lcionline Chapter 198 The Great Success of the Pottery Industry
Chapter 198 The Great Success of the Pottery Industry
Chapter 198 The Great Success of the Pottery Industry
The pottery industry is flourishing and reaching its peak.
The cold rain outside the cave extinguished the sparks on Xiao Yuhan's black iron armor, while the jade bracelet on Su Yunlan's wrist continued to tremble.
She covered the blood-stained silk handkerchief with the fragments of star-patterned glaze on the cave wall, and suddenly vermilion seeped out from the engravings of the Big Dipper—the very same ominous position she had calculated three days earlier when she was astrologically analyzing at the inn.
&34; The younger brother of the bandit leader of Wolf Mountain. &34; Xiao Yuhan wiped away the seal script of the hour of the snake on the scabbard, looking at the wolf blood pattern congealed in the mud, &34; This silvery soil vein is probably a secret kiln used by the bandits to smelt smuggled salt. &34;
Su Yunlan's spatial thermometer hummed in her sleeve, suddenly revealing the abnormally high temperature at midnight last night.
Under the guise of tidying her hair, she slipped the smuggled salt trafficking map, which had been copied from her spatial storage, into Xiao Yuhan's palm. "Thirty li southeast of Xun position, there's a miasma-filled forest perfect for hiding the account books."
Before the morning mist had dissipated, the two had already tied up the one-eyed stableman guarding the mine.
Su Yunlan deliberately tossed the private salt ledger, soaked in wolf blood, into the boiling water, and chuckled as she watched the "Zhang's Salt Permit" official seal float to the surface: "The village head just approved the salt ship clearance documents for Zhao Tao last month, didn't he?"
At midnight, the village head personally led the way with a torch, and cartloads of silver clay were transported into Su Yunlan's pottery kiln.
The jade bracelet gleamed with a warm luster under the moonlight, while the Big Dipper pattern imprinted in the space reflected the kiln fire.
Half a month later, the star-patterned glazed pottery with gold and kingfisher feather decorations caused a sensation in the market.
Zhao Tao, the potter, overturned three carts of substandard clay, staring at the long line of buyers opposite him with a sneer: "Give the Wang family kiln worker twenty taels of silver, and tell him that Madam Su needs to rush to make five hundred ancestral urns."
Just as the autumn rain arrived unexpectedly, Su Yunlan was packing the newly burned Seven Constellation Medicine Incense into a box.
Xiao Yuhan suddenly grabbed her wrist, and the black iron armor scraped against the undried glaze on the bottom of the jar—three cracks shaped like wolf claws were seeping water.
"The third batch of customers to complain this morning." Xiao Yuhan touched the mud from the crack to his nose and sniffed it lightly, his brows furrowing sharply. "This clay, mixed with sodium sulfate, is specifically prepared to disrupt the formula of the star-pattern glaze."
Su Yunlan stroked the broken Big Dipper pattern on the medicine jar when she suddenly heard a cracking sound coming from the storeroom.
When they arrived, they found the ground in a mess. The eighteen ancestral urns had cracked in the rain into the shape of ferocious wolves swallowing buckets, and the night watchman was lying unconscious in the corner, clutching half of the Zhao Family Trading Company's plaque.
Raindrops formed strings of beads along the eaves of the green tiles. Xiao Yuhan knelt on the muddy floor of the warehouse, his black iron armor making a soft clanging sound as it scraped against the broken pottery shards.
He suddenly used the tip of his sword to pick up a piece of clay stained with mirabilite, squinting at the sunlight: "Although this footprint has been smeared with castor oil, the sole pattern is the distinctive nine-curved pattern of horse traders from the Nanzhao Kingdom."
Su Yunlan's fingertips brushed over the copy of the ledger stored in her space, and she suddenly remembered the hoofprints she had seen in the Silverlight Soil Mine half a month ago.
She pretended to tidy her rain-soaked hair, but actually pressed the space thermometer against the pottery shard stained with mirabilite—the pointer indeed stopped at the abnormally high temperature at midnight last night, exactly the same as the smelting time marked on the smuggling salt map.
"Please, my husband, lend me ten secret guards." She pressed a silk handkerchief soaked in medicine against the crack in the pottery shard; the Big Dipper pattern shimmered with a fluorescent blue light. "This mirabilite is mixed with a bone-corroding powder specially made by the Western Qiang medicine people. Tonight, someone will surely come to destroy the evidence."
Just after the third watch gong struck twice, eerie green flames suddenly shot up from the beams and pillars of the warehouse.
As Xiao Yuhan, who was lying in ambush, swept his sword across, the black iron armor smashing the tiles and sending up a string of sparks that coincided with the traces left on the seal script in the cave.
The sword energy cleaved the plaques at the waists of the five masked men, revealing half of a gilded "Zhao" character.
"What a fine pair of nine-curved riding boots!" Xiao Yuhan sneered, stepping on one of the men's shins. His sword tip parted the man's trouser leg, which was stained with mirabilite. "The three hundred catties of mirabilite that the Nanzhao caravan brought three days ago should still be in Zhao's warehouse cellar, right?"
Before the morning mist had even dissipated, Su Yunlan had already blocked the entrance to the Zhao family's trading company with twenty-eight earthenware urns soaked in medicinal liquid.
When Xiao Yuhan's guards forced the Nanzhao horse merchant to break into the cellar, she suddenly scattered special medicinal powder into the air.
As the morning sun pierced through the mist, the Big Dipper pattern on all the pottery urns suddenly revealed a scene of Zhao Tao Shang trading with smuggled salt, causing an uproar among the onlookers.
"This...this is sorcery!" Zhao Taoshang knocked over his teacup and tried to escape, but Xiao Yuhan's sword sheath pinned his clothes to the ground.
"It's just an ancient technique of developing star-patterned glaze with medicine." Su Yunlan chuckled, stroking her jade bracelet. The developing powder in her spatial storage was falling into her sleeve through a hidden compartment. "You might want to take a look at the bottom of these pottery urns—they all have inscriptions with Manager Zhao's personally signed receipts for the Glauber's salt."
As the autumn wind swept through the streets with cries of condemnation, Su Yunlan was placing newly fired Seven Constellation Incense Jars on the shelves.
The shimmering starlight on the glaze reflected the beauty mark at the corner of her eye. Xiao Yuhan suddenly grasped her hand, which was dipped in the glaze: "It's time to name this new glaze."
"Let's call it the Broken Army Star Pattern Glaze." She traced the position of the seventh star of the Big Dipper on the bottom of the jar with her fingertip; "The fierce appearance of the Greedy Wolf star swallowing the Dipper ultimately couldn't suppress the murderous aura of the Broken Army Star."
Two years later, on the day of Lidong (the beginning of winter), Xiao Yuhan specially invited thirty-six kiln workers to set up the Liantian Kiln on the banks of the Xingwen River.
When the five hundredth gilded and kingfisher-patterned ancestral urn was fired, thousands of stars suddenly appeared on the river surface—it was because the luminous glaze developed by Su Yunlan developed developed a color when it came into contact with water, turning the entire river into a flowing Milky Way.
"You saved me from the bandit's den here back then, and now I repay you with a starry sky." Su Yunlan handed the warmed medicinal wine to Xiao Yuhan's lips, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her into his arms.
As the black iron armor swept past the jade hairpin in her hair, the lyrics of the shadow puppet troupe's "Beidou Zhensha" suddenly drifted from afar.
As the celebration banquet ended, Su Yunlan caught a glimpse of an old artist huddled up on a street corner.
The old man's faded shadow puppet was performing the scene of the Greedy Wolf Star Lord swallowing the moon, but only three or five young children remained in the audience.
When the night wind lifted the curtain, she saw that the worn cowhide at the joints of the shadow puppet was exactly the same as the cracks in the star-patterned glaze of the cave from back then.
"Husband, do you remember...?" She suddenly gripped Xiao Yuhan's sleeve, her gaze following the shadow puppet drifting away in the wind. "When we first met, you said that the Big Dipper held the secrets of war and conflict?"
Following her gaze, Xiao Yuhan noticed the black iron armor trembling slightly in the starlight reflected on the river: "Could it be that Yunlan has discovered a celestial array hidden within this shadow puppet show?"