"Scritch, scritch, scritch..."
Shen Le held a sheet of 1200-grit sandpaper and carefully polished the carved details on the window frame in front of him.
Once, twice, three times—he kept at it until the newly carved window lattice had a perfectly smooth finish to its carved crane feathers. Only then did he set down the sandpaper.
He stepped two meters back from the workbench, removed his KN95 mask, and gasped for breath.
At last, the window lattice was repaired.
He had finally escaped the sanding hell!
In cultural relic restoration, the saying went: five days to clean, one day to build the base, three days to shape, and ten days to sand. Whether it was wood, pottery, porcelain, or bronze, everything had to go through the sanding hell:
A pass with coarse sandpaper, a pass with fine sandpaper, then another with even finer sandpaper. Flat surfaces were manageable, but when he came across intricate carvings, he could only polish them by hand, bit by bit. That took forever.
Not to mention, while sanding, he had to wear a protective mask to keep from inhaling the fine dust and damaging his respiratory tract, which could eventually lead to pneumoconiosis. Wearing a KN95 mask for eight hours a day—if you'd tried it, you'd know what it was like...
No matter what, he'd finished another day's restoration work. Shen Le took several deep breaths, then tugged at the red cord around his neck and pulled out a mottled copper fragment.
Looking closely, he saw a faint layer of greenish light on the fragment. It had crept farther forward, now covering the entire piece. Shen Le's eyes lit up. He clenched the fragment tightly and swung it forward with all his might.
"Ha!"
He bent down, placed the fragment against the back of his neck, and pressed it firmly. A wave of warmth surged out, spreading from the nape of his neck up to the back of his head and down across his shoulders. For a moment, Shen Le seemed to hear his bones crackling.
"Ah... that feels good..."
When he lifted his head again, his neck felt limber and his shoulders relaxed. The stiffness in his neck and shoulders, built up over years of desk work, had completely disappeared.
"Now that's a treasure... I just wonder when I'll be able to use it again..."
The copper fragment had been passed down through his family. About half a palm in size, it was roughly rectangular. One end had a smooth curve and rounded corners; the other was jagged and unevenly thick. At a glance, it looked as if it had broken off from something.
He'd worn it ever since he was little. There was no hole in it, so he'd wrapped it in a red cord and tied it into a small pouch. It had looked that way for as long as he could remember, all the way through college. Then, after he started graduate school and began restoring cultural relics, it somehow began to change.
The first time, he had just finished restoring a wooden bracket when the fragment filled with green light. He happened to cut his finger, and when he touched the fragment, his wound healed instantly.
The second time, he had worked diligently for half a year, restoring dozens of items—wooden doorframes, window frames, railings, and more—before the fragment finally filled with green light. He held it over his eyes, and a wave of warmth washed through him. His nearsightedness was cured, and his vision returned to 20/10.
This time was the third. He'd almost graduated before he managed to build up enough energy for another use. Naturally, the effect was impressive. The stiffness and aching in his neck and shoulders—possibly even straightening his cervical spine, calcified ligaments, frozen shoulder, and whatever else—felt completely repaired.
This copper fragment was absolutely a treasure!
Even if it was only to have something to fall back on in case of illness in the future, he had to keep working hard to charge it up!
The problem was:
He was about to graduate. Where was he supposed to find enough cultural relics to restore after that?
Repair new things?
Sorry, but that didn't seem to charge the fragment. To store up energy, he'd already turned himself into a handyman, fixing his classmates' bags and shoes, repairing faucets, and patching mosquito nets...
He'd tried to repair just about anything he could get his hands on, but after three years, it seemed only cultural relics could trigger a change in the fragment and make the green light spread a tiny bit.
"So I still have to keep trying to get a civil service position... I guess the only way to handle lots of relics in need of restoration is to get into a museum—and it has to be a restoration department..."
Unfortunately, during his three years of graduate school, Shen Le had spent only one year studying on campus. For nearly two years, he'd been out working with his advisor.
They'd restored five or six ancient buildings alone. Altogether, the floor space might have been enough to give every person who'd worked on them—including their advisor and all the senior and junior students—a three-bedroom, two-living-room apartment.
Even with the senior and junior students helping tear out old timber and bricks, clean, carve, paint, and sand, they still worked from morning till night, then from night till morning. It wasn't quite 24/7, but it was even more intense than a 996 schedule.
And winter and summer breaks?
Forget it!
With a workload like that, finding time to study for the civil service exams was impossible. At least, Shen Le couldn't manage it.
Shen Le fought the urge to lower his head, opened Essays and Model Answers Collection, and gritted his teeth as he started reading. He'd barely gotten through half a page before he felt dizzy, got a headache, and felt his head throbbing as his blood pressure shot up.
After one page, he wanted to slam his head on the desk. After two, he wanted to bang it against a wall...
With his circumstances and this level of preparation, he had no chance of passing this year. Fortunately, he still had some savings, enough to stay home and study for next year's exams.
"Ahhh... Copper fragment, copper fragment, can you help me study? At least give me a perfect-memory buff... Huh? Copper fragment, you...?"
He pulled out the fragment again and looked down at it, mildly surprised.
After this use, it hadn't lost all its luster as it had the previous two times. Instead, its radiance had drawn inward, leaving it dark and mysterious.
The broken edges had become much smoother, as though it had "grown" a little. And in the dark center, something seemed to be sticking out slightly...
The copper fragment had changed? How was he supposed to use this new change?
Shen Le turned the fragment over in his fingers, looking at it from every angle, but couldn't figure it out. Pressing it a few times did nothing. Biting it did nothing. As for cutting his hand and dripping blood on it, he'd already tried that before, and it hadn't worked...
Shen Le had no choice but to close his book, lock up, and head out for dinner. As he looked for something to eat, he bought a few skewers of grilled meat and munched on them as he walked. Halfway down the block, a young orange cat suddenly darted out of an alley and pressed itself against his feet, meowing.
A cat had to be petted; not to do so was a waste of a perfectly good cat, especially when it was a kitten. Shen Le naturally bent down, only to see the orange kitten, no more than three or four months old, pressed against his leg and trembling all over. When he looked up, several stray dogs came bounding out behind it. They formed a semicircle at a distance and barked furiously at the kitten.
"Get lost! Go on, get out of here!"
Shen Le bent halfway down, made a fist with his right hand as if to pick up a rock and throw it at the dogs, and shouted at them repeatedly. Only then did the black dog leading the pack whimper and run off with its tail between its legs. Shen Le relaxed a little and stroked the orange cat's head.
"It's all right now, it's all right..."
The orange cat rubbed against his legs over and over, refusing to leave. Shen Le simply stroked it from head to tail, then scratched under its chin and at the base of its tail. Beneath his fingertips, he could feel each of its ribs jutting out. It certainly didn't have the "big orange cats are heavy" look.
"Aw, you've had a rough time..."
Shen Le simply crouched by the roadside, took the grilled meat off his skewers, and fed it to the orange cat in little pieces.
As he fed it, he got a closer look. One of its hind legs was covered in blood and dragged on the ground, clearly unable to support its weight. Its fur was patchy, with some spots completely bare, and one eye was so gummed up it could barely open.
"Tsk... Taking you to the vet would cost a lot... These days, treating a cat costs more than treating a person..."
Shen Le sighed and stroked the orange cat's head.
People just couldn't help themselves when they saw something pitiful. They wanted to do something, but they didn't have the means. An examination and some anti-inflammatory medicine could already cost over a hundred, and they might need to give it a bath too. And if the cat had feline distemper, feline infectious peritonitis, a fracture...
Or if it needed to be spayed or neutered...
The bill could easily run into the thousands. Poor Shen Le only had fifteen hundred yuan a month to live on. He couldn't afford to spend several months' living expenses on a stray cat.
And he couldn't use "I'm a student, give me a discount" as an excuse to make the veterinary clinic lower its prices. The clinic didn't owe him anything!
Luckily, luckily, he still had his golden finger. Maybe it could help...
Shen Le took the copper fragment from around his neck and gently touched it to the cat's leg. Before his eyes, the wound on the orange cat's hind leg stopped bleeding and began to close. Its leg straightened into the proper position, and it stood steadily on the ground.
Then new fur began to grow. The gunk around its eye disappeared, and a pair of bright green eyes gleamed. It meowed at Shen Le, seized the skewer in his hand, and sprang away into the dark alley.
"Hey! My grilled meat..."
Shen Le instinctively reached out, paused, then pulled his arm back and shook his head with a smile. Oh, well. He'd treat the cat to a skewer. It looked like it hadn't eaten its fill in a long time.
He stood where he was, watching the cat sprint farther and farther away. After a while, he couldn't help rubbing his eyes.
"Did I see that right... Why does that orange cat's tail look bigger and bigger?"
Though it seemed strange, Shen Le couldn't chase after it for a closer look. His stomach came first, so he turned around at his leisure and continued on in search of food.
The orange cat raced on, crossing two alleys. By the time it entered the woods, it had taken the form of a fox. Then a pair of trembling hands scooped it up, rubbing its newly healed leg and its big, bushy tail.
"It's all right now, it's all right... You've made it through this trial. Things will go smoothly from here on..."
Shen Le had no idea what became of the orange cat. He simply finished all his work, flew back from the ancient buildings out of town to the main campus of Beijing University, took his graduation photos, collected his diploma, and packed up his things...
He was swamped.
He also sent out dozens of résumés, but unfortunately, not a single one got him a job. Living in the Capital City was expensive. If he was just going to study for the civil service exams, moving back home and staying there would cost the least.
On the day he'd finally packed everything up and resigned himself to returning to his hometown, he received a phone call.
"Is this Mr. Shen? I'm your great-grandfather's lawyer. There are some matters concerning the old gentleman's estate that I need to discuss with you in person."