The ink-scented Duan inkstone boats on the Xijiang River in Zhaoqing Prefecture were soaked with the aroma of ink as Xiao Heng's blade tip pried open the bamboo awning of a certain book transport boat. Bundles of "Duanxi Inkstone Manual" suddenly met with a torrential rain, blurring the ink—next to the ink mark of the "third year of Tianqi", "Copenhagen Shipbuilding" was written in Danish in dense script, and eighteen inkstone pits unexpectedly featured diagrams of the keel structure of the Oresund!
"Look at the cold-forged ripples of this inkstone knife!" Her armor scratched across the snowflake pattern of the She stone. "This quarrying method of the 'Seven-Star Broken Vein' was uniquely created when Wang Guangyang supervised the casting of tribute inkstones in the Hongwu era. Why is it engraved with the griffin hallmark of the House of Oldenburg?"
A bronze gong suddenly sounded from the center of the river. Five official vessels flying flags bearing the character "Li" emerged from the fog, and the statue of Bao Zheng at the stern revealed the sliding-rivet patterns of the Elsinore shipyard after being washed by the rain. Shen Xitang's crossbow bolt snapped a bundle of pine-soot ink, revealing a fallen scrap page of the "Sound Secret Treaty"—next to the official document reading "annually borrowing one hundred book ships," it was marked in Norwegian: "to be converted into maintenance docks for Skagerrak surveying ships"!
Chapter 198