Chapter 187

"Reporting to the Assistant Commissioner!" A personal guard pried open a crate of cobalt blue glaze. "Inside this Su Mali blue..." Amid the flying glaze, twenty Spanish 4-pound field artillery pieces, disguised as "ceramic pillows," gleamed into view. The Habsburg double-headed eagles wedged in the flint clamps overlapped precisely with the private seal of Zheng Zhifeng, Quanzhou Maritime Defense Administrator! The foam of Yuegang Port in Zhangzhou Prefecture soaked through the foreign silver, and Xiao Heng's blade-tip pried open the cargo hold of a Nanyang vessel. Bundles of the *Haicheng Tax and Provisions Ledger* were suddenly blurred by a torrential downpour—next to the ink marks of the "fourth year of Tianqi," Dutch secret writing read, "Glaze mixture for Delft pottery," and eighteen entries on the manifest even marked the tidal data of the Zuiderzee!