The rock walls of Hailongtun in Zunyi Prefecture were stained with the smell of gunpowder. Shen Xitang's leather boots crushed the scorched edges of the *Complete Records of the Pacification of Bozhou*. Xiao Heng's Xiuchun Saber cleaved the sealing stone of an abandoned chieftains' granary, and piles of rice burst forth as the mountain wind hit them—hidden among the grains were not old crops, but twenty matchlock guns of the Dutch East India Company standard. Next to the Dutch inscription "Wanli 46" on the barrels, the grooves were marked in Yi script with the "Batavia Foundry rifling twist rate."
"Lord Thousand-Householder, look at this grain measure." Her fingertips brushed the spiral carvings on the nanmu container. "This measurement technique of the 'Five Grains Survey Method' was specially created when Li Hualong pacified Bozhou during the Jiajing reign. Why would it be mixed with the tulip emblem of the VOC trading post?"
Crossbow mechanisms suddenly clattered from deep within the fortress. Thirty remaining chieftains' soldiers, their heads bound in cyan turbans, leaped down from the arrow tower. The triggers of the Zhuge crossbows in their hands were identical in standard to the crossbows of Qin Liangyuan's White-Pole Army from the Chongzhen era. Shen Xitang's Silver Silk shattered a crossbow arm, revealing a fragment of the *Secret Ledger of Annam*—next to the official document reading "False reporting of a thousand qing of military agricultural lands," a Vietnamese…
Chapter 183