The tea ships on the Qiantang River in Hangzhou Prefecture were steeped in the fragrance of Longjing, and Shen Xitang’s leather boots trod upon the charred fragments of the *Wulin Old Affairs*. Xiao Heng’s scabbard shattered a model disguised as the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, revealing a Bronze Secret Casket containing the visible *Loire Secret Treaty*. Beside the clause "cede the lifeline of the Zhejiang Canal" on the parchment, the French fleur-de-lis, the Swedish lion emblem, and the secret dart flag of the Yongshang Merchant Guild were hideously intertwined.
"Look at these tide marks on the treaty," she said, her armor scraping against the rolled edge of the *Chongzhen Calendar Treatise* annotated with Qiantang tide data. "This anomaly of 'the tide being delayed by three quarters of an hour on the eighteenth day of the eighth month, in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen' was the very eve before Fang Guo'an burned the maps of the Liuhe Pagoda garrison..."
Amidst the roar of the midnight tide, as six hundred French 32-pound field artillery pieces, disguised as tea crates, fired in unison, the gilded inscription "Wanggong Factory Secret Manufacture" shone blood-red atop the Baoshu Pagoda, blasting the last barrier of the Great Ming’s southern river defenses into a crimson gash on the charts of European hegemony.
Chapter 207