The perfectly jade-green epoxy resin he had discovered like a miracle.
But Han-gyeol never relaxed his vigilance. Matching the color had only brought him to the entrance of a towering mountain range. What he had to overcome began now.
It was the recreation of the incense burner's lid and its seven-treasure openwork.
The lid fragments in the center of the workbench were in a miserable state. More than half of the rounded, dome-shaped lid had vanished, and even the surviving section had been reduced to a bare framework.
If he filled the damaged section solidly with resin as he would ordinary pottery, it would no longer be an incense burner. Not only would the openings for the smoke be blocked, but all the beauty of empty space intended by the Goryeo potter would be destroyed.
He had to weave extremely fine resin lines together in the empty air of the missing half to create a perfect sphere.
Han-gyeol closed his eyes and rubbed between his brows. He simulated the curvature of the fragments and the geometric design of the seven-treasure pattern hundreds of times in his mind. Mathematical calculations alone had their limits. An error of even 0.1 millimeters would misalign the pattern, ruin the proportions of the overall sphere, and betray it as a crude imitation.
'Don't calculate it with your head. Follow the memory in your hands.'
Drawing a deep breath, Han-gyeol once again placed his fingertips against the surviving fragments.
The instant he traced the cold, smooth cross section, the familiar ringing sounded and his vision receded into the distance. The workshop's cold white lights disappeared, and his consciousness was pulled into an earthen workshop somewhere in twelfth-century Goryeo as the fierce heat of a kiln washed over him.
A potter in a coarse hemp undershirt sat before him.
On the wheel in front of the potter rested a round lid that had only just taken shape. It was still moist, the clay not yet dry. Holding a bamboo knife sharpened to a point, the potter began carefully cutting into the lid's surface.
Slice, slice.
Each time the bamboo knife dug into the clay, crescent-shaped pieces fell away. Han-gyeol could not even breathe as he engraved every movement into his memory.
What astonished him was the angle of the potter's blade.
He was not simply cutting straight down through the surface. He carved the inner wall of each opening at a slant, making it flare subtly wider from the inside of the lid toward the outside like the bell of a horn.
'It's a smoke passage.'
Han-gyeol exclaimed inwardly. The potter had angled the blade with aerodynamics in mind, allowing the smoke rising inside the burner to pass through a narrow channel, meet the broader outer opening, and spread gracefully.
The vision scattered, and Han-gyeol's consciousness returned to the workbench in reality.
"Shall we begin?"
Han-gyeol lifted some of the premixed jade-green epoxy resin with a fine dental spatula. The resin had yet to cure and remained as sticky as honey. He applied it delicately to the broken edge of the lid and began drawing an extremely thin line through empty air.
He held an ultraviolet (UV) curing lamp in one hand and focused its light to solidify the resin before it could run. The first arch formed in midair. He layered more resin over that arch, gradually creating the shape of intersecting circles.
It was an exercise in extreme precision that required him to build and cure a framework just one millimeter thick hundreds of times.
The slightest tremble of his fingertips would make the resin flow where it did not belong, so Han-gyeol kept his eyes wide and controlled even the intervals between his breaths. He moved the spatula only in that fleeting instant of silence between one heartbeat and the next, when his body became utterly still.
As time passed, the framework of the seven-treasure pattern began to take rough shape in the air. Its surface, however, remained uneven and crude.
Now he had to catch the 'leather-hard' window, when the resin had become slightly tough like leather but had not yet hardened completely into stone. This was the only golden period in which it could be carved.
Han-gyeol detected the subtle change in the resin's surface tension through sight and touch, set down the spatula, and picked up a dental scaler and a micro-carving knife.
He recalled the bamboo knife of the Goryeo potter in the vision. The speed and rhythm with which the potter handled the clay, and that exquisite angle of the blade.
Scrape, scrape.
Han-gyeol's carving knife began shaving the curing resin's surface.
Carving one tiny seven-treasure motif, barely a centimeter across in either direction, to perfection took a full three hours. More than twenty such motifs had to fill the missing space.
Night deepened and the darkness beyond the workshop windows gradually brightened to blue, yet Han-gyeol never once left his chair.
The back of his neck burned with pain, and his eyes felt gritty, as though grains of sand rolled across them.
But Han-gyeol could not stop. If he paused the carving now, the resin would cure completely and the blade would no longer penetrate it.
Slice, scrape.
It had entered the realm of art beyond technique.
He refined and carved the tiny spaces hundreds, then thousands of times.
At last, Han-gyeol's hand stopped. He had just finished shaping the inner slope of the final seven-treasure motif to the perfect angle.
He turned the lid this way and that beneath the pin light. The lid, once hideous with half of it missing, now formed a perfect hemisphere, with graceful seven-treasure patterns woven across its surface. The joins between the original fragments and the resin sections blended so perfectly that no one could find them without a microscope.
"I did it......."
The most grueling task, recreating the openwork, was complete.
Han-gyeol leaned deep into his chair and closed his eyes for a moment. His body felt as heavy as wet cotton, but his heart pounded wildly with the rush of achievement.
All that remained was to join the shattered body fragments, fit the lid perfectly to the body, and then polish and coat the surface until it was smooth.
Han-gyeol brewed a cup of warm coffee to steady his trembling hands. Then, without delay, he began the next stage.
Returning the body fragments to their places one by one was easier than recreating the openwork, but it still demanded suffocating precision. He repeatedly applied resin and fixed each piece under pressure, careful not to leave uneven steps between them.
He had reached the point of cleaning and brushing a special solution over the deep interior where the broken body fragments met.
"...... Hmm?"
A strange scent brushed Han-gyeol's nose.
It was an alien fragrance that could not possibly exist in a workshop filled with the acrid smell of epoxy resin and the alcoholic fumes of ethanol.
Han-gyeol stopped his brush and sniffed. It was extremely faint, yet heavy, wistful, and tender.
It was the scent of incense.
Han-gyeol brought his nose close to the inside of the incense burner's body. The scent emanated from the rough inner walls of the fragments, where the unglazed paste clay lay exposed.
Looking carefully inside, he saw something like a faint gray stain coating the inner surface of the fragments in a thin layer. It was not mere dust.
It was soot from incense someone had burned ceaselessly in the burner decades ago, staining the clay after the smoke seeped into its pores.
In that instant, the black-and-white vision flashed through Han-gyeol's mind like lightning.
A winter night when a knife-sharp wind blew.
A young mother had laid her dying son in the corner of the room and burned incense in the burner as she bowed and prayed with such desperation that it seemed she might cough up blood.
The smoke of that desperate prayer had clung inside the narrow belly of the incense burner, preserving its fragrance even now, more than half a century later.
Han-gyeol's hand stopped in midair.
According to standard cultural-heritage restoration manuals, organic residue or soot like this inside a fragment had to be cleaned away completely. Any contaminants left behind would reduce the adhesive's effectiveness and could cause long-term deterioration of the pottery.
What would Professor Choi Myeong-ye have done?
Without the slightest hesitation, he would have poured in a powerful acidic solution or alkaline cleaner and scrubbed the inside of the incense burner until it was spotless and white. To him, an artifact was merely an exhibit to be placed in a museum case.
Han-gyeol was different.
'If I erase this fragrance and soot...... I will forever lose the true reason Chairman Kang of Taesung Group wanted this incense burner restored.'
To Chairman Kang, the incense burner was not merely Goryeo celadon worth billions. It was a precious object imbued with his mother's tears and prayers.
If he removed the soot and left only clean white clay that looked freshly fired in a factory, it might become flawless pottery, but it could no longer be his mother's incense burner.
After deliberating, Han-gyeol set down the cleaning brush in his hand.
"I will not erase it. His mother's heart must reach him intact."
Han-gyeol brought over an empty beaker and began preparing an extremely thin natural paper-mulberry paste. He mixed in only the smallest amount of preservation agent to prevent chemical deterioration.
He dipped a soft wool brush into the dilute natural adhesive and applied it with great care to the soot-covered inner walls of the incense burner. Rather than washing the soot away, he was adding a thin coating that would preserve it permanently by preventing the particles from falling loose or crumbling.
As the coating soaked in, the gray soot grew even more vivid, and the wistful scent of sandalwood concentrated deep inside the burner intensified, enveloping the air of the workshop.
The blood-drying work continued day and night for an entire week.
Han-gyeol devoted all his time to the incense burner, skipping even meals and surviving on two or three hours of fitful sleep a day on the cot in the corner of the workshop. By the time his vision blurred and every joint of his stiff fingers went numb.
At last, the end of the long, brutal struggle came into sight.
The timer on the large ultraviolet dryer, which had been turning with a low hum, stopped with a beep.
A heavy silence descended upon the workshop.
Han-gyeol dragged his heavy legs to the dryer. When he opened its transparent door with a trembling hand, the incense burner revealed itself on the stand through the rush of heated air.
Holding his breath, Han-gyeol carefully lifted the incense burner out in both hands.
Then he set it in the middle of the workbench and switched on a special appraisal light that blended white and yellow illumination.
"......."
What stood before him was not the miserable pile of fragments the chief secretary had brought a week earlier.
It was a Goryeo Celadon Openwork Incense Burner with Seven-Treasure Pattern, perfectly proportioned and roughly fifteen centimeters tall.
Its subtle, deep jade-green glaze sparkled brilliantly in the light, while the seven-treasure openwork covering the lid wove through empty air with exquisite precision, not a single section misaligned or blurred.
The resurrection was so perfect that even Han-gyeol himself, who had restored the burner, could not distinguish with the naked eye where it had broken or where it had been filled with resin unless he brought out a microscope.
A clear system window once again appeared before Han-gyeol.
[True Name: Goryeo Celadon Openwork Incense Burner with Seven-Treasure Pattern]
[Condition: Perfectly restored. (Restoration Rate for Missing Openwork and Form: 99.9%)]
[Special Notes: The devotion of the restorer and the owner's fierce longing have combined, restoring the energy of a Spiritual Object.]
[Current Value: 1,500,000,000 won + α]
It proved that the incense burner had become something beyond a mere artifact.
Han-gyeol nearly collapsed into the chair where he stood. The nerves stretched to their utmost limit suddenly released, and severe muscle pain and fatigue crashed over his entire body like a tsunami, as though he had been beaten all over.
But a deep, radiant smile hung on Han-gyeol's lips, bright enough to wash away any degree of exhaustion.
Leaning his head against the backrest, Han-gyeol looked up at the ceiling and murmured in a low, hoarse voice.
"It's ready."
The time was approaching to return a mother's prayers to Chairman Kang of Taesung Group, and to brand the existence of the Lee Family Workshop into the mind of the arrogant academic establishment.