Professor Li was practically pressed against the screen, struggling to make out Shen Le's every movement on the monitor connected to the low-light camera.
For a very long time, Shen Le neither stood up nor did anything at all.
He simply sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the Storage Box, hands resting on his knees, head upright and back straight, his chest rising and falling slightly-
If he had not remained sitting upright without slumping over, Professor Li would really have thought he had fallen asleep.
He checked his phone every so often, then the time displayed on the monitor. A full two hours had passed, and Shen Le had not moved once.
Yet inside the Storage Box, that precious piece of silk laid flat, that Dukang Map whose surface markings were almost impossible to distinguish in the extremely dim light, suddenly fluttered ever so gently...
"Huh?"
Professor Li's attention instantly snapped to it. He stared at the Dukang Map for so long that his eyes ached, but saw no further change.
Just as he began to suspect he had imagined it, or that what he had caught out of the corner of his eye was unreliable, another faint gleam swept across the map's surface.
Then a tiny patch of something, as thin and light as mist, floated up from the map...
Professor Li's eyes widened abruptly. He turned his head, following that little wisp of mist until his gaze settled on a corner of the Storage Box.
There, on a white porcelain tray placed separately to one side, a hazy layer of pale gray settled ever so gently.
"Is this... cleaning? Has he started already?"
Professor Li felt a buzz go through his head. Heaven knew how difficult cleaning these fragile textiles had been for them:
They