Bad news: the porcelain tower had shattered.
Good news: it had not shattered completely—or rather, none of the parts Shen Le had painstakingly restored had broken.
Only the Porcelain Powder that Mr. Zhao's subordinates had applied to glue the porcelain tower fragments together had all vanished for no apparent reason. No one knew whether it had been burned to ash or absorbed into the porcelain tower's body.
In any case, Shen Le peered through the fire opening and watched the porcelain tower fragments float down one by one. They still looked, by his estimation, like the pieces he had personally repaired, and he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Then he took two steps back and turned to Mr. Zhao:
So, what now?
Open the kiln door, bring all the porcelain tower fragments out, and try restoring it again?
Should I send a wind vortex inside?
"I'll do it, I'll do it." Mr. Zhao smiled helplessly and snapped his fingers. The kiln door opened on its own.
A wave of heat rushed at him. Shen Le squinted and tried to peer inside, only to see heaps and clusters of all kinds of bottles, jars, bowls, plates, ladles, and basins collapsed across the furnace chamber.
Looking closer, the bottle mouths were crooked, the jar bodies twisted, the glaze around the bowls' rims ran long in some places and short in others, while the colored glaze on the plates was strangely colored and warped in shape—
They had been fine when they went in! They had been a group of beautifully shaped, normally colored porcelain pieces that no one would have criticized even if they were put on supermarket shelves!
"Ah, sometimes this happens. If they aren't fired properly, their bones go soft and their bodies collapse. It's fine, it's fine. Once