After obtaining the cremated ashes, Chen Miao began making corpse wax.
During the process, Xiang Shang returned with a bag of wood ash.
"Where do I put this stuff?"
Chen Miao glanced at the ash in the plastic bag.
"Get a basin of water and pour it in, then soak those fish bones from earlier in it."
"What the hell are you making?"
Xiang Shang grumbled as he went to do as instructed.
While the fish bones soaked in the wood-ash solution, Chen Miao finished making the corpse wax.
There was a full half bucket of corpse wax, enough even to build an entire head from scratch.
Leaving the corpse wax to one side, Chen Miao washed his hands and began making the Fishbone Needles.
He fished the bones out of the water and wiped them dry, then took out a hair dryer and began drying the backbones and fish spines.
Worried that running a single hair dryer continuously would burn it out, Chen Miao went to the dormitory building and borrowed a few more.
He took turns using them for a full hour before stopping.
One of the two carp backbones had cracked as it dried; the other was barely usable.
Most of the sturgeon spines were still in good shape, and Chen Miao selected some of the better ones to keep.
Then Chen Miao began sanding the fish bones.
He had originally intended to use an electric grinding wheel, but realized that one slip could damage the bones, so he abandoned that idea.
Instead, he began sanding them by hand.
Xiang Shang got bored and wanted to go to bed, but Chen Miao would not let him.
It took a full half hour to grind the fish bone into the shape of a needle.
Then he handed the