bayedsolid Chapter 192 A New Fragrance Emerges at the Pinnacle of Incense Making
Chapter 192 A New Fragrance Emerges at the Pinnacle of Incense Making
Chapter 192 A New Fragrance Emerges at the Pinnacle of Incense Making
A new fragrance emerges, marking the pinnacle of incense making.
As dusk swallowed the last rays of the setting sun, Su Yunlan's fingertips gently brushed against the amber-colored balm that had solidified in the glass cup.
The scent of night dew drifting in from outside the window mingled with the rising steam from the cup, transforming in the candlelight into the shape of a black bird carrying a copper ring.
"Madam, the glue made from the bark of the sandalwood tree has solidified." Miss Sun stepped across the threshold, carrying the earthenware jar, her hair still adorned with cocklebur seeds she had brought back from the mountains.
The girl gazed at the thirty-six spices arranged on the table, her eyes burning like newly hung lanterns under the eaves. "Are you really going to use those three twin lotus flowers from the crack in the rock?"
Su Yunlan stirred the fragrant balm with a silver spoon, the red patterns on the jade bracelet on her wrist appearing and disappearing in the steam: "When the flower sap resonated with the spiritual spring, even the Thousand-Mechanism Incense laid down by the Wu family retreated by three points." She suddenly chuckled, the pearls hanging from the end of her hairpin sweeping across the yellowed "Secret Record of Heavenly Fragrance," "Back then, the Zhou family ancestors used phoenix wood to make Seven Treasures Incense, and today I will use the Black Bird Pattern as the catalyst..."
Before he could finish speaking, a sharp cracking sound of shattering pottery suddenly came from the front yard.
Xiao Yuhan pushed open the door, carrying a blood-stained sword sheath. A few fluorescent butterfly wings clung to the hem of his dark, fitted outfit: "The Wu family mingled with the spice delivery convoy and intercepted our camphor incense in the bamboo forest on the outskirts of the city."
The stone pestle in Miss Sun's hand clattered to the ground, and the crushed styrax rose up with pungent smoke.
Su Yunlan steadily dipped the silver spoon into the ice water, and the condensed balm instantly bloomed with patterns like peacock tail feathers: "It's alright, the bottom of the third jar in the cellar contains the dragon brain from the Kingdom of Polu that I collected three years ago, go and get it."
"But that was the incense you were preparing to make for the old lady to calm her nerves!" Miss Sun hurriedly grabbed Xiao Yunlan's cloud-patterned sleeve, only to see the red pattern on his wrist suddenly spread across his fingertips, leaving a dark gold mark on the rim of the glass cup.
Xiao Yuhan suddenly pressed down on his wife's trembling hand, and the black silk ribbon wrapped around the sword hilt moved without wind: "Yunlan, the blood you coughed up in front of the cliff today, was it...?"
"It was just the rotten leaves that made me choke." Su Yunlan shoved the blood-stained handkerchief into her dressing case, and the gilded clasp clicked shut. Just then, seven owls carrying copper bells flew past the window.
She held the newly formed perfume to her nose and sniffed it lightly, then suddenly chuckled softly at the void: "Master Zhou is probably about to smash his seventh teacup right now."
At this moment, inside the incense shop in the west of the city, Incense Master Zhou is inserting a silver needle soaked in snake venom into a wooden puppet with the character "Su" written on it.
Suddenly, the three sticks of incense on the offering table broke off all at once, and the ashes on the ground pieced together the incomplete left wing of a black bird.
His withered hand slammed heavily onto the "Zhou Family Incense Manual," causing the twelve bronze mirrors hanging on the wall to vibrate.
"Master, Manager Liu from West Street says he wants to cancel his order for new incense..." Before the apprentice could finish speaking, a flying shard of bronze mirror cut his cheek.
Zhou Xiangshi's cloudy pupils reflected the flickering candlelight, like a venomous snake spitting its tongue: "Go tell those foolish people that the appearance of the Black Bird is a terrible omen—those who use Blood-Patterned Incense will sooner or later be burned alive by heavenly fire!"
Three days later, at dawn, when Miss Sun rushed into the workshop carrying the incense box, she bumped into Su Yunlan staring blankly at the boiling bronze cauldron.
The purplish-red balm churning in the cauldron continuously transformed into a totem of a black bird carrying a ring, but suddenly burst open just as it was about to take shape.
"Madam, all three rouge shops in the south of the city have cancelled their orders." The girl, her voice trembling with tears, handed over the ink-stained contract. "Master Zhou has found a wandering Taoist priest from somewhere, who says our workshop's location has offended the mountain god..."
Su Yunlan's silver hairpin suddenly cut her fingertip, and the moment the blood droplet fell into the perfume, the red pattern on her jade bracelet actually climbed up the roof beam along with the steam.
She gazed at the patterns running between the beams and pillars and suddenly chuckled. Turning around, she took out a bronze box wrapped with gold thread from deep within the antique shelf: "Miss Sun, do you remember the lightning-struck wood we found in the Cangwu Mountain valley?"
Thunder roared outside the window, and torrential rain washed over the bronze wind chimes hanging from the eaves of the workshop.
The moment Su Yunlan unlocked the box, the thirty-three incense sticks inlaid with fragments of meteorite iron trembled in unison, resonating with the red patterns on her wrist in a strange rhythm.
Suddenly, Miss Sun noticed that the returned incense items glowed like fireflies in the sound of rain.
When Xiao Yuhan, soaked to the bone, pushed open the workshop's wooden door, he saw his wife pressing a blood-stained incense seal into newly made incense clay.
Seven jade incense pills, engraved with constellation patterns, lay quietly on the table, their fluorescence mirroring that of the rock wall totems amidst the thunder.
&34; Clouds, the golden dust of the black bird on the mountain path...&34;
"Does my husband know that last night at midnight, the Wu family's storeroom caught fire and burned all the styrax they had harvested this year?" Su Yunlan suddenly placed the Jade Incense Pill in her husband's palm, her eyes reflecting the phantom of the black bird rising from the incense burner. "Please give this to the storyteller in front of the City God Temple, and tell him..." As the torrential rain, carrying the acrid scent of lightning-struck wood, burst through the workshop window, the red mark on Su Yunlan's wrist had already climbed onto the bronze incense burner.
Thirty-three meteorite iron incense sticks floated and sank in the spiritual spring, imprinting the totem of the black bird carrying a ring into the purplish-red incense mud, startling the spice merchants outside the door who were holding oil-paper umbrellas and all took a half step back.
&34; Gentlemen, watch closely. &34; Su Yunlan suddenly opened the hidden door of the cellar, his fingertips brushing against the dragon brain from the Kingdom of Polu, which had been sealed for three years.
The moment the crackled porcelain jar was unsealed, the red patterns swirling between the workshop's beams and pillars suddenly contracted, solidifying the blood-stained fragrant mud into seven jade-like round balls. This incense is named "Mysterious Sound Guide," and when burned, it reveals a hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix.
Zhou Xiangshi, who was hiding behind the crowd, suddenly crushed the porcelain bottle containing snake venom in his sleeve. His cloudy pupils reflected the star patterns flowing on the surface of the incense pills.
He clearly saw the cancellation contracts spontaneously combust in Su Yunlan's sleeve, and the ashes that fell to the ground pieced together half a page of the "Heavenly Fragrance Secret Record".
"Mrs. Su, can this incense really cure convulsions?" The manager of Renhetang pushed through the rain curtain and squeezed to the front. The mugwort fragments stuck to his clothes were lifted into the air by the incense mist.
He suddenly widened his eyes—the mist clearly reflected the third drawer of his medicine cabinet, down to the exact location of the rhinoceros horn that had gotten damp the day before.
Xiao Yuhan silently tied the rain-soaked black silk ribbon from the sword hilt to the incense burner, then lowered his eyes to look at his wife's blood-stained fingernails.
When she deliberately spilled the calming tea this morning, the red lines on her wrist had spread to her collarbone, but now they faded into pale golden phoenix tail patterns in the fragrant mist.
"Please close your eyes, everyone." Su Yunlan threw the Jade Fragrance Pill into the gilded fire pit, and the sparks from the explosion condensed into the phantom images of hundreds of birds in mid-air.
Suddenly, Miss Sun pointed at Zhou Xiangshi, who was huddled in the corner, and exclaimed: "Look!"
The wooden puppet he hid in his clothes was emitting black smoke! &34;
Amidst the uproar, twelve bronze wind chimes moved automatically without any wind.
The witchcraft doll with the birth date and time written on it in Zhou Xiangshi's arms suddenly exploded, and the flying shards of paulownia wood clearly showed the pattern of a black bird crying.
As he staggered backward, he knocked over the earthenware jar containing the Thousand-Mechanism Injection. The poison powder, upon encountering the fragrant mist, transformed into fluttering phosphorescent butterflies, which rustled down onto the pearls dangling from Su Yunlan's hairpin.
&34; Master Zhou, do you know that the Black Bird prefers to feed on resentment? &34; Su Yunlan gently blew on the phosphorescent powder on her hairpin, and sparks fell into the incense burner along the red lines that traced her fingertips.
Suddenly, a cry of alarm came from the south of the city. Everyone opened the window and looked out. They saw the remaining beams and pillars of the Wu family warehouse rising up in the rain with golden flames shaped like black birds, burning the last few bundles of styrax incense into glassy ash.
Seven days later, on the Shangsi Festival, Xiao Yuhan prepared three jars of plum wine in his villa, which was filled with mimosa trees.
He specially made a half-person-high ice chest out of saltpeter and froze the waste incense mud used by Su Yunlan when testing the fragrance into thirty-six exquisite lamps.
When Miss Sun presented the gilded invitations and led the guests to their seats, she discovered that each lamp wick was inlaid with the medicinal herb that the witnesses of that day cared about most.
"This is for the manager of Renhetang." Xiao Yuhan pushed the ice lamp inlaid with rhinoceros horn pieces to the east side. "Yunlan said that the batch of medicinal herbs damaged by last month's rainstorm can be preserved by wrapping them in fragrant mud and chilling them with ice." The dark patterns on his black brocade robe flowed in the moonlight, clearly showing the pattern of black bird feathers.
Su Yunlan leaned against the corridor covered with wisteria, watching the guests touch the illusory fragrant mist that had solidified inside the ice lanterns in astonishment.
As Xiao Yuhan placed the warm jade hand warmer containing calming tea into her palm, the copper bell on the eaves suddenly played a melody that resonated with the incense seal.
She chuckled softly, noticing that the star chart engraved on the hand warmer matched the pattern of the fragrant pill perfectly.
At the height of the celebration, the sound of ocarinas suddenly drifted from the south of the city.
The flower seller, holding a handful of freshly picked June Snow flowers, squeezed in front of Su Yunlan. The plain silver hairpin tucked at her temple suddenly emitted a strange halo: "Madam, would you like to go for a stroll in the west of the city?"
This morning, Zhao's Pottery Workshop smashed seven kilns of unglazed pottery, saying they couldn't fire an incense burner that could match the Xuan Yin Yin (a type of incense burner)...&34;
Su Yunlan ran her fingertips over the water droplets that had condensed on the edge of the ice chest, and vaguely saw the shattered Jun kiln brush washer in the laboratory of her previous life.
The night wind swept a shard of celadon porcelain past her embroidered shoes, and in the moonlight, half of a broken black bird pattern could be faintly discerned.