bayedsolid Chapter 200 continues from the previous chapter (I can't think of a title yet).
Chapter 200 continues from the previous chapter (I can't think of a title yet).
Chapter 200 (Continued from the previous chapter; I can't think of a title yet)
The sound of the wooden clapper at dawn still echoed through the streets and alleys, and Su Yunlan had already spread the improved blueprints across three sandalwood tables.
The star trails on the parchment scroll were disassembled into seven-colored silk threads, which wrapped around the half-piece of blood-stained bandage that had been taken from Sun San's wound last night—that dark red gleamed with a strange bronze luster in the morning light, like the dye of a shadow puppet eroded by time.
"Fuling, light the agarwood that Nanzhao presented as tribute this year." She bit the silver hairpin between her lips, her fingers tracing the fluorescent star map on the fragment of the account book.
The Big Dipper pattern, stained by a drop of blood in the carriage last night, is now extending into fine golden veins on the rice paper, as if guiding some ancient ritual.
When Xiao Yuhan pushed the door open, he saw his wife kneeling among the blueprints scattered on the floor.
The jasmine hairpin in her hair was about to fall off at an angle, and there were still bits of fish glue she had brought back from the stage on her shoulder. She looked as if she were wrapped in a cocoon woven from morning mist and incense ash.
&34; Master Wang will be here at Chenshi (7-9 AM) to inspect the improvement plan. &34; He knelt on one knee, his black iron wrist guard lightly tapping the blue bricks. &34; Screenwriter Zhao was hungover last night, he's probably still at the tavern on West Street. &34;
Su Yunlan paused slightly, the ink spreading like plum blossoms beside the annotation "The Twelve Methods of Puppet Strings": "Since he says new plays are difficult to write, I will personally go and examine those old plays." Before he finished speaking, half a fluorescent stone suddenly slipped from his sleeve, landing precisely on the scabbard that Xiao Yuhan had wiped the night before, scattering a few points of ghostly blue sparks.
Screenwriter Zhao's residence is hidden in the back alley of the City God Temple, with mugwort that has not been picked for years hanging on the door knocker.
When Su Yunlan stepped into the room, the old scholar was tapping the yellowed script of "Investiture of the Gods" with a brass pipe. The room was filled with a musty smell mixed with the sour smell of rice wine from the previous night.
"Madam wants to revise 'Rainbow Feather Robe'?" His bloodshot eyes swept over the star chart Su Yunlan had brought. "Back then, Yang Guifei's puppet show required silk from the South China Sea as a backdrop. Where can we find such a thing now..." Before he could finish speaking, he suddenly coughed violently, and cigarette ash fell onto the Tang tri-colored horse statue with a missing ear on the table.
Su Yunlan lightly tapped the table with her fingertips, and the invigorating incense pills hidden in her sleeve quietly rolled into the teacup: &34; If the seven constellations of the Big Dipper correspond to the joints of the puppet, and then the star map is engraved with fluorescent stone powder...&34;
"Nonsense!" Screenwriter Zhao jumped up, the paperweight on his desk clattering to the ground. "Shadow puppetry is about a century-old tradition; how can you use supernatural tricks!" He pointed his withered finger toward the stage outside the window. "Last month, that brat Sun San tried some fish glue to stick scales on, and the Dragon King's jaw dropped to the audience!"
The copper bells on the eaves suddenly moved on their own without any wind, and the jade pendant on Su Yunlan's earring flashed with a faint light.
She gazed at the cloud pattern on the old screenwriter's worn-out cuffs and suddenly remembered the tattered pages of "The Puppet Manual of Rainbow Feathers" in the space last night—the yellowed edges also had similar brocade patterns.
As dusk settled, Su Yunlan locked herself in the incense-making room on the top floor of the inn.
All twelve carved wooden windows were open, and the night breeze carried sandalwood chips that were drying on the table.
She tried to draw the Big Dipper's position on the puppet's joints, but the gold thread on the parchment always broke at the position of the third star in the handle, as if it were forcibly snapped by some invisible force.
"Madam, Master Wang has sent someone to deliver ten catties of tanned donkey hides." Fu Ling's voice came from outside the door, accompanied by the soft clatter of a food box being placed on the threshold.
Su Yunlan looked at her slightly trembling fingertips. The drop of blood from the accidental cut last night had already scabbed over, but it appeared an eerie indigo blue under the candlelight.
When Xiao Yuhan pushed open the door, he saw his wife immersing the entire star chart in medicinal soup.
The indigo blood beads dissolved instantly upon contact with water, forming a swirling nebula pattern on the surface of the soup. "Yunlan..." He was about to speak when he saw Su Yunlan suddenly grab a leather-cutting knife. With a flash of cold light, three strands of black hair fell into the medicine bowl.
"Look at the direction of these blood beads." Her voice was so hoarse it didn't sound like her own. "Doesn't it resemble the fate chart of the Star Lord of Destiny in 'Heaven Official's Blessing'?" As she spoke, half a jade pendant slipped from her sleeve. It was the old item she had taken from screenwriter Zhao's house this morning—the Big Dipper pattern engraved on the back perfectly matched the nebula of the medicinal soup.
As the water clock pointed to midnight, Su Yunlan suddenly overturned the entire set of blueprints.
Amidst the falling Xuan paper, she saw her reflection in the bronze mirror overlap with the image of an ancient woman in ancient costume on the mural in the library.
Unconsciously, her fingertips brushed against her sleeve pocket, where a piece of star-patterned fabric she had taken from Sun San's costume the night before was hidden, and it was now faintly warm.
Xiao Yuhan silently picked up the mess on the ground, then suddenly placed his sword across the table: "Back then, I saw a shaman in the northern frontier use wolf blood to draw star maps..." He stopped abruptly, and the black jade bead on the sword tassel suddenly burst open, rolling into the still-dry medicinal soup.
Su Yunlan suddenly stood up, her silver hairpin knocking over a celadon brush washer.
She gazed at the indigo liquid dripping down the edge of the table, and in a daze, she smelled the unique borneol aroma of the spatial library again.
The sound of the night watchman's clapper drifted in from outside the window, startling the crows roosting under the eaves, their fluttering wings scattering the moonlight across the ground.
As the fifth candle burned out, Su Yunlan suddenly pressed her throbbing temple.
A blurry image flickered in the depths of her memory—it was an afternoon before she traveled through time, browsing through ancient books in the military library, sunlight streaming through bulletproof glass onto the gold-embossed cover of "A Study of Puppet Shows".
At that moment, the lingering medicinal scent on her fingertips suddenly overlapped with the smell of ink. Unconsciously, she reached for the pouch at her waist, which contained half a fluorescent stone that she had taken out from her spatial storage.
The candle flame exploded with a crack, and Su Yunlan suddenly froze amidst the mess on the ground.
A bitter taste, characteristic of camphor, rose in her throat. This taste always appeared when the spatial library was opened—just like now, when her fingertips touched the fluorescent stone in her pouch at her waist, the dark green metal bookshelves of the military library appeared before her eyes.
"Fuling, go and fetch some borneol." She deliberately knocked over the inkstone, and while the maid was tidying up, she slipped behind the screen.
With his palms pressed against the sandalwood frame carved with twin lotus blossoms, his consciousness instantly sank into the space.
In a corner on the third floor of the library, a collection of modern stories wrapped in the cover of "Obstetrics and Gynecology" was gleaming faintly.
As she returned to her desk clutching the forged ancient book, purported to be "The Chronicles of the Western Wilderness," Xiao Yuhan's sword tassel brushed against her burning earlobe. "This book..." He gazed at the gilded Twenty-Eight Mansions diagram on the indigo cover, "It looks like the rare copy stolen from the Imperial Observatory last year?"
"I found this at a used bookstore in the south of the city a few days ago." Su Yunlan turned the pages without changing his expression. The simplified Chinese version of "Havoc in Heaven" was printed on the yellowed Xuan paper.
Her fingertips traced the words "The Golden Cudgel Slams Down the Heavenly Palace," and she suddenly grabbed a cinnabar brush and wrote a note next to the star chart: "If the Great Sage Equaling Heaven were transformed into the Big Dipper Star Lord, the Peach Banquet would be changed into the Jade Pool Star Sacrifice..."
The night watchman's drum at dawn startled the sparrows under the eaves. When the crooked carved door of Zhao's screenwriter's house was pushed open again, Su Yunlan's cloak was still covered with night dew.
The old scholar was using a worn-out brush dipped in wine to repair the tattered pages of "Nezha Conquers the Dragon King" when he saw her unfolding improvement plan. His cloudy eyes suddenly fixed on the four characters "Stars Take Form".
"Absurd!" The pipe slammed heavily against the chipped Duan inkstone, making the bronze Pixiu paperweight on the desk vibrate. "Shadow puppetry is about loyalty, filial piety, and righteousness; how could it fabricate a story of a star lord mingling with a demon monkey?" But when Su Yunlan opened the hand-drawn somersault cloud pattern in "The Western Wilderness Chronicles," his withered fingers suddenly trembled as he touched the edge of the cloud pattern—there, the direction of the Big Dipper's handle was outlined with fluorescent stone powder.
Xiao Yuhan stood silently under the veranda, watching his wife's sleeves flutter in the morning light.
She was transforming the concept of modern film and television storyboards into a "puppet nine-square grid," and when she got excited, the antennae of the kingfisher feather butterfly hairpin in her hair were trembling.
When talking about Sun Wukong transforming into the Star Lord Dou Su and causing havoc in the Jade Pool, screenwriter Zhao's hand, covered with age spots, suddenly showed prominent veins, and he grabbed a wine gourd and took a big gulp.
&34；这泼猴...&34；他呛咳着指向星图某处，&34；若在此处加段紫微帝君点化劫数的唱词...&34；烟灰簌簌落在改良方案上，与苏云澜提前撒好的荧光粉混作一片，竟在朝阳下显出&34；因果轮回&34；的篆体水印。
Su Yunlan felt her sleeve being gently tugged, and when she turned around, she met Xiao Yuhan's deep eyes.
The half of his finger exposed beneath his black wrist guard was wrapped in a bandage; it was from a cut he made last night while cutting donkey hide for her.
As his thumb brushed across the ink stain on her palm, all the wit and sharp tongue he had displayed in front of screenwriter Zhao suddenly turned into a blush behind her ears.
"Madam, this star chart..." Screenwriter Zhao's hoarse voice suddenly rang out. He was observing the position of the third star of the Big Dipper with a magnifying glass, "It's similar to the fragment of the *Xuanji Pu* left by my grandfather." He pulled out an ancient book wrapped in oilcloth from the bottom of a box. The cloud patterns faintly visible among the mold spots were exactly the same as the murals in Su Yunlan's spatial library.
As dusk painted the windowpanes red, Su Yunlan suddenly pressed her throbbing temples.
The scheme for blending modern stories with traditional constellations was laid out on the octagonal table, with screenwriter Zhao's annotations in red ink: "The Thunder Generals should be added here." The ink was still wet.
But as she looked out the window at the darkening sky, the eerie blue foam rising from the modified donkey hide in the tanning vat reminded her of the swirling nebula in the medicinal soup last night.
"Three days later..." Screenwriter Zhao rolled up the improved plan into a tube and stuffed it into a bamboo basket. His hunched back paused at the door frame. "Let this old man think again about which constellation the hairpin of the fairy maiden of Yaochi should correspond to." His murky sigh startled the swallows on the beam, and a few downy feathers drifted down onto the fluorescent stone powder that Su Yunlan had not yet put away.
On the return journey in the carriage, Xiao Yuhan suddenly placed his sword across his lap.
The indigo bloodstains on the scabbard from last night had congealed into the shape of the Big Dipper, reflecting the light from the glass lamp hanging in the corner of the carriage and casting shimmering starlight on Su Yunlan's skirt. "Yunlan." His fingertips brushed against the fluorescent powder stains on her sleeve. "Years ago, on a snowy night in the northern frontier, I also saw such moving stars."
Just as Su Yunlan was about to speak, the wheel suddenly rolled over the gap in the bluestone slab.
She fell into Xiao Yuhan's arms, and the silver hairpin in her hair got caught on the leather rope binding his sleeve.
Through two layers of summer clothes, she could hear his heartbeat gradually merging with the sound of the drum, and the bitterness of camphor in her throat transformed into a warm, throbbing sensation.
As they parted ways in the backyard of the inn, Xiao Yuhan suddenly took out a bronze thumb ring from the inside of his wrist guard.
The star pattern engraved on the inside of the ring matched perfectly with the fluorescent stone in her purse. Found this morning in the crack of screenwriter Zhao's doorstep. He slipped the ring onto her thumb, ...
As the clapper sounded at midnight, Su Yunlan undid her hair in front of the bronze mirror.
Suddenly, the mirror fogged up, reflecting a fluorescent glow from somewhere on the bookshelf behind her—the copy of "The Western Wilderness Chronicles" was slowly oozing indigo droplets, which gathered on the sandalwood table to form the shape of the Big Dipper.
When she lightly touched the Tianquan star position with her silver hairpin, the "Study of Puppet Show" hidden deep in the space suddenly turned to the last page, revealing half a sheet of yellowed Xuan paper with drawings of modern stage machinery.
The candle wick crackled and popped, startling Su Yunlan, who was dozing off at her desk.
She stared blankly at the revised plan, which was damp with night dew. The question marks that screenwriter Zhao had marked with cinnabar still had water stains on them.
Unconsciously stroking the bronze thumb ring with his fingertips, he suddenly discovered that the star pattern on the inside of the ring perfectly matched the crack on the fluorescent stone.
The sound of Fuling drying donkey hides came from the backyard. Su Yunlan walked to the window and took a deep breath of the gunpowder-scented air.
The improved plan lay quietly on the desk, one corner of it, pressed down by a paperweight, trembled slightly in the morning breeze, as if those ingenious ideas that blended the past and present were about to burst forth from the paper.