Tung oil boats from Longjiang in Qingyuan Prefecture pushed against the ripples, and Shen Xitang's official leather boots crushed the scorched edges of the *Guangxi Customs and Tariffs Gazetteer*. Xiao Heng's Xiuchun Saber split the camphorwood hatch boards of an oil boat, and barrels of tung oil suddenly burst in the river wind. Among the viscous oil lay not pine resin, but twenty rolls of French-standard flintlock assembly diagrams. Beside the French text reading "Chongzhen 13th Year" on the parchment, the "rifled cold-forging parameters of the Lyon Arsenal" were marked in Zhuang!
"Lord Thousand-Householder, look at this pressing wedge." Her fingertips brushed the spiral patterns of the ironwood wedge. "This 'nine-turn pressing' oil-refining technique was improved by Han Guan during his pacification of the Yao in the Hongwu era. How could it be mixed with the fleur-de-lis etching of the House of Bourbon?"
Drums suddenly sounded from the riverbank. Thirty oil workers with black turbans wrapped around their heads rushed out from the banyan grove. The fish-scale forged patterns on their oil ladles matched the mold of the kerosene cans used by Chen Lin during his pacification of Luoding in the Wanli era with absolute precision. Shen Xitang's Silver Silk shattered an oil cake, revealing a fallen scrap page from the *Rhone River Secret Ledger*: beside the official document reporting "false customs tax of 50,000 piculs," Provençal annotations read "resold to Toulon Harbor as wat…
Chapter 199