Chapter 144

The morning mist at the Yangzhou Customs House was thick with the briny scent of salt, and Shen Xitang’s leather boots crunched through the frost atop the Lianghuai Salt Ledger. Xiao Heng’s Xiuchun Saber cleaved open the floorboards of an official salt transport ship; crates of Liaodong ginseng tumbled out, and tangled amidst the whiskers lay a half-sealed blood letter—beside a vermilion annotation reading "The twelfth month of the seventh year of Tianqi, three thousand piculs of grain delivered to Jianzhou," there sat, unmistakably, the seal of the White-Pole Army’s general, Qin Liangyu! "General Qin’s own handwriting..." Her fingertips traced the cracks in the seal’s clay. "The seal is missing the characters for 'Zhongzhou'; it’s a duplicate carved in the first year of Chongzhen!" A commotion erupted on the river. Five flat-bottomed boats flying the "Loyalty and Righteousness" flag drifted downstream, the inscriptions on the Red-Coat Cannons at their bows glinting coldly in the mist: "Commissioned by the Ministry of Works in the second year of Chongzhen!" Xiao Heng’s scabbard shattered one of the cannon breeches, but instead of gunpowder, it vomited out rolls of the *Shizhu Pacification Commission Intelligence Reports*, each page bearing the coiled dragon watermark of the Prince of Fu’s mansion.