Sea breezes, laden with the embers of burning saltpeter, swept across the deck. Shen Xitang’s fingertips brushed over the inscriptions on the Red-Coat Cannon, and as she touched the indentation of the characters "Third Year of Tian Gong," she caught a faint scent of blood.
Xiao Heng’s Steel Whip was coiled around the cannon barrel; the drops of blood in the mouth of the golden chimaera at the tip of the whip were slowly seeping into the casting marks, staining the character "Three" a ghostly, crimson gold.
"Does Miss Shen know that the first superintendent of the Xuanji Bureau during the Yongle era was none other than the ancestor of the Xiao family?" Xiao Heng pressed his wounded palm against the cannon mount, his blood flowing along the grooves to form the shape of the Big Dipper. "These seven cannons were supposed to have appeared in the Xuan De era, but they were sunk into Ghost-Head Reef a hundred years ago..."
A searing pain flared from the red mark on Shen Xitang’s wrist. The Big Dipper-shaped mole began to seep gold powder, which mingled with the blood.
The cannon body trembled violently. The inscriptions seemed to move like living things, rearranging themselves until they finally settled into four ancient seal characters: "First Year of Xuanji."
She suddenly recalled the Yongle firearms manual she had restored before she had traveled to this time; the seven missing pages of watermarked paper were now revealing themselves in the heat waves rising from the cannon barrel.
"The Imperial Edict has arrived—"
The eunuch’s shrill voice pierced the morning mist. As Shen Xitang knelt to receive the yellow silk, she glimpsed malachite powder on the soles of the eunuch’s boots—the very same powder unique to the residence of the Vice Minister of Rites three days prior.
The clouds patterned into the Imperial Edict appeared in the sea breeze; it was actually a condensed coastal defense map of the southeast, with Quanzhou Port heavily circled in cinnabar.
"Lord Xiao, Miss Shen, a verbal decree from the Emperor." The eunuch suddenly lowered his voice, the peacock feather on his cap brushing against Shen Xitang’s earlobe. "Test the cannons in three days. If you sink the Japanese envoy ship, the seal of the Xuanji Bureau shall be bestowed upon you immediately."
The waves surged, and dozens of iron chests floated up from the wreckage of seven black-sailed ships.
Shen Xitang fired her Pear Blossom Rain Needle to snap the locks. Instead of sulfur and gold, the chests spilled out bundles of the fragmented *Exploitation of the Works of Nature*—each title page stamped with the secret seal of the Ministry of Works. These were the very classics stolen from her father’s study.
On the eve of the test fire, Shen Xitang lit a rhinoceros-horn lamp in the temporary office of the Xuanji Bureau. The Ice Silkworm Silk hung down like a curtain, reflecting the missing watermarked pages of *Exploitation of the Works of Nature*.
She mixed ground Ryukyu purple gold into the lamp oil. As the flames flared, her father’s annotations suddenly appeared on the wall: "Red-Coat Cannon fears the damp; coat the bore with mermaid fat."
"Mermaid fat..." Qingxing’s hands trembled as she held the lacquer box. "Could it be the shark-person grease from the myths of the sea markets?"
Shen Xitang, using indigo to sketch on mulberry paper, suddenly paused. The shape where the ink bled out looked exactly like the coral reef group outside Quanzhou Port.
She remembered the "ambergris" she had seen at a Fujian fisherman’s home before her arrival; it was actually a secretion from sperm whales, which the ancients might have called mermaid fat.
At the third watch, Shen Xitang stood on the reefs of Quanzhou Port. The waves shattered into silver dust under the moonlight. She dipped her modified Pear Blossom Rain Needles into the whale oil, and with a soft click of the mechanism, the needle tips suddenly burst with ghostly blue phosphorescent fire.
Sounds of robes cutting through the air came from the shadows. Seven dark figures lunged from different directions, their sword hilts all inlaid with Ryukyu purple gold.
"Miss, watch out!"
Xiao Heng’s Steel Whip coiled around the first blade that struck. The branch patterns on the whip sparked with electric arcs upon touching the purple gold.
Shen Xitang seized the opportunity to fire the phosphorescent needles. The firelight illuminated the blood-red Big Dipper on the attackers' arms—it was of the same origin as the tattoo on Shen Yanzhou’s chest. The assassins suddenly let out a collective howl, the sound waves cracking the reef and revealing a pitch-black cave entrance.
"So the mermaid fat was hidden here." Shen Xitang threw the phosphorescent needles into the cavern. In the ghostly blue firelight, hundreds of ceramic urns were revealed. "Lord Xiao, have you heard of the treasure ship 'Xuanji' that sank during the Yongle and Xuan De eras?"
Before she could finish, the assassins committed suicide by detonating themselves. Amidst the mist of blood, the gold powder in the Big Dipper mole on Shen Xitang’s wrist condensed into a fine line, guiding her to grab a specific ceramic urn in the cave.
The moment the branch patterns on the urn collided with Xiao Heng’s bracers, the clay seal shattered, overflowing with an amber-colored grease that solidified into a seven-colored glaze upon contact with the air.
On the day of the test fire, banners obscured the sun at Quanzhou Port. Shen Xitang personally coated the cannon bore with the mermaid fat. The cannonballs cast from Ryukyu purple gold glowed with an eerie purple light in the sun.
Xiao Heng’s Steel Whip wrapped around her wrist. After the tip of the whip was soaked in the grease, a line of secret text appeared: "Trajectory deviates three degrees east; use the stars to calibrate."
"Fire!"
As the cannon thunder shattered the sea mist, Shen Xitang saw the trajectory of the projectile align with the fine line of gold powder on her wrist.
The mast of the Japanese envoy ship snapped at the sound. The sails that ignited were burning with an indigo flame—the very peacock fire specially made by the Shen family’s dye house.
Seven Kongming lanterns rose through the dense smoke, their blood-red runes forming the Big Dipper formation, pointing far away toward the capital.
"A clever feint to the east while attacking in the west." Xiao Heng severed the mooring ropes, and their small boat shot away like an arrow. "The Japanese were truly after the seal of the Xuanji Bureau!"
Shen Xitang smeared the mermaid fat onto her eyelids. When she opened them again, a fluorescent navigation path appeared on the sea.
At the end of the path, twenty improved treasure ships were being assembled. The figureheads were enlarged versions of the Xuanji Jade Pearl Lock.
She suddenly understood that the strange symbols her father had drawn in blood before he died were actually the keel structure diagrams for the treasure ships.
As the pursuers closed in, Shen Xitang pried up the floorboards of the cabin.
The fragments of *Exploitation of the Works of Nature*, soaked in whale oil, were slowly unfolding. The missing watermarked pages revealed themselves in the oil, forming an animated map of a naval battle. In the image, the Xiao ancestor held the steel whip, and the golden chimaera at the tip was biting onto the current Emperor’s Imperial Seal.
"Lord, are you willing to take a gamble?" She pressed the Xuanji Bureau seal into the groove on the treasure ship’s keel. "Let us use these secret techniques of the previous dynasty to trade for a century of peace in the Ming seas."
The treasure ship suddenly set sail on its own. Amidst the pitching of the deck, Shen Xitang gripped Xiao Heng’s bracer. The branch patterns peeled away layer by layer, revealing the Tiger Tally of the Ministry of Works hidden within.
When those seven Red-Coat Cannons issued a deafening roar over the main island of the Japanese nation, a sharp pain suddenly shot through her wrist.
She looked down and saw that the Big Dipper mole was actually seeping beads of blood, which fell, one by one, onto the Tiger Tally.
The blood droplets seemed to have a life of their own; they spread rapidly across the tally, finally coalescing into a complete character: "Tang."
The sea breeze, carrying the scent of gunpowder and the fishy aroma of whale fat, tousled her hair and the hem of her clothes. Shen Xitang stood at the prow, watching the enemy ship gradually sink, an indescribable feeling rising in her heart.
Just then, the prophecy her mother had left at the end of the *Tian Gong Textile Annals* flashed through her mind. She had read those words countless times, yet she had never been able to grasp their deeper meaning.
But at this moment, as she watched the sunken enemy ship and gazed at the blood-red character "Tang," she finally understood what her mother had meant.
The morning sun finally pierced the clouds, spilling ten thousand rays of golden light. Shen Xitang took a deep breath and turned to walk into the cabin. She threw the blood-stained Xuanji Bureau seal into the furnace, watching it gradually melt in the raging fire.
Once the seal had completely liquified, she added several special materials and used her masterful skills to cast it into a new copper key shaped like the Big Dipper.
The teeth of this copper key fit perfectly into the keyhole of the "Xuanji," which had sunk twenty years ago.
The sea breeze, filled with the salty tang of the ocean, poured into the cabin. Using the light of a horn lamp, Shen Xitang carefully wiped the bronze key in her hand.
The branch patterns on the key glinted with a ghostly light in the dim, yellow glow. The fine grooves on the teeth fit the keyhole on the keel of the Xuanji perfectly.
This was a mechanism key she had restored based on the fragments of *Creation of Heavenly Works*. The core hidden with seven-layered reeds was the exclusive craft of the Directorate of Imperial Manufactories from the previous dynasty.
"My Lord, look," she said, dipping the copper key into tung oil and pointing to the secret patterns on the handle by the oil’s reflection. "These fish-scale patterns are actually a scale. Only when the seven scales align with the phases of the moon can the secret cabin of the sunken ship be opened."