Chapter 159

The furnaces at the Tangdan Copper Mine in Dongchuan lit up the horizon, Shen Xitang’s boots crunching over the tattered pages of the "Chronicle of Yunnan Copper." Xiao Heng’s Xiuchun Saber cleaved the rock wall of the mine shaft, and piles of copper smelting crucibles collapsed with a roar—there, amidst the dross stuck to the bottom of the pots, lay half a bronze mold bearing a double-tailed lion crest. The Hungarian script engraved on its surface, "Manufactured under the supervision of the Grand Principality of Transylvania," gleamed fiercely in the furnace fire! "Lord Thousand-Householder, look at this bellows pipe." She traced the spiral grooves of the iron tube with her fingertips. "This 'four-fold sleeve' oxygen-injection technique is a method the Ministry of Works imitated from Frankish Breech-loading Guns during the Jiajing era. How did it end up here?" A sudden, strange sound erupted from deep within the mine tunnel. Twenty shirtless craftsmen leaped from a dark conduit, the forged patterns on the iron rods in their hands identical to the sounding rods used by Pan Jixun for river regulation during the Wanli reign. Xiao Heng’s scabbard shattered one of the rods, revealing a scrap of the "Dongchuan Mining Ledger"—the falsely reported 800,000 jin of copper output was, in truth, raw material for weaponry being smuggled to the Krakow Mint!