0p0 Chapter 195 The Dawn of the Revitalization of the Pottery Industry Appears
Chapter 195 The Dawn of the Revitalization of the Pottery Industry Appears
Chapter 195 The Dawn of the Revitalization of the Pottery Industry Appears
A glimmer of hope for the revival of the ceramics industry has appeared.
Before the morning mist had even dissipated, Su Yunlan's sleeves were already covered in kiln ash.
She squatted in front of the open-air pottery kiln on the southern slope of Longshou Mountain, her fingertips gently tracing the star-patterned grooves on the edge of the pottery blank, the celadon glaze gleaming with a metallic cold light in the morning light.
The molecular structure diagrams I observed under a microscope in space last night are now clearly appearing in my mind.
"Please look, Madam Su!" Sun Jing brought over a stack of yellowed ancient books. His coarse linen clothes startled the butterflies fluttering by the kiln. "These are the secret records of the Heluo tribe that my grandfather copied when he was on duty at the archives." The young man's fingers, stained with cinnabar, traced the pages. His youthful voice trembled with excitement. "Legend has it that their potters collect dew on the summer solstice and mix it with meteorite powder to create a heavenly glaze..."
Su Yunlan's silver needle suddenly touched a spot in the secret record, the sunlight reflecting off the needle tip dancing on the words "Chen Shi San Ke" (辰时三刻): "Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice." She turned to look at the old potters who were throwing clay on the potter's wheel. The twelve potter's wheels hummed in rhythm with their footsteps, and the red clay spun gracefully in their aged hands.
As dusk painted the eaves of the West Market red, seventy-two pieces of star-patterned pottery were neatly arranged on the bluestone slabs.
Sun Jing knelt among the pottery pieces, counting the direction of the star patterns. Suddenly, he grabbed a carving knife and added an arc to the bottom of the clay: "Last night, when I observed the stars, the handle of the Big Dipper in the Purple Palace should have been half an inch to the southeast." The animal bone pendant hanging around his neck flickered in the firelight; it was a relic of the Heluo people, unearthed this morning at the ancient kiln site.
Three days later, just after the opening drums had sounded three times, Su Yunlan's oxcart came to a stop at the east corner of Tao City, its wheels crunching through the morning dew.
As Zhao Taoshang strolled over, fanning herself with a gold-flecked folding fan, she was placing the last double-eared vase on the wooden shelf.
The porcelain vase shimmered with strange iridescent colors under the morning sun, and the star patterns on its surface seemed to change angles with the light.
"Shopkeeper Su, this glaze is quite fresh." Zhao Tao tapped the bottle's mouth with his fingernail, the crisp sound startling a blue-tailed magpie that had landed on the pottery. "But the star pattern looks like a child's scribbles. Three coins a piece, how about I buy them all?"
The west wind swept scraps of paper across the bluestone slabs, and Su Yunlan caught a glimpse of the crooked handwriting on one of the scraps: "Demon Porcelain Bewitches the Masses."
A few loafers gathered at the alley entrance, pointing and gesturing at her stall.
Without making a sound, she took the tinderbox and placed the kiln-transformed teacup, which she had calibrated the night before with the pyrometer in the space, under the sunlight. Suddenly, a semi-transparent Big Dipper pattern appeared on the bottom of the teacup.
"Does Manager Zhao know that the tribute porcelain presented to the Persian King in the previous dynasty had this kind of star pattern that appears when exposed to light on the bottom of the cups?" She lightly tapped the rim of the cup with her fingertips, the clear, resonant sound attracting several passing foreign merchants to stop. "Last month at the Ghost Market in Luoyang, such a fragment fetched twenty taels of gold."
Suddenly, a commotion arose in the crowd. Young Master Xiao Twenty-Four rode in on horseback, his black cloak sweeping across the wooden frame and carrying a scent of sandalwood.
The young man dismounted, the jade pendant at his waist jingling against the scabbard: "Sister Su, the Li family of Longxi ordered fifty sets of tea sets. Father said they should be packed in boxes made of golden nanmu wood." The curtain of the carriage behind him was slightly lifted, revealing half of a brocade sleeve embroidered with peacock feathers.
Zhao Taoshang snapped his folding fan shut, his face as pale as clay that had been smoked in a kiln for three days and three nights.
He stared at the Sogdian merchant who was holding the double-eared bottle and examining it closely. The man was using a glass mirror to observe the star patterns on the bottle, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down with each swallow.
As the copper bell bird of the Collection Pavilion swept across the market for the third time, Su Yunlan's oxcart was already returning with an empty wooden frame.
She leaned against the carriage shaft, stroking the star-patterned pottery shard in her sleeve. In the distance, she looked at the top of the fire tower, where the hem of her black-clad figure fluttered in the wind.
As Xiao Yuhan watched the dozen or so camel caravans of foreign merchants following behind the oxcart, the bandage wrapped around the hilt of his sword suddenly came loose and fluttered onto the ledgers piled high with orders.
The setting sun cast a long, thin shadow of the oxcart as Su Yunlan's fingertips traced the last ink mark on the ledger.
Xiao Yuhan's body temperature emanated from her palm, and the callus on his thumb was rubbing against the newly burned scar on the base of her thumb, as if he were tracing some ancient totem.
&34; The orders from the Li family of Longxi would occupy two kiln sites. &34; She laid the bamboo slips on the bluestone slab, using broken silver to weigh down the edges that had been lifted by the evening breeze. &34; Sun Jing led his men to clear out the abandoned kiln on the east side overnight, using plaster powder from his spatial storage to patch the cracks. &34;
Xiao Yuhan's sword sheath suddenly appeared horizontally on a section of the blueprint, the moonlight reflecting a cold gleam on the black iron: "Leave a secret passage here." The dark lines he drew with tea water passed precisely through three kiln sites; "Those rascals Zhao Taoshang keeps are probably sharpening their knives in Nanshan Valley right now."
The sound of the clapper at midnight startled the owls on the cave roof, and Su Yunlan, holding a torch, crawled into the newly built cave.
Sun Jing was kneeling on the kiln bricks, wiping something. A shard of pottery, gleaming with a bluish hue, peeked out from under the boy's mud-covered clothes. "This is a double-chambered kiln used by the Heluo people for firing sacrificial vessels!" The animal bone pendant around his neck phosphorescently glowed in the firelight. "Look at the fire channel, doesn't it resemble the Big Dipper?"
Suddenly, the microscope in the space appeared in Su Yunlan's mind, and Su Yunlan's pupils contracted slightly.
Those intersecting fire channels broke down into countless lattices in the field of vision, bearing a striking resemblance to the molecular structure of the meteorite studied last night.
Her fingertips traced the cool ceramic shards, where the fingerprints of the potter from three hundred years ago were still embedded beneath the glaze.
At dawn, the morning mist, carrying the scent of sandalwood, drifted into the kiln site, where twenty-eight potters were bowing in worship around the newly built Seven Star Kiln.
Old potter Zhang Bo tapped his pipe on the blue bricks, and sparks flew into a ceramic bowl filled with morning dew: "When firing a double-chamber kiln, three sacrificial animals must be offered, this is the custom..."
Su Yunlan's silver needle suddenly pierced her fingertip, and a drop of blood fell into the glaze bucket, creating ripples: "I swear on my blood, I will bring Heluo pottery back to life." The glaze reflected an eerie rainbow in the morning sun, and seventy-two unglazed pieces were carefully stacked into the kiln. Sun Jing's hand holding the torch trembled, and the sharp edges of the animal bone pendant hurt his chest.
When the seventh batch of teaware came out of the kiln, the caravans of foreign merchants in the West Market had already blocked half the street.
Ashina, a Sogdian merchant, stroked the star pattern on the bottom of the cup, his blue eyes behind the glass mirror gleaming: "This rainbow light is even more dazzling than the Persian king's moonlight cup..." He suddenly fell silent, biting his tongue with his gold teeth.
Su Yunlan's silver needle struck a spot on the contract precisely, and the sunlight reflected off the needle tip scorched a small patch of parchment black.
The sudden spring downpour caught everyone off guard. Just as Xiao Yuhan's sword pried open the warehouse door latch, thunder struck the nanmu crates piled high with orders.
His black cloak swept across the damp pottery blank, and the bandage wrapped around the sword tassel suddenly came undone, revealing half of a dark brown blood-written letter—a secret letter intercepted three days ago, in which Zhao Tao Shang had colluded with the corrupt officials of the Archives to burn down the ancient kiln site.
At midnight, the thermometer in the space beeped.
Su Yunlan sat up abruptly, the jade bracelet on her wrist hitting the edge of the bed with a crisp sound.
Xiao Yuhan's sword still carried the chill of the night dew, and half a piece of charred parchment was wrapped around the hilt, from which the words "Meteorite Iron" could be vaguely discerned.
She walked barefoot through the moonlight and saw the newly made star-patterned glaze shimmering with a faint blue light under the window, much like the galaxy projection she had seen in the space that night.
As the first rays of dawn pierced the clouds, twelve oxcarts were rolling over the overgrown weeds of the ancient kiln site.
Sun Jing's animal bone pendant suddenly emitted a buzzing sound, and the boy fell onto the cracked rammed earth wall, the cinnabar pen rolling from his fingers.
The faded murals gradually became clear in the dew: the priests of the Heluo tribe were throwing meteorite iron into the flames, and the star-patterned pottery flowed with eerie rainbow colors on the altar.