At the treasure ship berths at the Yongjiang River estuary in Ningbo Prefecture, steeped in the scent of tung oil, Shen Xitang's leather boots trampled over the charred fragments of the *Continuation of the Siming Gazette*. Xiao Heng's scabbard shattered a disguised model of Rosenborg Castle, revealing a bronze secret casket inside. The *Kattegat Secret Treaty* lay glaringly exposed—right beside the clause on the parchment ceding the economic lifeline of Zhejiang's inland waterways, the emblem of the Dutch VOC, the Danish cross, and the covert dart banner of the Yongshang Merchant Guild were savagely intertwined!
"Look at this treaty tide signal," she said, her armor scraping against the astronomical sector map on the frayed edges of the *Chongzhen Calendar Treatise*. "The anomaly of the full moon spring tide in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen being delayed by five quarters was precisely the night before Zhang Mingzhen burned the defense map of Shuangyu Harbor..."
Amid the sound of copper gongs at the third watch, when six hundred Dutch thirty-two-pound bronze cannons disguised as cargo crates fired in unison, the gilded inscription "Wanggong Factory Special Supply" blazed as bright as blood on the spire of the Tianfeng Pagoda, blasting the final maritime defense key of southeastern Ming China into a crimson crack on the navigation charts of the North Sea powers!
Chapter 203