The Little Puppet Can Help Out Now! So Good!

"Sigh, rust is still the easiest thing to deal with." Shen Le neutralized the residual acid on the surface of the axle with a dilute baking soda solution while sighing.

"Especially with things like this that aren't very ancient and lack cultural relic preservation value. You just toss them in rust remover, fish them out to neutralize the acid, wash them clean, and they're basically good as new. Bronze rust, on the other hand, is incredibly difficult. Removing it is simply not a job for a human..."

"How do you remove rust from that?" Xiao Ling poked her head over again.

"Using this rust remover?"

"This won't work; this is for ironware. Bronze has a different composition and is exceptionally fragile, so you need a different formula. Take a guess—what do you think is used?"

"How would I know that?" Little Puppet jumped onto his shoulder, grabbed a strand of his hair, and swung back and forth.

"Tell me! Tell me!"

"In the early days... that formula was quite a hassle..." Working alone was lonely, so Shen Le told the story to Little Puppet to keep himself alert.

"Take 500 grams of hawthorn fruit, remove the seeds, and add 250 grams of rice vinegar, 250 grams of glacial acetic acid, 100 grams of table salt, 100 grams of ammonium chloride, and 100 grams of copper sulfate. Then, put it in a clay pot and boil it..."

"A clay pot?!"

"Right, you have to use a clay pot. Boil it until the hawthorn pulp is completely broken down into a paste, then add a little malachite green, stir it well, and apply it to the bronze!"

"You can actually use that?"

"You can, and it works quite well." Shen Le chuckled.

"Master restorers of the past even praised this formula, saying, 'Although it takes a long time, it is gentle and does not damage the bronze!'"

All of this was just a necessity from back when resources were scarce and technical levels were low. Nowadays, you can use industrial formulas like formic acid, cysteine, triethanolamine, and borax; who would want to boil hawthorn paste in a laboratory?

After neutralizing the residual acid, he fished it out, washed it with clean water, and wiped it dry. The rust remover Shen Le had ordered was custom-made by their school; it contained corrosion inhibitors that provided a certain level of protection for ironware. Once cleaned, dried, and thoroughly aired out, he applied a layer of anti-rust paint. Then, he inserted it back into the wooden handle and reassembled it into the Little Ink Marker.

"Perfect!"

The handle turned smoothly, without the slightest bit of resistance or jamming. While he was adjusting the handle, Xiao Ling jumped up, hugged the spool to her knees, and began winding the thread with one hand on the spool and the other on the silk thread.

She was agile, grabbing the end of the thread with little hands that moved so fast they were almost a blur, winding it even faster than Shen Le.

By the time Shen Le finished his adjustments, she had already handed the wound spool back. She watched him secure it, then held out the end of the thread for her.

"Xiao Ling, do me a favor and help me thread the line through the ink reservoir... Hey, great job!"

As soon as he finished praising her, Xiao Ling leaped high into the air, grabbed the silk thread, and jumped under the table. She hung there like a large Plumb Bob, weighing down the ink line as it rattled out, dropping all the way beneath the workbench in one go. She swung back and forth, back and forth, just like a swing, looking incredibly happy.

Shen Le: "..."

He worked quickly, stuffing two large pieces of degreased cotton into the ink reservoir and pouring in the ink. He placed the Little Ink Marker flat on the table and pulled back until the ink line lay almost perfectly flush against the tabletop. He pinched the line, pulled it taut, and let go—

"Twang!"

With the sound of a plucked string, a perfectly straight, ink-black line appeared on the workbench's tablecloth.

"Refreshing! If I didn't still have to restore the exterior, it would actually be perfectly usable just like this..."

As he muttered to himself, his vision shifted once again. Shen Le was no longer surprised; instead, he felt a sense of joy. Hmm, my intuition is spot on!

This Little Ink Marker was indeed capable of developing sentience, and it was indeed capable of contributing a massive amount of experience points to his Copper Fragment!

Look, he had barely started the restoration, and it had already brought him a new memory fragment!

He stood up straight and looked around.

The room was at most seven or eight square meters, with a ceiling so low he couldn't even stand up straight, and the smell of mold wafted from the old wooden walls. On the mottled square table, the flame of a Kerosene Lamp flickered gently.

Under the dim light, a young man's sturdy, powerful, yet calloused hands held a carving knife, carefully cutting and digging.

"Ah! It broke again! Master, this Devil's Work Ball is just too hard to make. In such a tiny space, it's simply impossible!"

"Impossible? That's just because you don't know how to do it." A pair of hands with loose, wrinkled skin and age spots took the wooden bead and the carving knife, and with a swish-swish-swish, began to cut gently.

The old man's strength was no longer what it once was, but his hands were exceptionally steady. With every push and slice of the knife, the wood shavings that fell were identical in size and shape. As he carved, he explained to his apprentice:

"Your heart must be calm, and your hands must be steady. You must follow the grain of the wood; the force in your hands needs subtle adjustments, not just brute strength. Look here..."

"Master, you're a Grade 8 craftsman, and I'm only... what grade am I? Just because you can do this easily doesn't mean I can!"

"If you can't do it, practice more!"

The old man finished a circle, handed the bead and knife back to his apprentice, and watched him work slowly. After a while, he couldn't help but laugh:

"Ai Jun, when exactly will you finish this Devil's Work Ball? Do you want Master to help you? That girl Chang Hong has plenty of young men chasing after her, you know~~~"

"Master!"

The young man called out in embarrassment, his ears turning red. Even so, he refused to give up:

"We agreed that I would do it myself, so I have to do it myself! If I let you do it for me, Chang Hong will look down on me!"

The old man laughed heartily. After a moment, he stood up and headed toward the door. With his hand on the door, he paused, turned his head, and said:

"Ai Jun, the more you think about it in your heart, the less you should rush. If you carve the beads while thinking about Chang Hong, I'm afraid you'll end up with nothing at all!"

The old man walked away, leaving the young man named Ai Jun behind, carving the Devil's Work Ball, one stroke at a time.

Shen Le stood beside him, craning his neck to watch every movement of his knife and every detail of how he applied force.

The more he watched, the more he sighed, and the more he felt that he had no hope of restoring this Devil's Work Ball.

The old man was an eighth-level master craftsman, and his apprentice, who was currently hand-carving a Devil's Work Ball, was likely a third or fourth-level craftsman. As for himself, what level could he possibly be?

A second-level craftsman?

A first-level craftsman?

Could it be that he wouldn't even qualify for the first level?

However, just as that old man had said, if you're bad, you just need to practice more.

Shen Le leaned in beside the young man named Ai Jun, watching intently while his fingers moved lightly, as if he were holding a wooden ball of his own. One hand pinched the ball, the other held the blade, moving up and down, up and down.

He didn't know how long he had been watching or how long he had been mimicking the motions, but the light and shadows before him suddenly began to shift.

Shen Le looked up, dazed, glancing left and right to discover that his surroundings had changed; he had moved from the cramped residential house to a spacious, airy factory floor. Oh?

Had this memory transmitted by the Copper Fragment gained a new function, allowing it to provide two segments of memory at once?