Fleeing from famine? Not a chance; the divine healer's wife made her fortune.

Chapter 204 The Flourishing of Shadow Puppetry Finally Comes to a Perfect End

The flourishing of shadow puppetry has finally come to a perfect end.

As dusk turned the stage a dark gold, Su Yunlan used silver scissors to light the last fish oil lamp.

The sparks from the exploding candle wick landed on the blue bricks, perfectly outlining half of the Big Dipper pattern—exactly the same as the star map in the foam of last night's cold tea.

"Mr. Qian, please look." She lightly raised her hand, and seven improved shadow puppets rose into the air.

The newly made translucent silkworm silk was soaked in the medicinal spring in the jade bracelet space. In the warm light, it flowed out translucent scarlet meridians. As the music of "The Jade Pool Banquet" played, the puppet joints even shimmered with a faint light similar to the pulsation of blood vessels.

Qian Ximi's cane slammed heavily into the crack in the bluestone: "Nonsense!"

Was the Queen Mother's phoenix crown adorned with twelve white jade beads? &34;

"It's chalcedony from the snow-capped mountains of Northern Xinjiang." Su Yunlan brushed her fingertips across the puppet's head, and the beads suddenly refracted a seven-colored halo. "By repeatedly calcining fluorite powder wrapped in beeswax, it will..." Before she finished speaking, the copper furnaces at the four corners of the stage emitted a medicinal fragrance, and the heat waves wrapped around the light beads cast a sky full of stars on the screen.

The old man suddenly coughed violently, and half of the theater ticket hidden in his sleeve slipped out.

Su Yunlan noticed a new mark on the magnetic powder code—the position of the seventh star of the Big Dipper was stained with cinnabar, which matched the He Luo diagram formed by the bloodstains on Xiao Yuhan's battle robe.

&34;This is an improved mortise and tenon joint mechanism. &34;She suddenly pulled the golden thread behind the curtain, and the Queen Mother's wide sleeves instantly stretched out three zhang (approximately 10 meters), and the hundred birds embroidered with golden thread on the cuffs actually seemed to be taking flight.

The magnet in the hidden compartment made a soft sound, and the peach wood hand of the Seven Fairy Maidens puppet suddenly flipped over, revealing the red scale sand embedded in the palm lines.

Qian Ximi suddenly stood up, and his cane knocked over a Jun kiln cup filled with cold tea.

Tea seeped into the stage mechanism through the brick seams, and the red sand suddenly shimmered with a blood-red light when it met the water, reflecting the scene of the setting sun over Cangwu Pass as if it were blood.

"Twenty years ago..." The old man's voice trembled as he gripped the opera score that Su Yunlan handed him tightly with his withered hands.

The third act of the revised script uses magnetic powder codes to record the retreat route of the Cangwu Pass garrison—now, under the glow of bloodstains and red sand, it transforms into a diagram of the heavenly soldiers' formation in a shadow puppet show.

Su Yunlan's jade bracelet suddenly became hot, and the medicinal spring in the space moved automatically without any wind.

While tidying the curtains, she secretly pressed the magnet stained with Xiao Yuhan's blood onto the axis of the mechanism.

When the performance of "The Banquet at Yaochi" reached the point where the Queen Mother threw out the glass goblet, a thin mist suddenly rose from the stage, and hundreds of poisoned silver needles shot out from the puppet's chest, only to be attracted by magnetism before touching the curtain.

"Is this the peach wood puppet passed down through the Sun family troupe?" Qian, the opera fan, suddenly pointed to the scorch marks on the Seven Fairies' chests. "Back then, Old Ghost Sun was..."

The sound of breaking tiles came from the attic, and Su Yunlan's silver scissors were already nailed to the window frame.

Moonlight illuminated half of a poisoned silver needle, the Big Dipper pattern engraved on its end coinciding with the crack in the spatial jade bracelet.

As she turned, the hem of her skirt brushed against the tea stains, and the foam gathered again to form the star map that had not been completed the night before.

"Reform is not betrayal." She suddenly lifted the hidden compartment, revealing a log cabin soaking in the medicinal spring.

Those centuries-old peach woods, soaked in red sand, produced a metallic sound similar to that of armor. "Look at the wood grain—"

Qian Ximi's dove-shaped staff suddenly struck the jade bead on the Queen Mother's phoenix crown.

The bead cracked open, revealing a map of the northern frontier defenses drawn with magnetic powder inside.

The old man's cloudy eyes reflected the blood-stained curtain, and he saw his comrades who had fallen in the Crimson Sands twenty years ago now transformed into celestial soldiers riding the clouds in a shadow play.

When the seven fairies threw out colorful silk ribbons to guide the departed souls, the improved translucent silk suddenly emitted a medicinal fragrance.

The spatial jade bracelet vibrated slightly on Su Yunlan's wrist, and the magnets stained with Xiao Yuhan's blood projected the Big Dipper code onto the screen, transforming it into the star path for ascension during the tribulation at the end of "The Jade Pool Banquet".

Qian Ximi's theater ticket had somehow been embedded in the mechanism's core, and the magnetic powder code and red scale sand mingled in the medicinal mist.

The old man suddenly grabbed a drumstick and began to beat the rhythm of the Cangwu Pass military drum for the ascending fairy.

As the last streak of starlight disappeared behind the curtain, his age-spotted hand was tightly gripping half a bloodstained magnet.

When the third watch gong sounded, Su Yunlan found half a poisoned silver needle next to the tea-stained star map.

The medicinal spring in the space suddenly surged, condensing the toxins into the shape of the seventh star of the Big Dipper.

She looked up and saw Qian Ximi staggering towards the long street. The opera score in the old man's arms was stained with cinnabar, and under the moonlight, it was blurred into the outline of the He Luo Tu (a diagram of the Yellow River and Luo River).

The next morning, hoarse cheers echoed from the East Market Teahouse.

Qian, a fan of opera, followed the footsteps of the soldiers of Cangwu Pass in the past, scattering tickets for the revised version of "The Banquet at Yaochi" into the crowd.

His bloodshot eyes reflected the morning light as he watched the magnetic coded messages transform into the vast yellow sands of northern Xinjiang under the rising sun.

When the seventh opera troupe arrived seeking instruction in mechanical arts, Su Yunlan was immersing poisoned silver needles into the medicinal spring.

The star map in the jade bracelet space suddenly shone brightly, revealing the He Luo diagram formed by the bloodstains on Xiao Yuhan's battle robe, which was slowly rotating.

She listened to the hoarse narration of the opera fans outside the window, her fingertips tracing the red scales on the palm of the improved puppet—the newly added Big Dipper pattern on it fit perfectly with the crack in the peach wood inherited by the Sun family troupe.

As dusk fell, the last rays of sunlight swept across the carved windows of the restaurant across the street.

Su Yunlan put away the theater ticket stained with magnetic powder and caught a glimpse of half an old-fashioned water sleeve flashing by in the private room on the second floor—the Big Dipper embroidered on the cuff perfectly matched the trajectory she had filled in on the spatial star map last night.

(Continued from the main text)

The late spring breeze, carrying the scent of locust blossoms, swept past the flickering candlelight on the stage. Su Yunlan stroked the faded curtain, and her fingertips touched the dark Big Dipper pattern embroidered with gold thread, which suddenly became hot.

Last night, the star map that flowed through the space overlapped with the chalcedony bead that had cracked open on the Queen Mother's phoenix crown, casting tiny spots of light on the blue bricks.

"Lady Su!" Master Wang burst through the hanging flower gate, carrying a gilded lacquer box. His silver hair shone golden in the lantern light.

Inside the box lay half a charred peach wood puppet, its broken ends revealing magnetic veins soaked in red sand. The Sun family's lost classic, *The Match of the Milky Way*, which had been lost for thirty years, had miraculously reappeared within the improved mechanism!

The celebratory banquet was held in a courtyard filled with mimosa trees, and seventy-two kinds of carved candied fruits were arranged on the stone table.

As Su Yunlan picked up the peony pastry, she noticed fine magnetic powder embedded in the icing—just like the secret code on the theater ticket left behind by Qian Ximi.

The silver cloud pattern on Xiao Yuhan's black robe brushed against her wrist, outlining a line of starlight at the crack in the jade bracelet.

"This is a gift to my benefactor." Suddenly, Master Wang knelt down, his hands, like withered branches, holding a bronze key. "This is the ancestral key to the Puppet Tomb, buried outside Cangwu Pass..." His cloudy eyes reflected in the glass cup, where cold tea stirred without wind, the foam forming half a tattered border map.

Xiao Yuhan's combat boots crushed a fallen acacia leaf, the sound of the leaf veins breaking echoing the sound of a watchman's clapper on the battlefield twenty years ago.

As he took the key, a drop of blood from his old tiger's mouth wound happened to fall onto the scorch mark on the puppet, and the red sand emitted a metallic hum upon contact with the blood.

As the third watch drum sounded, the jade bracelet on Su Yunlan's wrist emitted a medicinal fragrance.

She leaned on Xiao Yuhan's shoulder, watching the improved shadow puppets automatically perform "The Match of the Milky Way" under the moonlight.

When the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl meet on the Magpie Bridge, seven hundred wooden magpies suddenly flap their wings and swirl around, their wingtips forming the Big Dipper in the night sky with magnets.

&34; Beekeepers from Cangwu Pass delivered a petition. &34; Xiao Yuhan pulled out a silk cloth soaked in honey from his sleeve; honeycomb-like patterns were faintly visible in the bloodstains. &34; Eight hundred hives of wild bees died mysteriously this spring... &34;

As the dawn drum shattered his lingering dream, Su Yunlan found himself standing in an abandoned bee farm.

The decaying beehives were piled up like small mountains, and fluorescent blue mycelium crawled between the charred cracks in the hive boards.

She bent down and picked up half a honeycomb. The dried honey in the honeycomb chamber suddenly turned reddish—the same color as the red scales on the chest of the shadow puppet.

"This is the Crimson Flame Gu of the Northern Rong." Xiao Yuhan picked up a fragment of a beehive with the tip of his sword. The smell of rust mixed with a strange sweet fragrance. "Twenty years ago, the water source of Cangwu Pass..." His voice stopped abruptly. The ground crushed by his boots suddenly oozed a scarlet liquid, which condensed into the shape of the seventh star of the Big Dipper under the rising sun.

Su Yunlan's medicinal hoe dug three feet into the damp soil, revealing the remains of a queen bee wrapped in magnetite.

The needle on the corpse's tail was engraved with a miniature Big Dipper code, which perfectly matched the star map trajectory she had completed in space the previous night.

As the first rays of sunlight pierced through the decaying beehives, the fluorescent blue mycelium twisted and knotted in the halo of light, forming the outline of a border defense map.

As dusk fell once more over Cangwu Pass, Su Yunlan's silver scissors dissected the last bee pupa.

The reddish patterns on the inner wall of the pupa shell, when exposed to the steam of the medicinal spring, project a complete picture of bee migration in the twilight.

As she gazed at a small border town marked on the map, the jade bracelet suddenly emitted a clear, melodious buzzing sound—that was precisely the location corresponding to the seventh star of the Big Dipper.

(Introductory paragraph)

As the waning moon climbed over the crooked wooden fence of the apiary, Su Yunlan put the beeswax stained with red sand into her jade bracelet.

Half of an ancient map floated up from the depths of the medicinal spring, marked with seven shimmering stars in beeswax.

As she traced the northernmost marker with her fingertips, she suddenly heard the hoarse singing of Qian Ximi in her ears—the ascension melody of "The Banquet at Yaochi" resonated with the frequency of wild bees fluttering their wings thousands of miles away.

Xiao Yuhan's battle robe was covered with fluorescent blue mycelium, which fluttered in the night wind like broken star trails.

As he pointed his blood-stained sword sheath northward, a seventh crack suddenly appeared on the jade bracelet on Su Yunlan's wrist—the direction the crack extended was precisely where the largest bee colony on the border was located.