The setting sun over Huangheji in Wuchang Prefecture soaked the iron-tinged air in blood, as Shen Xitang’s leather boots trod upon the torn scrolls of the *Panorama of the Jiang and Han*. Xiao Heng’s scabbard shattered a model of a Florentine medical school, revealing a bronze secret casket containing the "Apennine Secret Pact." Beside the clause for "Ceding the Han River Canal," the Medici red balls, the Polish eagle, and the dragon seal of the Prince of Chu were hideously intertwined.
"Look at the celestial signs on this treaty," she said, her armor scraping against the margins of a *Chongzhen Calendar Treatise* star chart. "This omen of 'the Year Star encroaching on the Quail Fire in the 17th year of Chongzhen' coincides exactly with the night before Zuo Liangyu burned the river defense maps..."
In the sound of fishing drums amidst the twilight, when ninety twelve-pound bronze Italian cannons—disguised as alchemy furnaces—fired in unison, the gilded inscription "Wanggong Factory Special Supply" glittered like blood on the eaves of Qingchuan Pavilion, shattering the last waterway of the Great Ming’s Jing-Chu region into a fissure on the map of the Mediterranean trade alliance!
Chapter 192