Chapter 168

The morning mist over the Guangji Bridge in Chaozhou Prefecture drifted across the shuttle-shaped boats, and Shen Xitang's leather boots stepped over a rubbing of Wen Tianxiang's "Song of Righteous Qi." Xiao Heng's scabbard shattered the bridge pier carved with "eighteen shuttle boats and twenty-four islets," and inside the exposed Bronze Secret Casket, the "London Tower Secret Treaty" stared them in the face—right beside the sheepskin scroll's clause on "ceding the Han River estuary," the Tudor rose emblem, the Scottish thistle pattern, and the Mu Mansion's seal intertwined menacingly! "Look at the hour this treaty was signed." Her gauntlet scraped the Greenwich sidereal time along the margin of the scroll. "This notation of the 'Spring Equinox in the fifteenth year of Yongli' falls precisely on the eve of Zhang Jiayu's martyrdom in Zengcheng..." A cannon shot suddenly boomed from the heart of the river. When three British Galleon warships flying the banner of the "Ming" dynasty swung their cannons around, the gilded inscription "Special Make of the Wanggong Factory in the Nineteenth Year of Chongzhen" gleamed like blood among the stone carvings of the Xiangzi Bridge, blasting the timeless masterpiece of "Passing Through Lingdingyang" into the opening salute of the colonial era!