The mirage over the Ou River in Yanzhou Prefecture is saturated with sea fog, and Shen Xitang’s cowhide boots tread upon the tattered scrolls of the *Yongjia Record*. Xiao Heng’s scabbard shatters a model of a disguised St. Mark’s Campanile; inside the exposed Bronze Secret Casket, the *Adriatic Sea Secret Treaty* lies in plain sight—beside the clause "Ceding the Zhejiang East Sea Lane" on the parchment, the Venetian winged lion, the Genoese Saint George flag, and the secret dart flag of the Zhejiang sea merchants intersect with a menacing aura.
"Look at the lunar phase of this covenant," she says, her armor scraping against the tide annotations of a curled *Chongzhen Calendar Treatise*. "This omen, the 'Triple Halo of the Full Moon in the Seventeenth Year of Chongzhen,' is exactly the night before Liu Kongzhao burned the coastal defense maps..."
Amidst the conch calls of the fifth watch, as one hundred and twenty Venetian galleass cannons, camouflaged as salt piles, fire in a simultaneous volley, the gilded inscription "Wanggong Factory Special Supply" glows bright as blood on the twin pagodas of Jiangxin Island, shattering the final gateway to the southeast of the Great Ming into a jagged rift upon the map of the Mediterranean trade alliance.
Chapter 195