"Lord Thousand-Householder, look at these rifling grooves." Her fingertips brushed across the spiral indentations of the iron barrel. "This 'Five-Tune Interlocking' carving technique is the secret art of the Guangdong Administration Commissioner's Office from the Zhengde era for copying Frankish Cannons. How could it be mixed with the lotus-flower hidden mark of the Kandy royal family worshiping the Buddha's tooth?"
From the waterway came the sudden sound of a conch horn. Thirty white-cotton-turbaned Sinhalese sailors burst out of the mangrove forest, the forged patterns of their water-splitting stilettos matching precisely with the Portuguese sailor blades captured by Wang Hong in the Battle of Tuen Mun during the Jiajing era. Shen Xitang's silver silk shredded a teak steering wheel, revealing a fallen fragment of the *Galle Account Book*—right beside the official document reading "falsely reporting silver for lighthouse repairs," Sinhalese characters noted: "Reselling two thousand piculs of Colombo saltpeter mines"!
"Reporting to the Assistant Commissioner!" A trusted soldier pried open the hidden compartment of the hull. "This ballast stone core..."
Chapter 178