142: Rice vinegar rinsed with water, the characters on the copper scroll became visible.

Upon returning to the hotel, Wang Dalong let out a shout the moment he entered and threw himself onto the soft, large bed.

“My god, I'm exhausted!”

“Bargaining with that old fox was more taxing than raiding three tombs!”

Wang Dalong rolled over on the bed and saw Lin Feng gently placing the black plastic bag on the table as if it were a precious treasure.

His curiosity was piqued once again.

“Seriously, Brother Feng.” He bounced up from the bed. “What kind of rare treasure is this pile of scrap metal? You actually spent twenty thousand yuan to acquire it?”

Lin Feng ignored him, set the bag down, and walked out of the door without saying a word.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

“Buying things.”

Lin Feng's voice drifted in from outside the door.

Ten minutes later, he returned.

In his hands were a bottle of white vinegar and a small bag of rice.

When Wang Dalong saw this, his eyes nearly popped out.

“Wait, Brother Feng...”

Wang Dalong was completely bewildered. He jumped off the bed and pointed at the two items.

“Are you... hungry? Planning to cook for yourself in the hotel?”

“Even if you want to cook, why buy vinegar and rice? To make a pot of sour porridge?”

Lin Feng didn't bother to pay him any attention.

He walked straight into the bathroom, took out the hotel's glass ice bucket, and asked for a brand-new plastic basin.

The preparations were ready.

He poured the rice into the basin, added purified water, and scrubbed it carefully.

Soon, the clear water became cloudy, turning a rich milky white.

He carefully decanted this first wash of rice water, pouring it all into the glass ice bucket.

Next, he unscrewed the cap of the white vinegar and poured about half the bottle into the ice bucket with a 'glug-glug' sound.

“Sizzle—”

A strong, pungent acidic smell instantly filled the entire hotel room.

“Holy crap! Brother Feng, what kind of dark cuisine are you making?”

Wang Dalong could no longer hold back. He rushed to the bathroom door, pinching his nose, and looked at the strange liquid in the ice bucket with a face full of disgust.

“This smell is way too strong! Anyone who didn't know better would think you're pickling vegetables!”

Lin Feng still didn't explain.

He returned to the table, opened the black plastic bag, and one by one, extremely carefully, placed the brass fragments covered in dark green patina into the ice bucket.

“Plop... plop...”

As the bronze fragments sank into the liquid, strings of fine bubbles immediately rose from their surfaces.

After finishing this, Lin Feng clapped his hands, his expression showing a hint of satisfaction.

“Alright, now we wait.”

Wang Dalong was completely at a loss.

His eyes widened as he pointed at the ice bucket that was currently emitting acidic fumes and bubbles, feeling as though his worldview had been severely impacted.

“You... you're using this stuff... to remove rust from antiques?”

“Brother Feng, which village's folk remedy did you learn this from? This is way too wild! Is it reliable? Don't let those twenty thousand yuan just dissolve away!”

“Rice water is weakly alkaline, and white vinegar is weakly acidic.”

Lin Feng finally spoke up, offering a concise explanation.

“Mixing the two can neutralize them. The alkaloids and starch in the rice water can gently strip and absorb the oxides on the metal surface without causing corrosive damage to the bronze itself like strong acids would. This is one of the oldest and safest physical rust removal methods.”

Wang Dalong listened in a daze, his mouth hanging open for a long time without closing.

After a good while, he squeezed a sentence out from between his teeth:

“The world of intellectuals is something we rough people just don't understand...”

The two ordered takeout and finished dinner in the room filled with the strange acidic smell.

Wang Dalong lay on the bed, and every ten minutes or so, he would poke his head into the bathroom to take a look.

“My twenty thousand yuan... please don't let it go down the drain...”

Time passed minute by minute.

The color of the liquid in the ice bucket was quietly changing at a rate visible to the naked eye.

The originally milky white liquid was gradually stained with a faint blue tint.

The stubborn rust on the surface of the bronze fragments was indeed fading and peeling off bit by bit, just as Lin Feng had said.

The night passed in silence.

Early the next morning, while Wang Dalong was still sound asleep, he was suddenly yanked out of his blankets.

“Come here.”

Lin Feng's voice was very calm.

Wang Dalong rubbed his bleary eyes, yawning as he stumbled toward the bathroom door in a daze.

The next second, he was instantly wide awake!

The sight before him made him force the remaining half of his yawn back down!

In that glass ice bucket, the liquid had become incredibly murky, showing a strange, poison-like mixture of blue and green, and emitting an indescribable odor.

But the bronze fragments soaking inside seemed as if they had been completely transformed, reborn!

The thick, ugly layer of patina that had covered them had vanished without a trace!

In its place was the original dark gold luster of the brass, possessing a texture that spoke of ages past. Under the bright bathroom lights, it shimmered with a captivating historical charm.

Lin Feng had already put on gloves and was fishing the bronze fragments out of the 'poison' one by one, rinsing them carefully with clean water, and then using the softest white towel from the hotel to meticulously pat each piece dry.

His movements were gentler than if he were washing his own face.

When all the bronze fragments were laid flat on the table, which was covered with another clean white towel, Wang Dalong's breathing almost stopped.

Although these fragments had broken edges, the surface of each piece was covered in a dense array of characters and symbols that he completely failed to understand, all created with an extremely fine intaglio process!

“My... my god...”

Wang Dalong couldn't help but lean in, his eyes wide as copper bells.

“There... there are words on these!!”

He sprawled by the edge of the table, his face almost touching the bronze fragments, as he carefully tried to identify them.

But after looking for a long time, he realized he didn't recognize a single word.

Those characters had complex strokes and square shapes, looking like some kind of block script he didn't know, but they were distinctly different from Chinese characters.

Interspersed among them were even stranger symbols that looked like tadpoles crawling around on paper.

There were only a very few characters he could barely recognize as Chinese characters from the Yuan Dynasty, over seven hundred years ago.

“What kind of ghostly scribbles are these?” Wang Dalong was completely dumbfounded. “Squares and tadpoles... were these left behind by aliens?”

Lin Feng's expression, however, became incredibly solemn at this moment.

He didn't need the system.

At a single glance, he recognized these three scripts, each representing a different civilization.

The official script of the long-extinct Western Xia dynasty—Tangut Script!

The official script commissioned by Kublai Khan from the Imperial Preceptor, which was used throughout the Yuan Dynasty—Phags-pa Script!

And, Han Script!

Three scripts that appeared in the same era but belonged to different regimes and ethnic groups had now, incredibly and eerily, appeared on the same document!

In history, this was something that absolutely could not happen!

He picked up the bronze fragment that was in the best condition and was also the largest; it was the one he had spotted at first glance at the stall.

As his gaze focused.

In an instant, the system's translation function automatically activated in his mind.

Lines of Tangut and Phags-pa Script that he originally did not recognize began to be automatically parsed in his field of vision, transforming into Simplified Chinese characters that he could fully understand!

He took a deep breath and began to work.

He took all the bronze fragments on the table and, following the fracture marks and the flow of the text, began to piece them together bit by bit, very carefully, on the white towel.

Although many parts were missing, causing the entire puzzle to look full of holes.

A rough outline, the form of an ancient scroll, slowly presented itself before the two of them.

As the puzzle neared completion, a passage of blood-and-tear-soaked last words from a person of a fallen nation, buried by yellow earth and bronze rust for a full seven hundred years, finally broke free from the shackles of time and was revealed before him.