The Liaodong pearls from the Liaohe River weighed heavy with moisture, and Shen Xitang’s black boots crushed the charred edges of the *Liaodong Gazetteer*. Xiao Heng’s Xiuchun Saber cleaved open a camphor wood crate from a tribute ship; bags of northern pearls burst open in the river wind—the gaps between the shells contained not meat, but eight volumes of Prussian standard flintlock musket blueprints. Beside the German text "15th Year of Chongzhen" on the parchment, the margins were annotated in the Jurchen dialect with "Berlin Arsenal Flintlock Lug Parameters"!
"Lord Thousand-Householder, look at this pearl-gathering basket." She ran her fingertips over the spiral weave of the wicker. "This 'Nine-Winding Abyss' diving technique was improved during the Yongle era when Yishiha built Yongning Temple. How could it be etched with the Hohenzollern eagle crest?"
A conch horn sounded from the reed marshes. Thirty pearl-divers wearing fish-skin caps charged out of the mist. The fish-scale forging patterns on their pearl-splitting knives matched the trigger molds used by Li Chengliang during the Wanli era to cast three-eyed guns. Shen Xitang’s Silver Silk shredded a luminous pearl, revealing a fallen scrap page from the *Elbe River Secret Accounts*—beside the official text claiming "100,000 tribute pearls falsely reported," Silesian notes indicated: "Resold in Breslau as moisture-proof filler for gunpowder!"
Chapter 215