Shen Le held half a belt in his hands and remained silent for a long, long time. In the end, he abandoned the idea of fully repairing it or cutting a new strip of leather and stitching it on with heavy-duty thread.
Every cut and every tear on this belt was an indelible medal—its owner's joy, sorrow, pride, and pain.
A belt like this would be fully worthy of entering a museum just as it was, without any embellishment.
Just like that belt in the National Museum: the writing on its back and the cuts at its end both bore witness to the suffering and glory of the past...
He turned the belt over, carefully flattened it out, and stared at the grooves and holes on its front, examining them closely.
If these belt plaques had been metal pieces, then they would have been attached to the belt by punching holes through the leather and fastening the plaques on with nails.
As for jade belts? Metal trays would be made beneath the jade pieces, with holes punched into the sides of those trays before they were nailed onto the belt.
No matter what, after such a long time, this method of attachment would leave the belt plaques pressing shallow grooves into the tough leather belt.
Around the edges of the holes, clear cracks and deformation could be seen. Perhaps the leather had been pulled tight, or perhaps something had once hung from the plaques and dragged them downward—
Shen Le held the belt and looked it over and over for a long while. Then he laid an extremely thin sheet of Tracing Paper over it, tilted a pencil on its side, and gently shaded across the paper.
A faint rustling sounded. Before long, one blurry black shadow after another emerged