Shoulder Swallow, What kind of gems do you want for the lion's eyes? Just tell me directly!

"This one—no."

"This one—no good either."

"This one still won't do? You don't like it? You don't want it?"

Shen Le lay sprawled over the table, using tweezers to pick up turquoise stones one by one and bring them beside Shoulder Swallow, to the beast eye's position. Carefully sensing the fluctuations coming from Shoulder Swallow, he muttered to himself:

"You still don't want this one... What kind do you even want? I've already gone through every jewelry market nearby!"

From Dunhuang to Urumqi, and every major city along the Silk Road.

GOOGLE SEARCH TWKAN

With the Special Affairs Bureau and influential local figures vouching for him, he found jewelers and antique dealers, borrowed the turquoise they had on hand, and let Shen Le sort through it:

Too small, no. No spiritual fluctuations, no. Fluctuations that were too dark, bloody, sinister, or tragic, no.

Of those remaining, he placed them one by one where the beast eye belonged, to see whether they could match the rhythm of the entire Shoulder Swallow and whether they could match the two original turquoise stones:

Yet even after traveling the Silk Road from end to end and searching everywhere he could, there was nothing. The stones he obtained were either dyed magnesite, compressed mineral powder, or simply of insufficient quality.

As for genuinely pure, natural stones, many were not old enough either. For example, the goods from Shiyan from the past decade or two—none of the pieces Shen Le was allowed to see had any fluctuations at all—

It wasn't as though Shen Le had never tried settling for second best. He had found turquoise he considered suitable and directly set it in place. He had tried it seven or eight times.

Every time, the result was exactly the same:

On the first day, he