Chapter 166

The river mist of the Longwang Temple at Hankou Town was thick with the smell of rice, and Shen Xitang's leather boots crushed the remnant pages of the *Huguang Water Transport Gazetteer*. Xiao Heng's Xiuchun Saber split open the bulkhead of a Javanese rice transport vessel, and bags of Champa rice suddenly burst open in the river wind—tucked among the grains were not rice, but twelve volumes of Sunda Strait current charts, their sheepskin edges bearing Balinese Sanskrit notes reading: "Monsoon shift hour, seventh year of Yongli." "Lord Thousand-Householder, look at these boat nails." Her fingertips brushed the spiral rust on the iron nails. "This forging technique of the 'barbed anchor mark' is the secret Frankish ship-material technique captured when Zhu Wan mopped up the Japanese pirates during the Jiajing era..." A boatman's chant suddenly rose from the center of the river. Thirty cargo junks flying flags bearing the character "Zuo" emerged from the mist, yet the statues of Mazu at their prows revealed the carved patterns of Javanese Wayang shadow puppets in the sunlight. Shen Xitang's Silver Silk shattered one of the divine statues, revealing a fallen remnant page of the *Sunda Secret Treaty*—beside the official text stating "An annual tribute of 300,000 shi of Huguang canal grain," it was marked in Old Malay: "Resold to Batavia's slave plantations."