The sound of camel bells suddenly cut through the salt fields. Twenty Arab salt smugglers, disguised as salt workers, charged out from the brine mist, the scales on their brass measuring tools identical to the official bushels recorded in Zhu Wan’s *Treatise on Coastal Defense* from the Jiajing era. Shen Xitang used her Silver Silk to shred one of the measuring scoops, revealing a scrap of the *Al-Farabi Secret Ledger* that tumbled out—beside an official document noting a "forty-percent exaggeration of salt levies," an Arabic inscription read: "Resold to the Abbasid Caliphate treasury!"
"Look at the stitching on these salt bags!" Xiao Heng used his Xiuchun Saber’s scabbard to smash open a burlap sack. Inside the exploding Bronze Fuze, Manchu ciphers aligned perfectly with the "dredging of brine channels" expenses falsified in the *Lantau Island Military Pay Ledger*!
The Trebuchet at the Tung Chung battery gleamed with a cold light as Shen Xitang’s leather boots stepped over a rubbing of the *Records of Zhang Shijie’s Naval Battles*. Xiao Heng’s scabbard shattered the "Guardian of the Seas" inscription on the base of the artillery mount, exposing a Bronze Secret Casket containing the *Ilkhanate Secret Files*. On the parchment, beside a clause titled "Cession of the Lingding Ocean Waters," a Mongolian wolf-head emblem, a Persian lion-sun motif, and the seal of the Mu Mansion were intertwined in a grotesque display!
Chapter 169