Restoring cultural relics: Starting with the crying Tang Dynasty figurines

Zhang Weiyi paused for a moment: "He's still inspecting the center these past two days, so you need to keep a close eye on him."

Su Yuan was still excited and didn't notice anything different. He nodded, closed the wooden box, and put it back in its original place.

The two walked out of the old warehouse. Su Yuan touched the jade ring on his index finger. He had a premonition that from the moment he gathered the three keys to the moment he opened the wooden box, many things would be different.

Not long after returning to the office, Lin Xi walked in carrying a stack of registration forms:

"Su Yuan, the inventory of the old warehouse needs to be updated with the items that were just unpacked."

Looking at the ring, Su Yuan thought for a moment and said:

"A jade ring passed down through generations, an heirloom of the Su family, tentatively designated as a family heirloom."

Lin Xi quickly wrote it down, and after finishing, she glanced at the jade ring on his index finger with a strange look before putting the form away.

"Understood, I'll take it to the archives. By the way, the museum sent a new restoration application; it's for a Tang Dynasty guqin."

"They said the strings have been breaking a lot lately, and there are often strange noises at night. Director Zhang wants you to prepare to go and take a look tomorrow."

"it is good."

After Lin Xi left with a smile, the office returned to silence.

Su Yuan sat in the chair, looking at the jade ring on his index finger, then took out the bronze mirror from his pocket and examined it. The small bright spot on the mirror was noticeably brighter than before, as if it were happy for him!

He could feel that the jade ring was reacting to him, as if it was slowly awakening something within his body.

Several shadows floated gently in the bronze mirror, appearing as if they were bowing.

No one knows where Wu Zhenshan went, but Su Yuan knows in his heart that what's meant to happen will happen.

Recalling what Zhang Weiyi had mentioned about Han Zhengming, he couldn't help but wonder if it was to secretly spy on the secrets of the Su family's ancestors.

What are the highlights in the bronze mirror?

Could it be her?

I shook my head to clear the thought away and organized the restoration tools I would need for tomorrow's museum visit: silk, adhesive, polishing cloth, and so on.

The ring on his hand always had a tactile sensation, making him feel that he would no longer be walking alone on the road ahead.

The light in the bronze mirror today is different from usual, as if... it has traveled across a thousand years!

The museum was closed today. When Su Yuan left work, there were no strange noises in the corridor, even though there usually are.

He could clearly sense that those shadows were deliberately avoiding him today!

The new security guard was either on patrol or something; I didn't see him anywhere.

The hall was quiet. Su Yuan noticed it but didn't pay much attention. Maybe they just wanted to stay away from him today?

He took the bronze mirror out of his pocket and placed it on the table to look at it. Apart from the bright spot, the shadows inside were unusually quiet, and the shadow of the old man who had been staring at him before did not appear.

Su Yuan didn't ask them out of curiosity, but sat on the edge of the bed and carefully examined the jade ring.

That faint feeling of bloodline resonance has always been there, and today I can even see the non-human silhouettes hidden in the shadows. They are inside the house, but I have never seen them before!

As Su Yuan looked at it, he thought to himself, "Is this what the Su family wants to protect?"

That sword and the bronze mirror... why have I rarely heard of human restorers who can repair interlayers...?

The other people in the unit only knew that they were different from ordinary people, but how do you define whether they are cultural relics or eccentrics?

Let's just call them Shadow Spirits. They're all quite polite to me, no, wait!

Su Yuan suddenly realized that they had only started acting this way after he put on the jade ring. Could it be...?

Suddenly, I looked at the jade ring. Could this ring control the interlayer?

They are afraid of this jade ring!

Having figured this out, I smiled and stopped thinking about it. I lay down on the bed to rest and had another peaceful night's sleep.

The next day, Su Yuan got up and washed up as usual, ate a quick breakfast in the cafeteria, and then took the toolbox from his desk downstairs.

The museum's car was already parked at the entrance. The driver was a quiet middle-aged man who didn't say much, only gesturing with his hand.

Su Yuan didn't ask the driver's surname, and they remained silent the whole way. They arrived at the city museum more than twenty minutes later.

The museum wasn't crowded on a weekday, and the exhibition hall was quite quiet. The staff led him directly into the artifact restoration room through the side door.

By avoiding the areas open to the public and minimizing interaction with outsiders, Su Yuan was quite suited to his personality.

The restoration room is spacious with soft lighting, and is equipped with instruments that maintain constant temperature and humidity, as well as tables, chairs, and other utensils.

On the restoration worktable in the center of the room sits the ancient zither from the Tang Dynasty.

After the staff left, Su Yuan approached the zither and examined it closely.

The instrument has a strong sense of age, with peeling paint that looks like scattered flower spots, and the wood grain exudes an antique charm that comes with the passage of time.

Two of the seven strings were broken. These two strings showed signs of repair; the breaks were very clean, not the result of ordinary wear and tear, but rather...

It was snapped off by something!

Upon closer inspection, a very faint layer of cold, yin energy lingered around the instrument, which ordinary people would not be able to detect at all, and Su Yuan probably wouldn't have noticed it before either.

It's immediately obvious that this is a chilling aura.

Su Yuan felt the jade ring emitting a slight warmth, which actually matched the aura of the guqin.

"Master Su."

The museum's head of the restoration department suddenly stood aside and called out to them in a very polite, low voice.

This startled Su Yuan, who had been so focused on studying the guqin that he hadn't even noticed someone coming in!

"This guqin in the museum's collection has always been properly stored, but it has been making strange noises at night for the past two weeks."

The head of the restoration department smiled sheepishly and continued:

"The warehouse surveillance footage didn't show anything unusual, but two strings broke in the last two days. We've tried to repair them."

"But it broke again as soon as it was connected. I'll have to trouble you to come and take a look."

Su Yuan nodded without saying anything, walked to the workbench, and put down the toolbox.

He didn't rush to repair it. Instead, he approached the guqin and carefully examined every detail of the instrument with a magnifying glass.

I discovered some small characters engraved on the bottom of the zither. The characters were very blurry, and due to the passage of time, most of them had been eroded away. Only a few fragments of the characters could be clearly seen.

There are no traces related to the Su family.

It wasn't an old item from the Su family, but this zither bore the marks of being haunted by supernatural forces!

He tried hovering his fingertips over the surface of the instrument without touching it, hoping to see if a scene from a fantasy drama would appear.

Immediately afterwards, a warm feeling flowed through the jade ring, and it was discovered that something was sighing inside the zither!

Su Yuan suppressed his excitement, knowing that it wasn't the vicious kind; it was just trapped inside the zither, which was why it made strange noises at night.

It broke the strings.

"Can you fix it, Master Su?" the repair manager asked. Su Yuan nodded.

"Can."

"Should we send a few people here to help?"

"Need not!"

The head of restoration didn't say anything more. Having heard about his habits, he quietly slipped out, making sure to close the door to the restoration room behind him.

The room fell silent, with only the hum of the ventilation system remaining.

Su Yuan pulled up a chair and sat down, not in a hurry to fix the strings. He took out a clean, fine cotton cloth from the toolbox and carefully wiped away the dust from the instrument.

When the cotton cloth was wiped across the surface of the guqin, the instrument vibrated slightly!