lcionline Chapter 197 The Search for the Origin of Clay Begins with Twists and Turns
Chapter 197 The Search for the Origin of Clay Begins with Twists and Turns
Chapter 197 The Search for the Origin of Pottery Begins with Twists and Turns
The quest to trace the origins of clay is fraught with twists and turns.
The rain curtain, carrying the cheerful chants of the potters, drifted into the warehouse. Su Yunlan's fingertips trembled as she touched the last basket of silver clay.
The jade bracelet radiated a scorching heat, leaving a plum blossom-shaped dark mark on Xiao Yuhan's palm—a warning that the space was about to dry up.
&34; We'll depart at 3:00 AM tomorrow. &34; Xiao Yuhan bit the tinderbox between his teeth, and the hemp rope wrapped around his wrist three times, leaving bloody marks.
He was filling a bamboo basket with fragments of star-patterned glaze, which Su Yunlan had warmed with her body heat last night to stop the glaze from disintegrating.
Before the morning mist had dissipated, Village Chief Zhang was squatting under the faded vermilion archway, burning a pottery turtle.
Blackened silt seeped from the cracks in the tortoise shell, and the old man's deeply furrowed hands suddenly trembled violently: "Thirty years ago, a meteorite fell on Qingya Mountain, and this soil was born in the crater." The tortoise shell exploded in the charcoal fire, shattering into seven blood-stained porcelain shards, "Later, the mountain god was angered, and the mud poured out..."
A silver light seeped from Su Yunlan's clenched palm, and the spatial thermometer on her wrist transformed into a cold iron chain.
The shape of those porcelain shards was exactly the same as the star-patterned glaze fragments that shimmered at the bottom of the pool last night.
"This is the mountain god's curse." Village Chief Zhang's cloudy eyes reflected the burn mark that suddenly appeared on Su Yunlan's wrist. "Of the seven mud collectors back then, only I returned unscathed."
Xiao Yuhan's sword sheath slammed heavily against the stone steps, shaking off the cobwebs that had accumulated at the corner of the archway for half a month.
The broken spider silk refracted eerie silver lines in the morning light, pointing directly at the misty summit of Qingya Mountain.
The rainstorm arrived suddenly at around 3 PM.
The handkerchief under Su Yunlan's raincoat was soaked in dark red, the wounds from the burns caused by the silvery soil when she was rock climbing.
Xiao Yuhan untied the blue silk ribbon binding her hair and used it to bandage her wound, only to find that the ribbon ignited with a ghostly blue flame the moment it touched the bloodstains.
"Don't touch it!" Su Yunlan abruptly pulled her arm back, the jade bracelet on her wrist flashing with starlight.
Last night, when the space swallowed the last handful of silvery soil, she clearly saw the seal script of "bloodline repulsion" appear on the thermometer.
The mountain wind whipped up pebbles that crashed against the cliff, and Xiao Yuhan shielded her from the flying rock fragments with his back.
The black, tight-fitting clothes he wore exuded a metallic smell, the result of the puncture wound on his tongue that morning when he swallowed the silvery soil to test for poison.
Thirty steps southwest. Su Yunlan suddenly gripped his bleeding wrist.
The fragment of space emitted a buzzing sound in her sleeve, guiding the withered tree that had been struck by lightning—a half-piece of star-patterned glazed pottery was embedded in the charred trunk, perfectly matching the tortoise-shell cracks that had appeared on Village Chief Zhang's body.
As the mud reached his shins, Su Yunlan smelled the familiar scent of gunpowder.
That was the scent that Xiao Yuhan had left on his clothes three days ago when he led his troops to suppress bandits, but now it was mixed with the fishy sweetness of Yinguangtu and entered his nostrils.
She stumbled and lunged toward the shimmering silver spots in the crevice of the rock, completely unaware that her raincoat was caught on the barbs.
"Watch out!" Xiao Yuhan's roar exploded like thunder.
Su Yunlan felt the world suddenly tilt, and the jade bracelet on her wrist hit the rock wall, sparking sparks. Those sparks actually condensed in mid-air into the seal script character "Unique to the Crater".
As excruciating pain exploded in her right arm, she saw herself fall into a pool of shimmering, silvery mud.
The star-patterned glaze fragments settled at the bottom of the pool are spinning wildly, weaving a shimmering star map in the torrential rain.
The chains of the space thermometer suddenly tightened, almost suffocating her—the last of the silvery soil was rapidly carbonizing.
"Don't look." Xiao Yuhan's burning palm covered her eyes, the torn hem of her clothes soaking in the scent of wound medicine.
The moment the powder touched the wound, the burn marks on Su Yunlan's wrist suddenly faded—he had indeed discovered the resonance between the powder and the silver soil last night.
As dusk turned blood-red, Xiao Yuhan carried her up Eagle's Beak Rock.
The mountain wind swept away the last trace of body heat. Su Yunlan looked at the seven faintly visible starlight in the sea of mist and suddenly remembered the seven pieces of porcelain that Village Chief Zhang had cracked.
The shape of those starlight points clearly resembles the ominous sign of the Big Dipper swallowing the Greedy Wolf.
"Tomorrow..." She coughed up blood froth mixed with silver powder, her fingertips tracing the outline of the crater on the rock wall.
Suddenly, the jade bracelet made a tearing sound, and the thermometer chain snapped—the final countdown had begun.
Xiao Yuhan took off his breastplate and pressed it against her bleeding wound. The mirror reflected the dark lines winding along the side of his neck.
That was the mark left by the silver clay when testing the poison this morning, but now it resonated with the burn mark on Su Yunlan's wrist in the torrential rain.
As the thunderclap cleaved through the night, Su Yunlan saw a faint, star-patterned glaze flash deep within his pupils.
In the distance came the roar of tumbling rocks, mixed with the final lament of spatial fragments, echoing eerily in the deep valley.
The cliff face crumbled and shed rocks in the torrential rain, and Xiao Yuhan's protective mirror struck the rock strata, sparking out.
Suddenly, the jade bracelet on Su Yunlan's wrist emitted a sharp shriek, and the chains formed from fragments of space pulled her deeper into the crevice.
As the two fell down the slippery moss, Xiao Yuhan's sword left a three-foot-long line of blood on the cave wall—wolf blood that had soaked into the hilt during the bandit suppression the previous night.
"Watch out!" Su Yunlan grabbed his rolled-up sleeve, and the fragment of the space thermometer burned a Big Dipper-shaped indentation into her palm.
The humus emanating from the depths of the cave was mixed with the unique smell of saltpeter from the silvery soil. Suddenly, the stray hairs at the back of her neck stood up straight, a tremor caused by the spatial sensing of meteorite matter.
Xiao Yuhan's tinderbox illuminated the stalactites hanging from the cave ceiling, and the gray-white stalagmites were covered with fragments of star-patterned glaze.
Su Yunlan's silk shoes sank into the soft soil, and the silver powder on the toes shimmered in the dim light, just like the glaze sample in the secret room of the inn three days ago.
"It's Silver Light Soil!" Her fingertips traced the winding ravines on the stone wall, and fragments of space transformed into fine needles in her sleeve, drilling into the rock strata.
Semi-transparent seal script appeared on the surface of the jade bracelet. Fragments that fell when the thermometer chain broke condensed in the humid air to form a star pattern with a purity of 97%.
Xiao Yuhan's sword sheath slammed heavily against the bottom of the cave, shaking down the night bats that were perched three zhang high.
The startled black creatures flapped and crashed into the stone wall, the echoes of their wings suddenly mixed with the sound of metal scraping—his gauntlets, forged from black iron, were resonating with a protruding rock.
Here. The God of War's thumb brushed away the moss, revealing half of a rusty pickaxe.
Su Yunlan's spatial fragment suddenly beeped, guiding her to look at the clump of mud that had solidified next to the hoe.
Those dark red gelatinous substances contained silver sand, which was exactly the mud unique to the meteorite crater that Village Chief Zhang described.
Xiao Yuhan untied the rhinoceros horn belt around his waist and sprinkled the last half packet of wound medicine powder onto Su Yunlan's bleeding palm.
The moment the medicinal powder touched the silver sand, the fragments of star-patterned glaze on the cave ceiling suddenly refracted seven-colored halos, piecing together a complete Big Dipper constellation above their heads—perfectly matching the cracks in the tortoise shell pattern that had been burned by Village Chief Zhang.
"It's done!" Su Yunlan's silk handkerchief, wrapped in silver sand, brushed against the jade bracelet, and the chain of the spatial thermometer solidified again.
As she turned, the ends of her hair brushed against Xiao Yuhan's bloodstained chin, and the congealed blood beads suddenly melted into a golden-red glaze, rolling down the God of War's Adam's apple and into his collar.
Xiao Yuhan's palm gripped the back of her neck, and the smell of gunpowder mixed with the sweet, metallic scent of silvery soil exploded between their lips and teeth.
The burn marks on Su Yunlan's wrists crept up to the dark lines on the side of his neck, and the fragments of space turned into flowing stardust between their pressed chests.
The roar of the torrential rain outside the cave suddenly became distant, leaving only the resonance of each other's pulses striking the meteorite material.
"Watch out!" Xiao Yuhan suddenly pushed her down onto the muddy ground.
A poisoned blowgun grazed Su Yunlan's hair and embedded itself in the rock wall, the animal bone talisman tied to its fletching gleaming eerily indigo in the dim light.
The twisted patterns were strikingly similar to the cracks in the tortoise shell that Zhang, the village chief, had burned, but with three intersecting bloodstains.
Su Yunlan's spatial fragments condensed into a magnifying glass in his palm, revealing the bronze bell half-hidden in the soil.
The silver sand that condensed on the bell's tongue formed a ferocious wolf head totem, mirroring the bandit-suppression emblem on Xiao Yuhan's sword sheath.
Her bloodstained fingertips traced the engravings on the bell, and she suddenly remembered the direction in which the star-patterned glaze at the bottom of the pool spun last night—the same angle at which the shadows on the cave walls were tilting at this moment.
"Someone has been here." Xiao Yuhan's sword sliced through the vines, revealing the restrictive runes drawn with wolf blood on the stone wall.
The runes were inlaid with silvery soil at their turning points, and fine droplets of blood seeped out in the damp air.
The jade bracelet on Su Yunlan's wrist suddenly contracted, and the spatial thermometer chain left bruises resembling the Big Dipper on her forearm—a warning from space to the plunderers.
The crisp sound of pottery shattering echoed from deep within the cave, mingling with the sound of silver sand colliding between rock layers.
Su Yunlan grabbed Xiao Yuhan's sleeve and took three steps back. The spot where they had just been standing suddenly collapsed, revealing boiling silver mud below.
Half a star-patterned glazed pottery bowl floats up from the churning foam, and the wolf head totem branded on the bottom of the bowl echoes the talisman on the blowgun.
Xiao Yuhan's protective mirror reflected Su Yunlan's pale face, and suddenly the mirror surface was covered with spiderweb-like cracks.
The direction in which those cracks extend is pointing towards the bronze cauldron slowly rising from the mud—the seven barbs with blood grooves on the chains wrapped around the cauldron's handles are the same number as the porcelain shards that Village Chief Zhang cracked.
"Don't touch this soil." Su Yunlan wrapped the soon-to-be-carbonized fragments of space with her silk handkerchief, and the jade bracelet on her wrist emitted a dying buzzing sound.
The star-patterned glaze fragments suspended on the mud began to rotate counterclockwise, projecting a fierce image of a wolf swallowing the Big Dipper onto the cave ceiling—a phenomenon that perfectly overlapped with the strange sight she had seen three days earlier when she was astrologically interpreting things at the inn.
Sparks suddenly flew from Xiao Yuhan's sword sheath, etching a retreat signal on the rock wall.
The flying sparks condensed in mid-air into the seal script "巳时三刻", which was the last warning moment when the space thermometer flashed last night.
His bloodied palm covered Su Yunlan's trembling hand, and he sprinkled the last half packet of wound medicine powder into the boiling mud.
The moment the powder touched the silver light, a beast-like roar echoed from the depths of the cave.
Su Yunlan's spatial fragments suddenly carbonized completely, and the word "danger" appeared on the surface of the jade bracelet in blood color.
The suspended star-patterned glaze fragments rained down on the ground, piecing together the complete pattern of Zhang Village Chief's tortoise-shell cracks in the mud—each crack oozing fresh wolf blood.
"Let's go!" Xiao Yuhan grabbed Su Yunlan's waist and leaped toward the cave entrance.
In his last glimpse, Su Yunlan saw the silvery soil rising from the bronze cauldron solidifying into a human shape. The blurry face bore a striking resemblance to the Wolf Mountain bandit leader who had escaped during the bandit suppression three days prior.