Chapter 154

The brine vapor from the Banban Salt Wells steamed like miasma under the moonlight, and Shen Xitang’s black-leather boots crushed the moss on the well platform. A fragment of the "Yunnan Salt Inspection Record" stuck to her sole suddenly self-combusted, and the secret Jurchen characters revealed in the ashes matched the annotations in the Yi-language "Road-Guiding Scripture" on the banks of the Zhegan River exactly. "My Lord Thousand-Householder, look at this brine canal." Xiao Heng's Xiuchun Saber cleaved through the vines along the well wall. On the surface of the dark bronze-cast canal, the relief lotus pattern shimmered with a greenish-black hue in the moonlight. "The pattern on this aqueduct is the altar style used when the White Lotus Cult rioted during the Chenghua era..." Shen Xitang’s Silver Silk pierced into the silt at the bottom of the canal, and the half-section of animal bone it hooked up suddenly burst—what rolled out of the bone cavity was not marrow, but strings of Ministry of Works standard Matchlock Gun copper caps. Between the inscriptions of "Wanggongchang, 11th Year of Chongzhen" at the base of the caps were mixed translated and annotated copies of the "Refinement Method for Fierce Fire Oil" from the Jianzhou Culture Office!