Harry Potter’s Morning Light

   Chapter 2170 Flower War (seventy-eight)

  Nick returned the undelivered clock to the antique dealer. He was obviously unhappy, and after some haggling, he agreed to Nick buy other things in his store without Nick paying extra.

   So many real and fake antiques dazzled Nick, so he had to send someone to find them.

After about half an hour, he came. The antique dealer looked at him suspiciously and cautiously, while Zhuren maintained a polite and serious look. He walked around the antique shop with poor lighting. Picked up a stone.

  The antique dealer showed a surprised expression, and gave Juren a thumbs up, unable to stop praising him.

It's not the first time that the antique dealer has done this. It seems that every customer who picks up goods from him will say that. For example, he once gushed about a 12th century gong to Nick. Nick really can't understand a gong. Why is it so expensive.

   The jury explained to Nick that he chose a Duan inkstone from the Song Dynasty, which was used by emperors, princes, and highly regarded ministers.

  This kind of inkstone has a characteristic, it is very cold and does not freeze, and it does not need to be heated with fragrant charcoal like a warm inkstone. It has been very valuable since the early Tang Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, the development of Duan Inkstone reached the extreme. Song Huizong used Duan Inkstone to write "Zhaoqing House" in thin gold as a gift to the ministers, so Duanzhou was renamed "Zhaoqing".

  Not all jades are called jadeite, and not all inkstones made of stone produced in Duanzhou can be called Duanyan. Simply put, it is only the "stone meat" part that can be made into Duanyan.

She inkstone produced in Huizhou is also a good inkstone. Li Yu, the late master of the Southern Tang Dynasty, once praised it for its very exquisite carving, which was mainly influenced by the brick carving technology of AH, while Duan inkstone, especially the Duan inkstone of the Song Dynasty, was named "original inkstone". Mainly, it is what it looks like when it is mined. There is not much decoration, and it looks like an ordinary stone.

   There is a red silk inkstone next to this port inkstone with a phoenix embossed on it. It looks very hot, but in winter, the ink will freeze, so it is not suitable for the admiral who is about to return to Beijing.

  Nick can't estimate how much this inkstone is worth, he only knows that if it is fake, then he paid a high price for a stone, in contrast, he bought Nink for the exquisite agate bottle.

However, the antique dealer looked like he was losing money, and "reluctantly" gave the two inkstones to Nick, at the cost of Nick having to say a few good words for him in front of the admiral, and then put the two inkstones on the silk lining Phoebe box at the bottom.

  Nick wanted to reason with him, but his Chinese was still not fluent enough, so Juren took him by the hand and left.

They didn't go far before they arrived at a spice shop, which sold not spicy spices, but agarwood, sandalwood and other spices. It was run by Guangzhou Thirteenth, but Nick would never buy these and gold. equivalent.

   Juren said something to a guy, and the boss came out not long after, after communicating with the boss, the boss took some spices from the cabinet similar to the medicine cabinet, and then took Juren to the inner courtyard.

  Yongzheng liked to burn incense when he was in power. First, it was necessary for worshipping Buddha, and secondly, it was a personal interest. When Qianlong arrived, he was even more interested in this way, and instructed the office to find ancient incense prescriptions. From then on, the Forbidden City was also surrounded by fragrance.

There are two kinds of incense made in the Qing Palace, one is Western incense, which is mainly made and prepared by missionaries, and the other is made by the manufacturing office according to ancient recipes, especially in the Song Dynasty. There are many fragments of the Song Dynasty, and Juren found a method of making hair oil from these fragments.

   Folks like to ask how the concubines in the palace maintain their skin care and hair care. From ancient times to the present, people in the Central Plains, both men and women, have grown their hair, and long hair is easy to dry out and split.

The nobles had the conditions to let their servants untie their hair buns and wash them. In the Qing Dynasty, they replaced them with braids. In order to make the hair darker and thicker, people tried every means, including washing their hair with rice water, which is cheap and cheap. Beautiful, but for those people represented in "A Dream of Red Mansions", it is far from enough. For example, in the fifty-ninth time when Fangguan shampooed his hair, Xiren sent an old lady to send a bottle of "flower oil".

On the thirty-fourth time, Li Jia Baoyu was beaten by his father, sometimes awake and sometimes in a coma, shouting to drink sour plum soup, but he was stopped by Xiren, who ran to Mrs. Wang, who told Xiren that she had " Muxi Qinglu", and a "Rose Qinglu", these are tribute tributes.

Mushrooms are sweet-scented osmanthus, but the Mushrooms in the palace square of the Song Dynasty had to pick the kind of flowers that were about to bloom, and they had to be picked in the morning when the dew was still there. This spice shop is not so particular about it, I'm afraid it will have to wait until September. Picked up later.

In addition, sandalwood, benzoin and other spices are also used, and sesame oil is used for the oil, which is similar to the principle of extracting essential oils from plants. I tried a little bit, and the boss smelled it. The boss was very satisfied, and asked me to copy the recipe. After coming down, I made ten more bottles, five of which were distributed to Juren.

   "Take it and change it to a nice bottle." He gave Nick the bottles of hair oil as a gift to the Admiral.

   At this time, Nick remembered the perfumes and various cosmetics used by the French court. However, as a "man with broad shoulders, strong and sturdy", should he apply palace powder and perfume?

  Georgianna couldn't help laughing.

   She looked at Napoleon's face, he didn't want to reason with her, let her continue reading.

  After careful decoration and matching with glass bottles from Europe, these hair oils look very expensive. Nick then remembered that he should use roses or orange blossoms, which are more like those from France.

   But Juren didn’t know the practice of rose oil and felt that it was not suitable for the Admiral, so Nick finally went to the Admiral’s mansion with these gifts.

Admiral    liked these gifts very much, and then he mentioned something that worried him. Cao Xi suggested that before he left, let the Guangzhou Navy go to a hidden harbor in Hong Kong to clean up pirates.

  Guren said that to send the Kitchen God back to the heaven for debriefing, people should not only give him a lot of tribute, but also burn the paper money prepared in advance, so that he would say good things in front of the Jade Emperor.

  If Nick doesn't intercept that note, both the White Lotus Sect and the Timber Brothers will develop in secret, until they are strong enough to compete with the imperial court. It is too early.

   Except for the big ships of the British "countryship" class, the southern pirates were hardly afraid of anyone, and the islands and small harbors dotted along the coast provided ideal hiding places for pirates.

Admiral    felt that it was unnecessary to do this, and it was completely an outlier, so he had a lot of complaints when he talked about Cao Xi.

Nick remembered the small island where he was once imprisoned. In fact, many people are unwilling to be pirates. Some are because of their poor age, while others are completely forced by pirates. If they knew that the government would come to rescue them, maybe they would not. There will be a willingness to compromise.

  A Dream of Red Mansions once wrote such a poem in Chapter 66: Crushed peach blossoms are all over the ground, and it is difficult to support Yushan when it falls.

After breaking off the marriage, the third sister You, who swore never to marry again, came to him with the couple's sword of love with Liu Xianglian, "The concubine has been infatuated with you for five years. infatuation."

   said that after a gust of fragrant wind blew, and Sanjie You disappeared without a trace, Liu Xianglian thought it was a dream.

   When he opened his eyes again, there was no child from the Xue family, nor the newly-married wedding room, but a ruined temple with a lame old Taoist sitting next to him catching lice.

   Liu Xianglian asked, "Where is this department? The name of the immortal master?"

  The Taoist priest smiled and said, "Even I don't know where I belong, who I belong to, but I'm just here to rest for a while."

It is impossible for a person to have an epiphany with such words, but Liu Xianglian is soberly aware that Sanjie You is dead. He pulled out the male sword of the Yuanyang Sword and swept away all the troubles, and followed the Taoist priest who did not know where to go. .

   "Who is Liu Xianglian?" Bonaparte asked.

   "A man who can't study well, looks handsome, likes to act in dramas, and likes to sing Hua Dan." Georgiana replied, "Actually, you don't need to break your hair to be a Taoist priest."

  It is the monk who wants to shave his head.

   "Why did he think of breaking the marriage?" asked Bonaparte.

   "Because he misunderstood." Georgiana replied, "Sister You is very beautiful, there are many frivolous people in Ningguo Mansion, he thought..."

   He covered her mouth.

   "Are you going to wait five years for him too?"

   She didn't answer.

   Then he let go.

   "It's the Portuguese month this year."

   "On that day, you can still think of him in your heart."

   She didn't know what to say.

   The past thirty years mean nothing to him? Just because he is still nostalgic for his childhood and pure first love?

   She flipped through the book randomly, and before he could read the contents, he blocked it with his hand.

   "I hope you can swing your sword and make a break like Liu Xianglian on that day, if you really want to be a man." He said calmly, "Otherwise I'll make a break for you."

   "You're going to kill me?" she asked.

   He smiled, took his hand back, and covered his forehead with his hand as if seasick.

   Instead of reading the story right away, she grabbed his hand.

   She doesn't know which is more illusory, a wizard who has only died a few years, or a Muggle who has died two hundred years, or she is simply crazy and lives in the world of the Mirror of Erised.

   (end of this chapter)