Restoring cultural relics: Starting with the crying Tang Dynasty figurines

He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

He closed his eyes, his mind filled with the words of Lao Wu and Zhao Huaishan:

"Don't let him come here..."

When Su Yuan arrived at work the next day, Wu Zhenshan was not in the lobby. Su Yuan thought to himself:

"He must have gone wandering around somewhere again..."

He went up to the second floor and passed the director's office. The door was open, and Zhang Weiyi was on the phone. He spoke in a very low voice, and Su Yuan only heard one sentence:

"...No, that thing can't be moved..."

Zhang Weiyi saw Su Yuan at the door, waved his hand, and gestured for him to go ahead. When Su Yuan walked to his office, he saw a note on his desk.

"The sword is in the storeroom, in an iron box on the side. The password is your birthday, Zhang!"

Su Yuan stared at the note for a few seconds, his mind in turmoil:

"My birthday? How did he know? I haven't told anyone. My mom? No way... Wu Zhenshan? Maybe, but... it wouldn't be surprising if they knew, they've known my dad for a long time..."

He put the note in his pocket, picked up his toolbox, and went to the warehouse door. Chen Xiaohe wasn't there yet. He walked past A Wu and paused for a moment:

"Awu, all of this started when I first met you..."

In the innermost corner, there was an extra iron box.

Su Yuan crouched down to look at the gray box, which was about half a meter tall. There was a six-digit combination lock on the front. He entered his birthday, and the lock clicked open!

Upon opening the lid, one sees a black velvet cloth lining the inside, with a sword lying on it.

It is a bronze sword about thirty centimeters long. The blade is not wide, with two edges and a ridge in the middle. The guard is slanted and inlaid with turquoise. Two stones are missing, leaving three.

The hemp rope wrapped around the sword hilt was mostly rotten and crumbled at the slightest touch.

Su Yuan took it out. The sword was covered with a layer of green rust, and the thicker parts were bulging, like the skin of a toad. The thinner parts still showed a copper color, a bluish-gray.

He turned the sword over to look at the spine on the other side. There were two bird-script characters engraved in the middle. He took a magnifying glass and looked closely. The first character was "Yue" and the second character was "Wang".

Su Yuan paused for a moment, his heart pounding:

"The King of Yue... the Sword of the King of Yue? No..."

He realized that the Yue King's sword should be in Hubei. The one he had was much smaller than the previous one and didn't have any inscription indicating which Yue king it belonged to. He continued to look down and saw a line of small characters at the bottom of the spine. It wasn't bird-script but seal script, and most of it was covered by rust.

He shone the flashlight at an angle, and a few words could be seen:

"...made by oneself...for use, in the end..."

"It's hard to see clearly, I need to remove the rust..."

Su Yuan muttered to himself as he placed the sword on the shelf, then took out a scalpel, tweezers, a small spray bottle, and bamboo skewers from his toolbox. He couldn't use chemicals to remove the rust from this sword; he had to use physical methods, scraping it off bit by bit!

The rust on bronze artifacts is verdigris, which is hard and brittle. There is likely an inscription underneath. Scraping too hard will damage the bronze body, while scratching too lightly will leave the rust.

Su Yuan picked up the scalpel and brought it close to the blade. He found a piece of rust that had bulged out, pressed the tip of the scalpel against it, and gently flicked it off. The rusty piece fell off thinly, green in color, revealing a small, shiny, bluish-gray copper-colored piece underneath.

He picked another piece, this time very carefully, the tip of the knife tracing the seam between the rust and the copper. The rusty piece was lifted up in one piece, revealing a line of text underneath:

"...I made this sword myself, to offer as a sacrifice!"

Su Yuan was stunned for a moment:

"For sacrificial purposes? This is not a sword for fighting; it is for offering sacrifices in the ancestral temple."

As he continued removing the rust, scraping it bit by bit and carefully picking out each piece, the tip of the scalpel touched something when he reached the area below the hilt.

It's definitely not rust; it's something else, hard and black, embedded in the copper.

Su Yuan poked it with the tip of his knife, but it didn't budge. He then took a magnifying glass and examined it closely—it was lacquer! Black lacquer filled the grooves of the inscription; lacquer from over two thousand years ago was still there!

Su Yuan put down the scalpel and replaced it with a bamboo skewer. The bamboo skewer wouldn't damage the copper.

He used a bamboo skewer to carefully remove the rust from the lacquer trough, revealing the black lacquer that looked brand new!

The inscription on the sword was also revealed, containing more than sixty characters, all neatly engraved in seal script. The inscription tells the story of one of the sons of the King of Yue who made this sword and placed it in the ancestral temple for ancestral worship.

The last sentence reads: "May your descendants preserve it."

Su Yuan stared at those four words for a few seconds, thinking:

"For over two thousand years, their descendants have not been saved..."

This sword was buried underground, then dug up and placed in the storeroom, and nobody knew what it was for! He put down the bamboo skewer, changed to a soft cloth, dampened it with water, and wiped the sword blade.

The green rust wasn't completely removed, nor could it be completely removed. The rust on bronze artifacts develops over time; removing it all would damage the very foundation of the artifact!

He cleaned the part with the inscription, leaving the rest.

After wiping it clean, Su Yuan noticed that the sword blade was a bit brighter. The turquoise on the bluish-gray guard had fallen off and was lying on the side. There were three loose stones left, so Su Yuan used some gelatin to fix them all in place.

The hemp rope on the sword hilt was rotten and would break at the slightest touch, so it had to be rewound. Su Yuan took out a roll of black silk thread from the toolbox, which was specially used for wrapping sword hilts!

He cleaned the broken hemp rope, revealing the wood core underneath. The sandalwood core was not rotten. He wrapped it with silk thread, circle after circle, and tied a knot at the end of the sword hilt, then used a dot of gelatin to fix it in place.

After wrapping it, I held it in my hand; it felt just right.

He turned the sword over and examined it again. The inscription was clear now, the blade looked much shinier, and the hilt was wrapped with new silk thread. But… a piece was missing from the tip!

It's not cracked, it's been worn down. About half a centimeter has been worn away, like it's been used for a long time.

"How could a sacrificial sword show signs of wear?"

Su Yuan picked up a magnifying glass and looked at the sword tip. The grinding marks on it were very old and were integrated with the rust on the blade, indicating that it was ground more than two thousand years ago.

He thought again:

"It wasn't worn down from fighting, so could it be... for carving something? Did someone use this sword as a carving tool? I don't know..."

Su Yuan shook his head, put the sword back in the iron box, and closed the lid. He locked the case, scrambled the combination, stood up and stretched, then stopped in front of A Wu.

"Awu, that sword is repaired... It belonged to the son of the King of Yue, and was used for sacrifices..."

There was no response, Su Yuan said tentatively:

"The tip of the sword was sharpened and used as a carving knife; I don't know what it was carved on..."

There was still no response. Su Yuan stood there for a few more seconds, then left the warehouse and walked towards his office. As he passed the director's office, Zhang Weiyi called out to him:

"Is it finished?"

"Um."

"Have you figured out what's going on?"

Su Yuan walked in and sat down in a chair:

"The sword of the King of Yue's son, used for sacrificial rites... The inscription has over sixty characters, and it's fairly well preserved!"

He fiddled with his fingers and continued:

"Two turquoise stones fell off, and three came loose, but I glued them all back on. The hemp rope on the hilt rotted, so I replaced it with silk thread. The sword tip was worn down and was used as a carving knife..."

Zhang Weiyi nodded without speaking. Su Yuan waited a while and then asked:

"Who dug up that sword?"

"I don't know. It's been sitting in the warehouse for years, nobody knows where it came from!"