On a rainy night in Dehua County, Quanzhou, Tang Ren squatted in a pile of broken porcelain and sneezed. Half an hour ago, the security guard of the ceramic factory found blood seeping from the wall of the duty room. When he pried open the interlayer of the newly built kiln, a body in a kneeling position fell to the ground. The spirit cover of each body was embedded with half a piece of celadon, and the cracks formed a broken double-sword emblem.
"This... this is not an ordinary murder," Qin Feng picked up the porcelain piece with tweezers, "kneeling... the kneeling posture is consistent with the Ming Dynasty's ceremony of surrendering Japanese pirates." He opened the copy of the county annals, and the way the prisoners were tied up in the yellowed illustration was exactly the same as the corpse.
Su Chen scraped the pottery from the cracks of the corpse: "It contains an unusual amount of kaolin, and it comes from the Yueji kiln, which was sealed off in the past." He suddenly pieced the pieces together, and a dark red liquid oozed out of the cracks. "It's a mixture of rust and cinnabar, imitating the cracking effect of ancient porcelain."
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Among the ruins of the Yueji Kiln, Tang Ren was tripped by vines and rolled into the abandoned mine with a flashlight. With the residual light of the flashlight illuminating the cave wall, he crawled out screaming: "There is a dried corpse wearing Chinese clothes inside!" Qin Feng found a work permit from 1958 in the bag inside the corpse: Lin Zhenye, director of the technical department of Dehua State-owned Porcelain Factory.
Su Chen examined the oral cavity of the dried corpse: "The teeth showed signs of long-term opium use, and high-purity heroin was detected in the tongue coating residue." He peeled open the corpse's tightly clenched right hand, and on the palm was a kiln-changed glaze formula drawn in blood, with one line of the chemical formula repeatedly circled.
"This... this is a secret recipe from the Lin family's genealogy!" Qin Feng projected the recipe onto the cave wall, "But... but if you add cobalt oxide, it will burn out a forbidden blue color."
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When raiding the underground black kiln, Tang Ren held up a fire blanket as a shield. Qin Feng kicked open the kiln door, and hundreds of blue-glazed porcelains glowed in the firelight. Su Chen used liquid nitrogen to extinguish the kiln fire, and under the alternating hot and cold, a porcelain bottle suddenly exploded - the inner wall of the flying porcelain pieces was engraved with longitude and latitude coordinates.
"This... This is a smuggling ship route map!" Qin Feng pieced together the tiles, "Every... Every line passes through an ancient shipwreck site."
Tang Ren suddenly pointed at the statue in the kiln and asked, "Why is this God of the Earth holding a Japanese sword?" Su Chen scraped off the painted surface of the statue, revealing a statue of a Ming Dynasty general who fought against the Japanese invaders. On the handle of the sword was the emblem of a double sword.
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The coast guard picked up a rusted iron box at the coordinate point, which was filled with Republic of China cigarettes wrapped in oil paper. Tang Ren tore open the oil paper, and half a 1958 edition of the Fujian Daily slipped out from the interlayer. The headline news was circled in red: "Dehua Porcelain Factory was commended for its innovative craftsmanship."
"Lin Zhenye was developing a new glaze..." Su Chen pieced the newspaper fragments together, "The cobalt oxide needed to create the azure blue color is the catalyst for refining heroin."
Qin Feng suddenly opened the evidence box, revealing the blue and white porcelain pieces at the bottom. After piecing them together, the complete double-blade emblem appeared - Lin Zhenye's work ID number was engraved on the handle.
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When visiting retired employees of the porcelain factory, Tang Ren used two bottles of sorghum wine to get a shocking inside story: "Master Lin was forced! Back then, someone threatened to take his son's life..." The old man trembled and handed over a yellowed notebook. On the inside page was a photo of Lin Zhenye and a mysterious man - the other person had a double knife tattoo on his wrist.
Su Chen was developing the photos in the darkroom, and a hidden image emerged in the developer: Lin Zhenye was kneeling in front of the kiln god statue, with a man in Chinese clothes standing behind him, holding a Japanese sword that looked exactly like the kiln god statue.
"This... This is Deputy Director Zhao who retired from the Cultural Relics Bureau in 1998!" Qin Feng retrieved the missing person's file, "He... He was in charge of the Yueji Kiln cultural relic protection project."
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The carved door of the Zhao family's old house was tightly closed. Tang Ren broke the dead branches when he climbed over the wall. Qin Feng kicked open the study door, and the Japanese sword collection on the wall glowed coldly. Su Chen pried open the safe, and inside was the mineral distribution map of Yueji Kiln - the high-quality kaolin ore veins were marked as red spider webs, and the center point was the drug factory.
"He...he is replicating the smuggling network of the Japanese pirates during the Ming Dynasty!" Qin Feng held up a 1958 mine map, "reopening the mine under the name of...under the name of cultural relic protection!"
Suddenly, there was an engine sound in the backyard. Tang Ren rushed to the moving car and tore off half of the double-blade from the window. Deputy Director Zhao crashed through the roadblock and escaped. The document bag thrown out from the rear of the car contained records of cobalt mine transactions with Southeast Asian gangs.
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The cross-provincial pursuit started in the Wuyi Tunnel. Deputy Director Zhao drove into the abandoned mine area, and Qin Feng led the SWAT team to chase on foot. Tang Ren was cut on the arm by poison ivy, and he ran and cursed: "This old fox is a man in armor!"
On the altar deep in the mine, blue-glazed porcelain jars were piled up in the shape of a Japanese pirate flag. Zhao held up a torch and laughed wildly: "General Lin Feng's great cause cannot be interrupted!" Su Chen threw out a scalpel to knock down the torch, and the liquid nitrogen tank exploded at the same time, freezing the porcelain jars into ice sculptures.
"You... you worship a traitor who was spurned by history." Qin Feng showed a photocopy of the family tree, "Lin Feng colluded with Japanese pirates in his later years and was expelled from the ancestral hall long ago!"
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In the main hall of the Lin clan in Quanzhou, the clan leader burned the fake clan genealogy in public. Tang Ren secretly stuffed the blue porcelain pieces into the box, and Qin Feng found them with an electromagnetic detector: "This... there is a signal transmitter embedded in it!"
Su Chen discovered hidden text on the back cover of the reconstructed genealogy, and under ultraviolet light, the true ancestral teachings were revealed: "Japanese invasions can be resisted, but inner demons are not." A lacquer box suddenly fell off a pillar in the ancestral hall, containing Lin Feng's blood-written apology and a real coastal defense map during the anti-Japanese period.
"Originally...Originally the double-blade emblem was a symbol of warding off enemies," Qin Feng touched the warship mark on the coastal defense map, "and was...tampered with by the villains of later generations into something evil."
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At the ceramics expo a month later, Tang Ren's "case-solving commemorative porcelain" booth was unpopular. Qin Feng picked up the blue-white glazed teacup and examined it. The glaze surface faintly revealed the double-knife pattern: "You... why are you still using this pattern?"
"This is an improved version!" Tang Ren proudly spun the cup, "The two swords cross to form a shield, it's called the 'Evil-Proofing Cup'!"
Su silently sent the teacup for testing, and the cobalt oxide in the glaze was replaced with a safe ingredient. Outside the exhibition hall, it was drizzling, and a deliveryman passed by carrying a blue vase. The manufacturer number on the box label was exactly the same as a fish that had escaped the Yueji Kiln's seizure list.
(The mist is hard to clear, and the heart is dark again)
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