112: Why was this sentence written in Chapter 112?

[Significant historical information residue detected. Current preservation state: Severely deteriorated. Ink loss rate: approximately 61%. Partial fracture of fiber structure. Effective information extraction rate: less than 40%. The system has activated the historical information auxiliary restoration module. Do you accept the system repair guidance?]

Hu Tian froze for a second before responding in his mind.

[Guidance initiated. Please follow the steps below to process the six scrolls sequentially.]

[Step One: Environmental Stabilization. Current indoor humidity must be adjusted to the 55% to 60% range, with temperature maintained at 20 to 22 degrees Celsius to prevent secondary shrinkage of the material due to environmental fluctuations. Please turn off all direct light sources and switch to cold light diffusion lamps to reduce further decomposition of photosensitive components.]

Hu Tian glanced up at the light above the workbench, stood up to turn off the ceiling light, and switched on the cold light lamp beside the table. He adjusted the angle so the light diffused from the side, spreading evenly across the cloth surface.

After the warm yellow light vanished, the color of the entire room changed. The cold light reflected off the fabric more clearly, and the ink marks, which had been submerged in the yellowing background, began to reveal faint patterns that hadn't been noticed before.

The system continued its prompts.

[Step Two: Separation of Surface Dust and Oxidation Layer. Use a soft-bristled medical cotton swab dipped in a solution of anhydrous ethanol and distilled water at a 1:3 ratio. Wipe gently in a single direction along the flow of the ink. Do not wipe back and forth. Each contact area should not exceed two centimeters. Change swabs every thirty seconds to avoid secondary contamination.]

Hu Tian walked to the side cabinet, found a bottle of anhydrous ethanol, took out distilled water from the storage locker, mixed them in the correct ratio, and poured the solution into a small glass dish.

He sat back in his chair, took a cotton swab, dipped it in the solution, and gently wiped in a single direction over the most blurred part of the first scroll.

The tip of the cotton swab came away with a faint yellow color; it was the surface oxidation.

He changed the swab, changed the position, and continued.

Thirty seconds, once, change swab, repeat.

This process was extremely slow and required immense patience. He bent over, pressing all his attention onto that small area. Occasionally, the night wind seeped through the window cracks, causing the light on the workbench to flicker slightly, but he didn't look up and simply continued.

After about twenty minutes, the area on the first scroll that had been completely blurred began to change. The outlines of several characters emerged from the murky yellow-brown background. They didn't appear out of nowhere; they had always been there, just suppressed by the oxidation layer. Now, as it was gently peeled away layer by layer, the writing was exposed once more.

Hu Tian leaned in with a magnifying glass and clearly saw two words—"Transfer."

He paused for a moment, turned those two words over in his mind, and continued the work.

[Step Three: Infrared Auxiliary Enhancement. For areas where pigment has severely faded, the system will activate visual enhancement assistance. Please maintain a stable focal length with the magnifying glass. The system will perform real-time imaging overlay on the target area to assist in identifying the original brushstroke trajectories.]

This was a step he couldn't complete with physical tools; it was a part where the system intervened directly.

He aimed the magnifying glass at several red pigment markings on the fifth scroll that had almost completely faded. The system overlaid a transparent image in his field of vision. The red marks, which had been mere faint outlines, became clear within that layer. Not just the outlines, but even the tiny characters annotated next to the marks emerged from the visual overlay.

He identified them character by character, transcribing them onto a piece of paper as he went.

He copied down the annotations next to those key positions on the fifth scroll's map, one character at a time.

After finishing those notes, he looked up, stretched his stiff neck, and then looked back down to continue.

There were several scrawled characters in the private letter of the fourth scroll that he hadn't been able to see clearly before. The system's visual enhancement restored the brushstroke trajectories of those characters, and he copied them down one by one.

Hu Tian finished transcribing this section, paused, and read it over.

He didn't yet know who the sender or the recipient of the letter was, but the information revealed in it had already sketched out a rough framework of the origins and history of these items.

During the reign of Emperor Kangxi, a German foreigner named Adam Schall von Bell had secretly transferred a batch of palace items. The reason for the transfer was that he had been framed and sentenced to death during the "Calendar Case." The sender of the letter feared being pursued and thus carried out an emergency relocation, leaving behind a map and inventory, entrusting them to another person for safekeeping and leaving a contact person as a clue.

The system finally prompted the conclusion of the third step.

[Step Four: Extraction of Remaining Information from the Text Scrolls. Significant overlapping information exists on the surfaces of the first and third scrolls. Some text is written on the back of the fabric and can be extracted via light transmission imaging. Please lay the material flat over the cold light lamp; the system will assist in identifying the information on the reverse side.]

Hu Tian carefully laid the first scroll flat on the surface of the cold light lamp. The light shone through the fabric from below, and the writing on the back seemed to seep into the light, becoming faintly visible from the front.

The system once again overlaid an enhancement layer in his vision, clearly presenting the writing on the back that had been revealed by the light.

There were fewer characters on the back than on the front, only a few lines, but every line was written with great care. Each stroke was deliberate, unlike the official document format on the front; it looked more like some kind of postscript.

He read aloud, his voice very soft yet clear in the quiet room: "Palace collection from the Chongzhen era of the former Ming, passed through two dynasties. A total of nine handlers have managed it. Each transfer was accompanied by a recorded ledger. This is now the ninth transfer."

He stopped.

Palace collection from the Ming Chongzhen era.

Two dynasties.

Nine transfers.

He ran these terms through his mind, his pen resting on the paper without moving.

The back of the third scroll also contained light-transmission information. He laid the third scroll flat as well, and the system extracted it simultaneously—there was only one line of text on the back, but this single line made him stare for nearly a minute.

"As listed in the inventory, there are a total of one hundred and thirty-seven original items, of which forty-one are Imperial-made."

Imperial-made.

Hu Tian put his pen down, leaned back against the chair, looked up at the ceiling, and remained silent for a long time.

One hundred and thirty-seven items.

Forty-one were Imperial-made.

He picked up the inventory list lying on the workbench again and went through it from beginning to end under the magnifying glass.

This time, with the information from the back extracted by the system as a reference, he re-estimated the quantity. There were thirty-seven lines listed on the inventory, and each line was followed by the number of pieces. Adding all the pieces together, it came to exactly one hundred and thirty-seven.

It matched.

It matched; this inventory was complete.

One hundred and thirty-seven items, originating from the former Ming palace, passing through two dynasties and nine handlers, moved secretly time and again, re-cataloged and recorded each time, and finally ending up in the hands of a certain foreigner in Fujian Province.

During the Yongzheng Emperor period, under the looming threat of pursuit by Governor-General of Min-Zhe Hao Yulin, they were urgently hidden in the back mountain of the old kiln site northwest of Songxikou.

Hu Tian read through the information he had recorded on the paper from the beginning.

But Hu Tian's gaze stopped on the final line—'If these items emerge, the world shall know the gravity of the harm caused by foreign barbarians.'

This sentence was left by the last handler of the sixth scroll.

He sat at the workbench where the six scrolls of fabric were laid out. The cold light illuminated them clearly, the ink varying in shade. They recorded the secrets of nine people over nearly three hundred years, and today, he alone had spent an entire night opening them scroll by scroll and identifying them word by word.

"If these items emerge, the world shall know the gravity of the harm caused by foreign barbarians."

He stared at this sentence, tapped his finger on the desk twice, then pulled his laptop over, opened a search page, and typed "Adam Schall von Bell" into the search bar.

Results popped up page after page.

He started reading from the beginning.

Adam Schall von Bell, a German from Cologne, full name Johann Adam Schall von Bell, born in 1592 in Cologne, Germany. He came to China in 1619 as a Jesuit missionary. Proficient in astronomy and the calendar, he was highly regarded by the Chongzhen Emperor and continued to be favored during the reign of the Shunzhi Emperor in the Qing Dynasty. He rose to the rank of Director of the Bureau of Astronomy, was titled 'Teacher of Profound Mystery,' and was granted a first-rank cap button, becoming one of the highest-ranking Western missionaries in Qing history.

Between 1664 and 1665, Yang Guangxian initiated the "Calendar Dispute," accusing Adam Schall von Bell of errors in the calendar and using it to spark a movement to suppress Western missionaries. Adam Schall von Bell was arrested and imprisoned, an event known in history books as the "Calendar Case." In 1665, he was sentenced to death by a thousand cuts. Later, due to an earthquake in Beijing and the intervention of Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, he was released, but he died shortly after in 1666 in Beijing. After his death, Emperor Kangxi rehabilitated him, granted him a posthumous title, and restored his reputation.

He read through these details carefully.

Then he read them again.

The biography matched.

The timing of the Calendar Case matched.

The framing and the death sentence also perfectly aligned with the content recorded on the fabric.

However, in the entire entry, not a single word mentioned palace collections.

There was no mention of transfers, no inventory, no contact persons, and no records regarding his secret safekeeping or transfer of palace items.

Hu Tian tried searching with different keywords: "Adam Schall von Bell palace collection," "Adam Schall von Bell transfer of items," "Adam Schall von Bell palace relics." He looked through them one by one, but they were all blank; there were no relevant records.

He scrolled down through the search results for a long time until he reached the bottom of the page. There was nothing.

He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling.

The only sound in the room was the faint hum of the cold light lamp. The six scrolls of fabric remained spread out on the workbench, the writing clear.

He let his gaze fall back onto that sentence.

"If these items emerge, the world shall know the gravity of the harm caused by foreign barbarians."

He broke down every word in that sentence to think about them individually.

"If these items emerge"—'these items' referred to this batch of goods, one hundred and thirty-seven pieces, forty-one of which were Imperial-made.

"Emerge" meant if this batch of items were to be made public.

"The world shall know"—the people of the world ought to know.

"The gravity of the harm caused by foreign barbarians"—'foreign barbarians,' meaning the Western missionaries, and how heavy the harm they caused was.

He read the sentence in its entirety once more, sat up straight, picked up his pen, and wrote down a question on the paper.

Who was the last handler of the sixth scroll?

Was it Governor-General of Min-Zhe Hao Yulin?

But why would he write, 'If these items emerge, the world shall know the gravity of the harm caused by foreign barbarians'?

He flipped back to his previous notes and reorganized the information from the six scrolls.

The first scroll was the inventory, recording the items.

The second scroll was the map, recording the coordinates.

The third through sixth scrolls were text scrolls, recording the origins of these items and the process of each transfer.