The armory at Jiayu Pass was saturated with the stench of sulfur, and Shen Xitang’s leather boots crunched over the charred remnants of the *Western Regions Illustrated*. Xiao Heng’s scabbard shattered a disguised model of Topkapi Palace, revealing a Bronze Secret Casket containing the "Two Rivers Plain Secret Treaty." Next to the clause stipulating the "Cession of the Hexi Corridor," the Ottoman crescent emblem, the Mamluk chainmail sigil, and the hidden dart flag of the Hexi clans were intertwined in a grim display.
"Look at this meteor shower of treaties," she said, her armor scraping against the margins of the *Chongzhen Calendar Treatise* where the comets were annotated. "This omen of 'stars falling like rain in the mid-autumn of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen' occurred the night before Yang Jiamo burned the defense maps of Jiayu Pass..."
When the ballistae roared at the fourth watch, and a thousand Ottoman Orban super-cannons disguised as salt bags fired in unison, the gilded inscription "Wanggong Factory Special Supply" glowed blood-red on the battlements of the Great Wall. It blasted the last lifeblood of the Ming’s western frontier into scorched earth on the maps of Near Eastern powers.
Chapter 217