"Look at this astrological chart of the covenant." Her armor scraped across the curled edges of the *Chongzhen Calendar Treatise* and its map of the Three Enclosures. "This ominous omen of 'a comet sweeping through Wenchan in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen' fell on the very eve of Jin Shenghuan's destruction of the Tengwang Pavilion naval camp..."
Amidst the drumbeats of the third watch, when five hundred Hungarian eighty-pound mortars disguised as grain chests fired in a simultaneous volley, the gilded inscription reading "Wanggong Factory Special Supply" gleamed like blood upon the eaves of the Shengjin Pagoda, blasting the final water-transport barrier of the Great Ming's Jiangxi territory into a jagged red scar upon the territorial map of the Central European powers!
The cinnamon boats on the Xun River in Wuzhou Prefecture heavy with pungent spice, Shen Xitang's leather boots crushed the charred edges of the *Notes on the Fauna and Flora of the Guangxi Coast*. Xiao Heng's Xiuchun Saber cleaved open the camphorwood hold of an incense boat, and bundles of cassia bark burst open under the river wind—tucked within the fissures of the wood were not sawdust, but eight rolls of Polish-standard cavalry artillery blueprints. Beside the Polish text reading "Sixteenth Year of Chongzhen" on the parchment was a note in Zhuang regional dialect: "Krakow Arsenal rifling barrel cooling parameters."
Chapter 210