The tides of Yuegang Port in Zhangzhou Prefecture carried a salty breeze, and Shen Xitang's black boots crushed the charred edges of the *Gazetteer of Haicheng County*. Xiao Heng's Xiuchun Saber cleaved open the sealed brick door of a silk warehouse, and bolts of Zhangzhou velvet burst open upon meeting the sea breeze—amidst the dark patterns of the satin emerged not cloud brocade, but twelve volumes of the *Secret Accounts of the English East India Company*. Next to the English marginalia reading "10th Year of Chongzhen" on the parchment was annotated in Minnan dialect: "London Tower Firearm Forging Technique."
"Lord Thousand-Householder, look at this loom shuttle." Her fingertips traced the spiral incisions on the sandalwood shuttle. "This jacquard method of the 'Five Planets Shuttle' is a technique improved by Yu Dayou during the Jiajing reign when resisting the Wokou. How could it be mixed with the gear watermarks of a Yorkshire woolen mill?"
From deep within the silk warehouse came the sudden sound of a loom. Twenty weavers wrapped in white turbans rushed out from a hidden room, the forged patterns on the bronze shuttles in their hands identical to the Wodao Saber used by the merchant group of Li Dan in the Wanli era. Shen Xitang's Silver Silk shredded a loom, revealing a fallen fragment of the *Treatise of Portsmouth*—next to the official document reading "False reporting of ten thousand bolts of annual tribute silk," it was annotated in Latin: "Resold to King Charles…
Chapter 182