Tang Ren squatted in the ruins of the sugar factory, picking up broken bricks, and suddenly kicked a tin box. Inside the box, the yellowed envelope was stained with crystallized sugar grains, and Lin Zhenye's trembling handwriting was smudged: "Lu'er, if you see this letter, Grandpa has returned the sweetness to the world..." On the back of the letter was a faded family photo, with little Lin Lu hugged by his parents, and the chimney of the sugar factory in the background was emitting green smoke.
Qin Feng shone a purple light on the edge of the watch, revealing two lines of small characters: "When the seventh ship docks, go to the lighthouse to find the white porcelain conch." Su Chen stroked the pocket watch left by his father, and the second hand suddenly got stuck at 7 o'clock - the same direction as the Big Dipper on the mural in the air-raid shelter.
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The lighthouse flickered on a stormy night, and Tang Ren held a waterproof flashlight and groped among the rocks. The waves brought half a white porcelain conch, with micro-plastics embedded between the spirals. When Qin Feng was developing the image in the darkroom, his father in the photo was having a secret conversation with Lin Zhenye, with a cargo ship full of maltose behind them.
"It turns out...it turns out that we have already joined forces to fight against the drug lord!" Qin Feng's hands were shaking so much that ripples appeared in the developer. Su Chen suddenly pointed to the corner: there was a pair of children's feet at the edge of the photo, and the sandals were exactly the same as the pair that Qin's mother treasured.
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In the storage cabinet of the nursing home, Qin Feng trembled as he took out the plastic sandals that his mother treasured. After rubbing the worn pattern on the sole, it matched the shipping map in Lin Zhenye's diary perfectly. Tang Ren poured syrup on the upper of the shoe, and under ultraviolet light, the longitude and latitude coordinates appeared - pointing to the Wuji Island where his father died in the sea.
"Mom, you already knew..." Qin Feng knelt in front of the wheelchair, tears rolling down his old man's cloudy eyes, and his fingers tapped out Morse code on the armrest: "...safe..."
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When the assault boat hit the reef, Su Chen protected the detection equipment in his arms. The Song Dynasty dragon kiln in the center of Wuji Island was still emitting green smoke, and the kiln was piled with pottery jars printed with children's paintings. Lin Lu stroked the distorted sun pattern on the jar: "This is a painting that Xiaoyu drew last month!"
Tang Ren pried open the bricks and found a burnt sailing journal in the secret compartment. The last page was stained with the fragments of Qin's father's police badge, and the blood stains solidified into blue-black in the high temperature: "Seven ships have sunk, and the eighth one carries children..."
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Xiaoyu's hospital room is filled with crayon drawings, and Su Chen scans the drawings into a spectrometer. In the stamens of the purple iris, nano-scale cobalt powder is arranged in a boat shape. Qin Feng suddenly snatches "My Home", and the black puppy in the corner of the picture is the same as the tattoo of the arsonist.
"Uncle Lan brought the dog to find mom..." Lin Lu was overwhelmed by the murmur of the fever. She smashed all the pottery jars and found a note among the broken blue porcelain: "The game starts with the children"
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In front of the sugar painting stall at the night market, an old lady hummed a newly composed nursery rhyme while dipping her syrup. Tang Ren chewed sesame candy and suddenly choked: "This tune is a variation of the pirates' boat song!" Qin Feng rushed to the audio equipment. The outer shell of the USB flash drive was engraved with the welfare home's logo.
Su Chen found a secret compartment at the bottom of the sugar painting table, which contained a recorded hypnotic audio: "You use nursery rhymes to encode drug transport instructions!" Xiaoyu's crayon drawings rotated in the projection, forming a route map of the eighth ship.
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Lin Lu fired the last batch of pottery at the Longyao site, and the kiln-fired glaze flowed into the image of his father at a high temperature of 1,200 degrees. Tang Ren threw the fragments of Qin's father's police badge into the kiln fire, and the azure blue suddenly faded to snow white. The moment the kiln was opened, the sea breeze rolled in with salty water vapor, and all the porcelains hummed in unison - the rhythm perfectly matched the knocking sounds in the sanatorium.
Qin Feng pushed his mother closer to the kiln, and the old man suddenly spoke clearly: "Haifeng said... white porcelain is the cleanest..."
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When the drug-hunting boats surrounded the eighth freighter, the deck was filled with the sound of a childish ocarina. Xiaoyu stood in front of the drug owl, with the white porcelain whistle against her throat: "Uncle Lan, listen... This is the "Qingping Diao" that Grandpa taught me..." Tang Ren threw out an iron spoon to knock down the pistol, Qin Feng jumped to catch the child, and Su Chen rolled the liquid nitrogen tank towards the drug box.
In the blast, the white porcelain conch shell made by Lin Lu rolled onto the deck. The tide surged into the shell, playing the anti-Japanese boat song that Lin Zhenye had not completed sixty years ago.
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The first snow after the case was closed fell on the site of the sugar factory, and the children built ice sculptures with non-toxic syrup. Xiaoyu buried the white porcelain whistle in the dirty place of the snow: "Uncle Lan turned into snow, and it will be clean next year." Tang Ren's red scarf swept Qin's mother's wheelchair, and the old man suddenly handed out a piece of maltose - the wrapping paper was a photo of Qin's father when he was young.
Su silently adjusted her mother's treatment plan. The latest report showed that the cobalt content had returned to zero. Lin Lu blew the whistle of the new kiln. The sound waves shook off the icicles on the eaves, reflecting seven tiny rainbows.
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As the bells rang on New Year's Eve, the exhibition hall of the air-raid shelter was filled with children's white porcelain wind chimes. Tang Ren danced the Yangko dance in front of the sugar painting stall, while Qin Feng pushed his mother to explain the exhibits one by one. Su Chen stood in front of the "Pure Fire" series, and the cracks on the porcelain bottle just spelled out the recipe in his father's notes.
The sea breeze brought the sound of a distant whistle, and Lin Lu scattered the last handful of cobalt blue porcelain pieces onto the waves. Under the moonlight, the cobalt blue gradually faded and merged into a clear and brilliant light that stretched for thousands of miles.
(Porcelain is clean from dirt, and fire is always bright)
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