? Let's repair the silk first, and then deal with the broken dagger?
Perhaps there are clues on the silk that can help him repair the broken dagger...

Shen Le sighed, respectfully returned the broken dagger to the storage box, evacuated the air, filled it with nitrogen, and adjusted the temperature and humidity to let it rest peacefully in the most suitable environment.

Then, he turned off the lights, took out the storage box containing the silk, and, in the extremely dim light, carefully examined the roll of silk using both his mental power and a magnifying glass:

...It wasn't whole. Not only was it incomplete, it was also somewhat tattered, as if it had been thrown on the ground and roughly trampled over:

It was only because the silk was of good quality and thick enough that it didn't tear a hole under the pressure of the shoe sole.

Even so, on its back, the side without any pattern, many threads were broken, with the ends dangling pitifully.

This isn't even the part that most needs repair. In fact, both its front and back are stained and covered in dust, indicating that it has been badly damaged.
Not only that, but it was also splattered with blood. The blood seeped in from its back, penetrating to its front, leaving stains on several mountains, rivers, and towns:
In some places, it was even visibly moldy...

Shen Le hesitated. The mold definitely needed to be removed, but what about the bloodstains and dust?

Or, to what extent should it be removed?
There is a possibility that the bloodstains on this are similar to those marked "This is the blood of Attendant Ji, do not remove," and it is best not to remove them rashly...

He observed it meticulously, wishing he could pick up a microscope and scan the silk fabric square centimeter by square centimeter—

Some dust particles are not on the surface, but embedded in the warp and weft of the silk. Cleaning them out requires extra care and patience...

"what?"

Shen Le's hand holding the magnifying glass suddenly trembled, almost poking the magnifying glass into the silk.

This roll of silk had always been rolled up, supporting the broken dagger. Naturally, there were grooves pressed out by the broken dagger on it, layer upon layer pressing down, gradually becoming gentler from top to bottom.

However, if you flatten it out and observe it carefully, you can find that the inside of the silk roll also has grooves that bulge outwards.

Unlike the indentations created by the pressure of pottery jars left for thousands of years, these outward grooves are longer, thicker, and more prominent:
Inside the silk, it left a vivid, phantom image of a dagger, blurred and outlined by a golden aura...

It's complete!

It is a complete dagger, from the hilt to the tip, not a broken dagger that has been cut in half!
Shen Le suddenly jumped up. He quickly adjusted the infrared camera, carefully taking pictures from multiple angles again, trying to capture the dent on it.

However, the mark was stained with golden energy, and it was clearly visible to cultivators, but it could not be detected by ordinary technological means.

Shen Le failed once, twice, three times, and finally had to take a large, semi-transparent sheet of paper, cover the glass top of the safe, and carefully trace the outline stroke by stroke, looking down into it...

After finishing the drawing, he placed a large sheet of paper into the storage box, lightly covering the silk, and used his mental power to carve a mark on the large sheet of paper.

Finally, carefully roll up the silk, leaving space for a dagger, and then trace the outline of the dagger's thickness and the shape of its hilt in the air...

"Got it! Let's use this one! -- By the way, is this rolled-up silk map with a dagger hidden inside really the map I'm thinking of?"

While speculating, Shen Le restarted forging the knife. Meanwhile, outside the laboratory, Professor Hu's room was already packed with people, three or four deep.
"The Dukang map! Those four characters—it's the Dukang map! No doubt about it! —Hey Lao Hu, stop hiding things! Show it to everyone! At least take a look!!!"

(End of this chapter)