Recaps

Shen Le agreed to restore Alloy Master's damaged silk painting after learning it had belonged to a dear friend, while Alloy Master settled into the Mansion and insisted on watching. Shen Le began examining the painting with laboratory instruments, but the image remained a blur, so he considered taking it apart to inspect its backing.

• Shen Le resisted repairing the silk painting until Alloy Master explained that it had belonged to an important friend and he wanted to see what it showed.
• Shen Le agreed to restore the painting, warning Alloy Master that the work could take three to six months or longer.
• Alloy Master chose the East Road First Courtyard as his residence, transformed into his giant beast form, and stretched out while Shen Le warned him not to damage the Mansion.
• Shen Le checked the instruments set up in temporary laboratory space across from the Old Mansion and returned to his Studio to examine the painting.
• Shen Le photographed and scanned the damaged silk with a Raman Laser Spectrometer and a Micro-focus X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer, but the image remained unclear.
• Shen Le wondered whether he should take the painting apart to scan its back and lining.

Shen Le tried to reconstruct a badly damaged ancient painting with spectral scans, but Alloy Master, the painting’s original owner, recreated a rough version from memory. Shen Le left with a clearer idea of the scene but still needed help restoring its missing details.

• Shen Le criticized Alloy Master for neglecting the painting, and Alloy Master admitted he had damaged it by repeatedly opening it before leaving it rolled up for a hundred years.
• Shen Le struggled to identify the painting’s pigments from spectral data and realized Alloy Master could describe its original appearance.
• Alloy Master tried drawing the scene but produced an unclear mess, then used his control over metal pigments to make a rough image on paper.
• The image showed a young man on a white horse shooting a willow branch as a young woman looked up, with mountains and an army in the distance.
• Alloy Master kept the loose pigment powder in place so Shen Le could photograph it, and Shen Le wondered whom he could ask to help restore the painting.

Shen Le’s advisor inspected his lavish laboratory, worried about the risks behind his money, and urged him to think about dating, while Teacher Zhang began guiding him in painting restoration. Shen Le arranged to use algorithmic restoration images as references and produced a huge collection of practice paintings for Teacher Zhang to assess.

• Shen Le’s advisor questioned his decision to restore paintings and calligraphy, then confirmed the school could use the laboratory’s equipment and checked that Shen Le’s money came from legitimate Special Affairs Bureau missions.
• Shen Le reassured his advisor about his safety and explained that he owed a colleague help restoring the silk painting; his advisor lectured him about lab safety, career plans, and finding a girlfriend.
• Teacher Zhang examined the painting and agreed to help arrange Raman analysis and restoration images from research teams, while warning that current algorithms could only provide references.
• Teacher Zhang forbade Shen Le from dismantling and washing the painting, then ordered him to practice on other works until his hands were steady.
• Shen Le brought out boxes of practice paintings and calligraphy that Old You had gathered, including cheap modern works and ordinary folk paintings collected by demons.

Shen Le trained in calligraphy and painting restoration under Teacher Zhang, using discarded practice paintings to learn washing and handling techniques. After Teacher Zhang left, Shen Le experimented with his mental energy on the painting he had promised Alloy Master to restore, but his first attempts failed.

• Shen Le nervously poured boiling water over practice paintings as Teacher Zhang instructed him, then gradually became steadier.
• Teacher Zhang explained restoration techniques and put Shen Le through ten days of intensive practice washing, turning, copying, and mounting paintings.
• After Teacher Zhang returned to school, Alloy Master worried that the restoration work was too difficult, but Shen Le promised to finish it.
• Shen Le used his mental energy to try separating the painting core from its backing, but tore the paper.
• Shen Le tried removing dust and mold with mental energy, then pinning pigments in place during washing, but neither approach worked well.

While restoring an ancient painting, Shen Le discovered that its Scroll Rod concealed patterned Gold Foil and that a Silverfish Demon had been hiding in the painting. The X-ray revealed the gold foil’s contents, leaving Shen Le and Alloy Master ready to investigate its significance.

• Alloy Master told Shen Le that the painting’s Scroll Rod held a hidden treasure, and Shen Le became curious after noticing the rod might be made of Red Sandalwood.
• Shen Le removed the painting’s bottom rod, heard a voice cry out in pain, and learned from Little Oil Lamp that the voice did not belong to the painting’s spirit.
• Little Oil Lamp forced a Silverfish Demon out of the painting, and Shen Le spared it after it warned that killing it would destroy the painting.
• Shen Le carefully removed the rod’s wrapping and examined the hollow rod with an X-ray.
• Shen Le and Alloy Master saw that the rod contained rolled Gold Foil marked with patterns.

Shen Le and Alloy Master opened the Red Sandalwood scroll and found an abstract map engraved on a gold foil sheet. Alloy Master recognized the central figure as resembling his younger self but could not identify the map’s destination, leaving Shen Le with an unsolved secret.

• Shen Le used a nitrogen-filled glove box to remove and carefully flatten the gold foil from the Red Sandalwood scroll.
• Shen Le and Little Oil Lamp examined the foil’s curved lines and symbols, and Shen Le made a paper rubbing of its engravings.
• Alloy Master guessed that the central figure resembled him, then recalled how a young nobleman had fed him a treasured sword and kept him for four years.
• Alloy Master and Shen Le interpreted the engravings as an abstract map with mountains, rivers, settlements, and a marked destination.
• Alloy Master admitted he did not know where the map led, and Shen Le complained that he had been left to solve the secret.

Shen Le continued restoring an ancient silk painting and demonstrated that his abilities could make Silk Fibroin join broken silk threads seamlessly. Teacher Zhang recognized the technique’s potential but considered its conflicts with conservation principles, then began imagining how researchers might reproduce it without Shen Le’s powers.

• Shen Le set aside the Gold Foil after the Alloy Master admitted he could not identify the map, then resumed practicing restoration on fragile silk paintings.
• Teacher Zhang returned to the laboratory and found Shen Le using his abilities to fit a silk patch into a damaged painting.
• Shen Le showed Teacher Zhang how a drop of Silk Fibroin Solution joined the patch’s threads to the original silk.
• Teacher Zhang eagerly asked Shen Le to help restore the research group’s artifacts, but Shen Le raised concerns about how they could report the method and preserve the relics’ reversibility.
• Teacher Zhang considered experiments and collaborators who might help reproduce the silk-repair process without relying on Shen Le’s personal abilities.

After weeks of training, Shen Le began restoring an ancient Silk Painting under Teacher Zhang’s supervision, learning to prepare it for washing and carefully clean it. As the rinsing cleared the painting, Shen Le’s Spirit Eye revealed its spirituality beginning to awaken and its memories and legacy returning.

• Teacher Zhang let Shen Le begin restoring the painting, but Shen Le struggled to mist the painting core until he found a spray bottle that Teacher Zhang approved of.
• Shen Le spent a week making and practicing different pastes, then used thin paste and cotton-paper strips to secure fragments before cleaning the painting.
• Shen Le brushed away mold and grime, tested the pigments with damp paper, and applied thin Gelatin to areas at risk of losing color.
• Teacher Zhang showed Shen Le how to cover the worktable with plastic wrap and guide him through positioning and rinsing the painting with warm water.
• Shen Le watched the dirty water grow clearer as the painting cleaned, while his Spirit Eye revealed its spirituality awakening and its memories and legacy returning.
• Teacher Zhang called out to Shen Le when he appeared to lose himself in the painting.

Shen Le touched the ancient painting’s spiritual energy again and witnessed the memories of a young warrior who befriended a metal-eating creature called Little Gold. The memory ended with the youth worrying that Little Gold’s appetite for gold and silver would bankrupt him.

• Shen Le reassured Teacher Zhang after the painting’s spiritual energy had left him unaware of the studio around him.
• Shen Le entered a memory of a military training ground, where a fourteen-year-old youth trained under his father, a commander.
• The youth’s father refused to let him go to war but promised him a hunting expedition if he placed in the army-wide competition.
• After the youth led a unit into the mountains and returned with a strange metal-eating creature, his father beat him for leaving his sword on the ground.
• The youth named the creature Little Gold, and Little Gold led him to ore veins that helped the garrison obtain more iron.
• Little Gold grew to the size of a dog, but the youth balked when it said it needed gold and silver to grow larger.

The boy tried to feed Little Gold enough gold and silver to help him grow, but learned that the beast needed far more than he could afford. With his father’s support and a promise to earn battlefield rewards, the boy took Little Gold to war and rose through the ranks, leaving him in a captured enemy commander’s tent after rescuing a girl’s gold hairpin from Little Gold.

• The boy offered Little Gold his savings, but Little Gold demanded gold equal to his weight or ten times his weight in silver.
• The boy’s father gave him two hundred taels of silver and told him to earn the rest through military merit.
• The boy joined the Night Scouts with Little Gold, and they killed Tatar soldiers during a border skirmish, earning rewards for their heads.
• The boy and Little Gold fought from summer into autumn, earning merit for a hundred heads and raising the boy to thousand-household commander.
• During a great autumn battle, the boy and Little Gold broke through the Tatar ranks, killed the enemy commander, and captured his tent.
• The boy took a gold hairpin from Little Gold’s mouth and returned it to a girl, prompting Little Gold to complain that he cared more about her than his friend.

Shen Le and Teacher Zhang turned the painting over and began removing its backing layers, while Shen Le used his special ability to separate stubborn paper safely. They uncovered writing beneath the Qi Paper, revealing another part of the secret Alloy Master had promised was hidden in the painting.

• Alloy Master repeated that the young man in the painting had cared more about a pretty girl than his friends, then refused to reveal what happened next until Shen Le solved the painting's secret.
• Shen Le prepared paste and helped Teacher Zhang protect the painting with Oil Paper and Xuan Paper before turning it face-down.
• Shen Le's ability kept the Painting Core buoyed above the table as he and Teacher Zhang settled it smoothly into place.
• Shen Le carefully peeled away the Qi Paper, using his ability to separate a stuck section without damaging the painting.
• Shen Le and Teacher Zhang discovered writing on the backing paper, and Shen Le realized it could be another part of the painting's secret.

Shen Le practiced removing the backing from the damaged painting and showed Teacher Zhang that his new silk-repair method could work. After class, Shen Le and Alloy Master examined the hidden writing in the painting and realized a piece of its directions was missing.

• Shen Le carefully lifted the Qi Paper and Life Paper from the painting core under Teacher Zhang’s guidance, using his abilities to keep the fragile paper from tearing further.
• Shen Le questioned whether his Silk Fibroin Solution repairs needed the traditional sloped scraping method, and Teacher Zhang tested the repaired silk with ink and pigments before approving the approach for further inspection.
• After Teacher Zhang left, Shen Le told Alloy Master that he had found the secret in the painting.
• Alloy Master interpreted the writing as directions involving the sixty-four hexagrams and twenty-eight lunar mansions, but found a section missing because the paper was torn.
• Alloy Master asked whether the Silverfish Demon had eaten the missing piece and demanded that Shen Le bring it out for questioning.

Shen Le questioned a tiny painting-eating spirit but learned it could not read or restore the ancient painting’s writing. He then prepared silk-aging experiments for Teacher Zhang to assess, while the missing painting’s clues pointed toward a complicated Formation.

• The tiny creature insisted it was a painting worm that had eaten paintings all its life, and its crawling revealed images of the missing landscape.
• Shen Le returned the creature to the wastepaper box and told Alloy Master Old You he would keep restoring the painting and search its memories for clues.
• Alloy Master Old You explained that the painting’s sections appeared to encode a Formation using hexagrams, lunar mansions, seasons, directions, and constellations.
• Shen Le presented Teacher Zhang with four differently aged silk samples and records of their preparation and tests.
• Teacher Zhang judged the alum-sized silk aged with extra alum to be best, then suggested combining alum sizing with hydrolysis and light exposure.
• Shen Le began another round of aging experiments using his reserve silk.

Shen Le restored the damaged painting core, and its spiritual nature revealed a memory of a young general, Little Gold, and an Oirat girl held in a military camp. The memory ended with the general offering to teach the girl to read while Little Gold protested that his friend was favoring her.

• Shen Le prepared and tested alum-sized silk, then used his cultivator ability to join the repair threads seamlessly with the painting core.
• Shen Le sprayed the painting core with Silk Fibroin Solution and EGDE, strengthening it as its spiritual nature began to grow.
• The painting’s removed pieces and fittings joined their radiance with the core, revealing the memory of a bloodied young general, Little Gold, and a captive girl.
• Little Gold tried to eat the girl’s gold hairpin, but the general stopped him and offered her the hairpin instead.
• The girl explained that she was from the Oirat Tribe and asked the general to send a letter so her father could bring her home.
• When the general asked about her people, the girl stayed guarded, so he offered to teach her to read and Little Gold complained that he had been denied the same lesson.

The young man and Jin Zhu grew close, but his father rejected his request to marry her and revealed that she had been married as a child in a political arrangement. After learning she had been offered to Tuoluohan against her will, the young man returned to ask whether she loved him and wanted to marry him.

• The young man and Jin Zhu spent the seasons reading, hunting, riding, and sharing stories as their feelings deepened.
• The young man asked his father for permission to marry Jin Zhu, but his father refused and said she had already been married.
• Jin Zhu explained that her father had given her to Tuoluohan in a political marriage when she was very young.
• The young man confronted his father, who said Jin Zhu would soon return to the grasslands and dismissed his concern for her reputation.
• Little Gold reminded the young man that Jin Zhu liked him, so he returned to ask whether she loved him and had considered marrying him.

Jin Zhu rejected Nari Su because she knew his family and the Central Plains would never accept her as his principal wife, then returned to the grasslands with books while he went south to the Capital. After Shen Le viewed the memory, he and the Alloy Master considered how to uncover the secret hidden in the unfinished painting.

• Jin Zhu told Nari Su she had always known she could not marry him, explaining that a Tartar woman could not become the principal wife of a Central Plains officer.
• Jin Zhu kissed Nari Su as repayment for saving her, then he shoved her away and ran; she stayed behind with Little Gold and wept.
• Nari Su received Jin Zhu's gold ornaments and request for history books, bought her books, and later asked Little Gold to protect her on the grasslands while he served in the Capital.
• Shen Le asked the Alloy Master about Jin Zhu after viewing the memory, but the Alloy Master urged him to finish restoring the Qi Paper before revealing what happened to her.
• Shen Le proposed that the restored Painting Core might reveal the location hinted at by the landscape, map, and formation, and the Alloy Master decided to compare his reconstruction with satellite maps.

Shen Le struggled to use satellite maps to interpret the ancient painting and then struggled to sort paintings by color while preparing to mount the Painting Core. Lan Zhuang demonstrated its superior color perception, leaving Teacher Zhang wondering why he had bothered teaching Shen Le.

• Shen Le tried to match the ancient Landscape Painting to a satellite map, failed to identify the location, and went to bed while Alloy Master continued searching.
• Teacher Zhang inspected the repaired Painting Core and began teaching Shen Le to mount it by selecting and arranging Life Paper according to the paintings’ colors.
• Shen Le struggled to arrange the fragile paintings by shade, and Teacher Zhang scolded him for relying on instruments instead of aesthetic judgment.
• Lan Zhuang communicated through colored light and sorted the paintings from lightest to darkest in minutes.
• Shen Le admitted that Lan Zhuang was better than him at judging color, and Teacher Zhang concluded that he would rather take a wooden box as his apprentice.

Shen Le tried to keep Teacher Zhang from taking Lan Zhuang as a student, then helped him restore a spiritually infused painting. The chapter ended with Shen Le suggesting magical methods to reinforce the painting’s original Life Paper, leaving Teacher Zhang exasperated.

• Teacher Zhang bonded with Lan Zhuang as it dyed paper and copied painting details, while Shen Le struggled to persuade him not to take it to the school.
• Shen Le reassured Teacher Zhang that spiritual-energy snacks made the nearby supernatural presence safe for ordinary people, and Teacher Zhang chose to stay indoors.
• Teacher Zhang ordered Shen Le to practice dyeing Life Paper, and Shen Le applied layers to ten sheets under his instruction.
• Shen Le asked to reuse the original Life Paper because it held the painting’s spiritual energy, and Teacher Zhang agreed they needed to reinforce it.
• Shen Le proposed chemical treatments and then suggested using magic or asking the neighboring garden’s tree spirit for help, leaving Teacher Zhang nearly speechless.

Shen Le struggled to repair an ancient painting’s Life Paper with reinforced Xuan paper, learning the technique from Ah Lu after repeated failures. After he successfully repaired and attached the paper, Zheng Mo took over smoothing it and offered to help turn the painting over.

• Teacher Zhang advised Shen Le on reinforcing Xuan paper and told him to use an iron to flatten crumpled Life Paper.
• Shen Le repeatedly failed to repair an ancient painting, causing uneven patches, damaged spirituality, and even green shoots to sprout from the paper.
• Shen Le asked Ah Lu for help, and she demonstrated how to use Growth Runes to make the paper fibers absorb pulp and grow together.
• After watching Ah Lu’s demonstration ten times, Shen Le successfully reinforced the Xuan paper, and Teacher Zhang approved the repair.
• Shen Le ironed the Life Paper and attached it to the Painting Core, while Teacher Zhang coached him on smoothing it without wrinkles or bubbles.
• Zheng Mo smoothed the Life Paper with its Ink Line, drew the ink back off the paper, and asked Shen Le if it should help turn the painting over.

Shen Le and Little Ink Marker turned over and prepared the Painting Core while Teacher Zhang trained Shen Le to restore its colors and brushwork. When Shen Le and Teacher Zhang disagreed about the painting's original composition, Shen Le summoned Alloy Master, who revealed that he had owned the painting and remembered how it first looked.

• Little Ink Marker showed Shen Le and Teacher Zhang that it could help turn the Painting Core over, and Shen Le worked with it to flip the painting.
• Shen Le removed the Oil Paper, cleaned the Painting Core, and helped paste it onto the wall to dry beneath Korean Paper.
• Teacher Zhang had Shen Le practice restoring the painting on a printed copy while Cyber Student Lan Zhuang demonstrated restoration techniques.
• Shen Le struggled to match the colors and brushwork, and he and Teacher Zhang disagreed about how the painting's scenery should look.
• Shen Le brought Alloy Master to the Studio, where Alloy Master revealed his beast-like head, said he was the painting's original owner, and demonstrated the image he remembered.

Shen Le worked with Teacher Zhang, Alloy Master, and the Bookworm Monster to reconstruct the missing details of the ancient painting, then began restoring it. As the painting’s spiritual power guided his brush, he completed the damaged lines and saw its figures come alive, with the youth asking if he had finally come.

• Teacher Zhang questioned Alloy Master about his memories of the painting, and Alloy Master identified some details by smelling its copper-based pigments but admitted he relied on memory for others.
• Shen Le brought out the Bookworm Monster, which recreated patterns it had eaten from the painting by scattering its silver scales across the Printed Version Painting.
• Teacher Zhang and Shen Le compared the recovered details with references and spent three days developing a preliminary restoration plan.
• Teacher Zhang trained Shen Le to restore the painting on paper and aged silk, making him practice repeatedly until he met the required standard.
• Shen Le began restoring the ancient painting, and its spiritual power responded to his strokes, guiding him toward the correct patterns and colors.
• Shen Le completed the final stroke, and the painting’s figures seemed to rise and ask whether he had finally come.

Shen Le witnessed the restored painting’s memories, following a young commander more than ten years after his youthful romance with Jin Zhu. After Altan Khan’s death, he accompanied an envoy to the grasslands and discovered Jin Zhu faced pressure to marry the old khan’s heir; the chapter ended as the commander and envoy met her in mourning.

• Shen Le finished restoring the painting, then fell asleep and entered its memories.
• The young commander rose to defend a crucial pass, married and had two sons, but continued to wonder whether Jin Zhu was happy.
• After Altan Khan died, the young commander received orders to escort an envoy beyond the frontier and learned that Altan Khan’s heir had pursued Jin Zhu to secure her tribes and possessions through marriage.
• The young commander and envoy rode west and found the heir’s camp facing off against Jin Zhu’s formidable encampment.
• Altan Khan’s heir told the envoy that Jin Zhu refused to marry him, leaving him unable to control her followers or decide whether the Tribute Market would open.
• The envoy and young commander visited Jin Zhu, who received them in mourning beneath a Buddha Statue and bowed as a widow.

Zhongjin Khatun resisted the Ming envoy’s demand that she marry Huang Taiji, while the envoy warned that refusing could cost her political influence and her son’s future. She asked Nari Su whether he wanted her to marry the Shunyi King, and he refused to help her through force but suggested winning the court’s support.

• Zhongjin Khatun rejected the envoy’s proposal that she marry Huang Taiji and argued that the emperor should respect her wish to remain faithful to her late husband.
• When the envoy invoked frontier custom and the fate of her son, Zhongjin Khatun’s soldiers entered the tent and she demanded to know what the court would do if she refused to marry.
• A monk offered to build Zhongjin Khatun a temple if she joined the Buddhist faith, but the envoy threatened that she would lose her favor and political standing if she did not submit to the king.
• After the meeting, Zhongjin Khatun summoned the young general Nari Su and asked whether he also wanted her to marry the Shunyi King.
• Nari Su said he could not start a border conflict to help her, but advised her to persuade the Shunyi King to submit to the court and earn an appointment that would let her make her own choices.

Jin Zhu reunited with Nari Su and Little Gold on the steppe, while Shen Le watched their farewell through the Painting Core. Back in the present, Shen Le insisted on an expensive, thorough repair for the painting’s Zhuanghua Satin, leaving Teacher Zhang aghast at his Special Affairs Bureau points.

• Jin Zhu told Nari Su that she understood the court’s demands and asked him to help mediate if anyone bullied her.
• Jin Zhu summoned Little Gold, who had grown enormous and could speak; he joyfully knocked Nari Su down and licked him.
• Little Gold complained that Nari Su had delayed returning for over thirteen years, and Nari Su promised to visit within three years and protect Jin Zhu.
• Shen Le watched the reunion through the Painting Core and decided to tease Little Gold the next day, but Alloy Master scolded him over the damage to the Qi Paper.
• Alloy Master admitted he had not found the mountain in the painting, while Shen Le urged him to finish repairing the Painting Core.
• Shen Le asked Teacher Zhang to help repair the Zhuanghua Satin by filling its holes, then showed him his points to prove he could afford the costly work.

Teacher Zhang took Shen Le to the Yunjin Institute in Jinling to arrange a replica of his damaged Zhuanghua Satin. He watched the institute analyze the fabric and prepare its weaving diagrams, then left after learning that two master craftspeople could weave only a few inches a day.

• Teacher Zhang learned from her contacts that the Yunjin Institute could reproduce Shen Le’s Zhuanghua Satin for a fee, and she told him to bring the original fabric.
• Shen Le traveled with Teacher Zhang to the Yunjin Institute, where the staff agreed to reproduce the Agarwood Crane Cloud Pattern Zhuanghua Satin and invited him to observe.
• Shen Le shared his photographs and measurements, and a female teacher used them to analyze the threads and colors.
• The female teacher generated and manually corrected a Design Draft, then used it to create a Loom Setup Diagram.
• Shen Le watched the staff prepare to weave the complicated satin on a traditional Flower Tower Loom, but Teacher Zhang took him away after explaining how slowly it was woven.