The morning mist of Bailu drifted across the square of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where Shen Xitang stood before the newly recast ten-thousand-jun bronze cannon.
The newly crafted Xuanji Thickness Gauge rotated slowly along the cannon barrel, its brass pointer holding steady at the old Hongwu standard of "four cun and nine fen." As she stroked the dragon-scale pattern on the cannon, she suddenly heard the familiar sound of a mechanical latch behind her.
"Does Grand Coordinator Shen know that the true Renyin Incident has not yet ended?" asked the elderly man in a python robe emerging from the shadows, his gilded compass gleaming with a sulfur-blue light. "What your late father discovered back then was not the formula for Wodao bronze, but something left behind by the Founding Emperor..."
Chapter 21