"So... this is your memory..."
Shen Le sighed softly and stroked the puppet's cheek. It was the 1980s in the memory, more than thirty years ago now. In all that time, had your owner—that boy—ever come looking for you?
Had he ever played with you again?
Or had he forgotten you after you were locked in that box?
Was the man who had roared, "Might as well throw it away!" and tossed you out of the room straight into the river the same boy who, more than thirty years ago, had cried, "Xiao Lin is my friend!" and refused to let go even when the string had cut his finger until it bled?
Whatever the truth, the past was past, and there was no point dwelling on it. Shen Le sighed again and again. He found a washbasin, put the puppet's clothes in to soak, then dampened a rag and washed the puppet thoroughly, inside and out. He hung the clothes up to dry, then picked up his phone and started shopping on Taobao:
"Chinese fir... Chinese fir... Chinese fir..."
Thank goodness for Taobao. You could buy raw Chinese fir online without a fuss. You could get blocks, strips, or planks; four strips measuring two centimeters by two centimeters and thirty centimeters long cost just ten yuan, shipping included. The dimensions could be customized, and bulk orders came at a discount.
Shen Le estimated that the wood needed to repair the puppet would cost no more than fifty yuan at most.
—Of course, that was only because the puppet was made of Chinese fir, which was cheap. If it had been made of Huanghuali, Red Sandalwood, or Wenge Wood... the price of the lumber would have been one thing, but there was no guarantee you could even find the real deal online.
Fortunately, Shen Le didn't have to worry about buying Rosewood for now. He quickly placed a whole pile of orders: lumber, Paint, Silk Thread, Nylon Thread, and all sorts of woodworking tools. While waiting for the deliveries, he got a good night's sleep, then began cleaning the puppet:
First, wash the surface with clean water and a rag. Remove the dust and years of grime from the puppet;
Second, sand the puppet to strip away the old Paint...
"This is exhausting..."
Shen Le gripped the puppet's head in one hand and Sandpaper in the other, grinding away with gritted teeth. He sanded for a while, let go, shook out his wrist, then sanded some more before letting go to shake his wrist again...
"My Sander... No, I need to order a Sander too... If I keep this up, I'm really going to get tendonitis..."
Sanding was no job for a human being! Luckily, this puppet was mostly made up of smooth, flat surfaces, so a Sander would do the job. If it had been covered in intricate carvings, he would have had to sand it all by hand. He couldn't even imagine living like that...
Even so, he patiently kept at it. The sooner he finished the repair, the sooner he could charge the Copper Fragment; the sooner it was charged, the sooner he could discover what else it could do.
And even if he put all that aside, he felt a great deal of sympathy and curiosity for this puppet that could call for help and show him its memories. If he fixed it soon, maybe it would come to life and lend him a hand?
He put down the Sandpaper and picked up the Chisel Knife. Sanding could wait until the Sander arrived; removing the rotten parts was something he had to do by hand...
Shen Le lifted the bedsheet and looked at the table he was using as a workbench, then stood up and surveyed the room, drawing a sharp breath. Huali Wood, Huanghuali, Red Sandalwood, Red Sandalwood, Dalbergia Wood, Wenge Wood...
"My great-great-uncle—or maybe his ancestors—must have been rich... All the furniture in this room is made of Rosewood... Using it as a workbench and clamping something to it feels like a terrible waste..."
In the bedroom, opposite the canopy bed, stood a Huanghuali dressing table. Against the wall was a half-table made of Red Sandalwood. In the room outside the bedroom stood a round table of Huali Wood inlaid with Marble, surrounded by four round stools beneath the window. To the right of the table, against the wall, was a Dalbergia Wood zither table...
Clamping a Woodworking Clamp onto any of those and leaving a deep mark to hold the piece he was repairing would be an awful waste!
So he simply went out and searched room by room. He checked the east and west sides of the third courtyard, upstairs and downstairs, and both side wings; then the main hall and side rooms of the second courtyard, and the sedan hall of the first. After searching the West Road, he moved on to the East Road, the study, the Water Pavilion beside the Lotus Pond, and the Wangxian Tower in the third courtyard...
Every piece of furniture he found was either Ming Dynasty or Qing Dynasty in style, made of one kind of Rosewood or another, and decorated with lacquer carving or Mother-of-Pearl Inlay—or else covered in Cloud Patterns, scrolling vines, pomegranates and a hundred children, bats, peaches of longevity, and other designs.
Take any of it to market—even without going through an auction house like Sotheby's or Christie's—and you could sell it for tens or even hundreds of thousands of yuan without breaking a sweat.
Shen Le kept searching until he reached a row of small houses behind Wangxian Tower, possibly servants' quarters. There he finally found a large square table. Its surface was smooth and its four legs straight. It had no carvings or decorations, and it was made of some kind of hard Miscellaneous Wood. Shen Le couldn't quite identify it; it might have been Walnut Wood, Jujube Wood, Elm Wood, or something similar.
The tabletop measured one meter by one meter and was two centimeters thick. The table stood about seventy centimeters tall. Every detail made it perfect for a workbench.
The only problem was—
"Am I really supposed to carry it over there myself?"
All the way from the West Road to the East Road! Through the courtyard gate, down the alley, over the thresholds, up and down, and around all the twists and turns—a distance of at least a hundred meters.
A square table this big was hard to lift with both hands, and carrying it on his shoulder would throw off his balance. It would be easy for two people to move, but for one person to shift it? Forget it!!!
Unfortunately, Shen Le didn't know anyone around his family's old home, and he really didn't want to go outside and ask someone to help him move the table. In the end, he found a rope, wrapped it around the table twice lengthwise and twice crosswise, and carried it on his back to the only room with air conditioning. Then he fixed the Woodworking Clamp to the table, secured the puppet's head in the clamp, picked up the Chisel Knife, and began cutting away the rotten parts:
Scrape, scrape, scrape. The six-millimeter flat Chisel Knife sank into the puppet's head again and again, shaving along the edges of the cracks. Each stroke sent tiny, dark crumbs of wood falling away. After a dozen or so strokes, there was a sharp crack, as if the blade had hit something that was only partly hard.
Shen Le wrinkled his nose, released the puppet's head, turned it upside down, and tapped it, then carefully brushed inside with a small brush. As he moved it, a little pile of things came tumbling out of the depths of the crack:
Wood shavings, more wood shavings, and still more wood shavings. Wood shavings, a dried-up insect egg, and half of a...
Cockroach?!
"Good grief!"
As if he'd been burned, Shen Le jerked the puppet's head out of his hands and shook it hard twice. Only after confirming there was nothing alive inside—not even the cockroach, which had dried up beyond recognition after all these years—did he clean the table and set down the puppet's head.
"Poor thing... How long were you forgotten for? You must have had a hard time all these years..."
Chisel Knife, Iron Crowbar, Steel Needle. He used them one after another to clean out every crack in the puppet's head, including the holes where the Silk Thread had passed through. Once he put down the Steel Needle, Shen Le rubbed his palms together, excitement creeping in.
"Just wait. I'll fix your head right up!"
Once the head was fixed—or once the whole puppet was repaired—what kind of surprise would it have in store for him?