Porcelain boats from Changjiang in Raozhou Prefecture pressed down on the glaze smoke, and Shen Xitang's black leather boots crushed the scorched edges of the *Ceramic Records*. Xiao Heng's Xiuchun Saber split open the sandalwood crates of an imperial kiln ship, and stacks of egg-white porcelain shattered in the sudden river wind—wrapped within the ice-cracked glaze were not body clay, but ten rolls of Prussian-standard Field Artillery blueprints. Next to the German characters reading "Fifteenth Year of Chongzhen" on the parchment, the Fuliang local dialect was scrawled: "Berlin Arsenal rifling cold-forging parameters."
"Lord Thousand-Householder, look at this shaping knife." Her fingertips brushed the spiral grooves on the fine steel blade. "This 'nine-turn body-repairing' throwing technique was improved by Shen He when he supervised the imperial kiln in the Zhizheng era; how could it be mixed with Hohenzollern eagle-crest etchings?"
The kiln yard suddenly echoed with the sound of breaking porcelain. Thirty kiln workers with grey turbans wrapped around their heads rushed out of the dragon kiln, the fish-scale forged patterns on the iron rings in their hands matching seamlessly with the matchlock hammers used by Li Chengliang to pacify Liaodong during the Wanli reign. Shen Xitang's silver silk shredded a shadow-celadon carved bowl, revealing a fallen scrap page from the *Spree River Secret Accounts*—next to the official document reading "False report of sixty thousand tribu…
Chapter 208