Li Shimin agreed with Li Jing's assessment.
And that was exactly why the matter of maritime policy was now giving him a headache the size of Mount Tai.
He stood at a crossroads. Two paths stretched out before him, and both were terrifying for completely different reasons.
Path One was safe. Boring, but safe. Follow the traditional path of his predecessors. Keep the farmers farming. Keep the merchants chained to the land. Build a glorious hundred-year golden age that would shine brightly in the annals of history. His name would be remembered forever as the Emperor who maintained order and stability.
Path Two was terrifying. Twist the foundational policies of the empire. Crack open the maritime bans. Let the people sail. Build a grand strategic chessboard meant to secure dominance for the next thousand years. His name would either be remembered as the visionary who saved China or the madman who destroyed it. There was no middle ground.
This choice wasn't merely about his personal legacy. That would have been easy. This decision directly impacted the livelihood, safety, and future of tens of millions of people. One wrong move, and he could plunge the empire into chaos. One right move, and he could reshape the course of history.
He couldn't afford to be reckless. But he also couldn't afford to do nothing.
Above them, the broadcast continued, the narrator's voice conversational, almost breezy, contrasting sharply with the heavy subject matter. It was like listening to someone casually discuss the weather while your house was on fire.
[Light Screen]
[So, we can confidently conclude that the geography of the South China Sea archipelago, with its massive island chains and absurdly rich resources, is the exact reason why ancient Chinese ships were never designed for open ocean sailing.
Think about it. The maritime merchants were essentially just cruising through a localized pond. The coastal trade routes weaving through the Southeast Asian archipelagos relied heavily on complex, rapidly changing near-shore winds. It was like driving on a winding mountain road instead of a straight highway.
Because these near-shore winds were so fickle and multidirectional, Chinese shipwrights poured all their technological skill points into developing the longitudinal sail. The traditional junk rig was an absolute masterpiece of coastal engineering. It allowed ships to tack against the wind and navigate tricky coastal channels with incredible precision. If you wanted to sail in tight spaces, the junk rig was your best friend. It was the sports car of the ancient maritime world.
Furthermore, sailing along the coast meant a constant, terrifying threat of hidden reefs. To solve this, Chinese builders pioneered the watertight bulkhead. If a ship hit a rock, only one compartment would flood, saving the entire vessel and its precious cargo. It was brilliant. It was also a solution to a problem they should never have had to solve if they had just sailed in deeper water. But hey, when life gives you reefs, build bulkheads.
However, there is always a catch.
Because the local environment was so profitable and manageable, Chinese shipbuilders never invested their tech points into developing the square-rigged sails required for riding the relentless, singular monsoon winds across the deep oceans. After all, if there is no economic demand for cross-ocean travel, why would anyone waste money researching it? It was the classic trap of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Except it was broke.
This natural technological plateau was eventually compounded by a political disaster.
By the time the Ming Dynasty rolled around, the concept of ocean-faring had become a toxic, highly volatile issue. The most glaring problem was the implementation of the strict Sea Ban, the Haijin.
Now, to be fair to the Ming Dynasty, they did not invent the Sea Ban. They copied the homework from the Yuan Dynasty, and the Yuan Dynasty had copied it directly from the Song Dynasty. It was the ancient Chinese version of plagiarism, but with worse consequences.
The reason the Song Dynasty originally initiated a monopoly and restricted private sea trade was hilariously simple. The Emperor looked at the ocean and said, "That is my money. I want all of it."
Regarding this matter, a certain Song Dynasty emperor, who prefers to remain anonymous but essentially acted like an obedient vassal of the invading Jin Dynasty's Wanyan clan, summarized the philosophy quite clearly. This emperor famously stated:
"The profits from the maritime trade bureaus are the most lucrative of all. The income easily numbers in the millions of strings of cash. Is this not a far better way to generate state revenue than squeezing taxes out of the peasant farmers? This is why I pay such close attention to the ports. Perhaps it will slightly ease the burden on the common people."
The emperor in question here is Zhao Gou, Emperor Gaozong of the Southern Song. He was the one who fled south after the fall of Kaifeng and established the Southern Song dynasty.
His statement about maritime profits was not wrong. The money was astronomical. But his hypocrisy was equally astronomical, since he happily signed peace treaties that made his empire a vassal to the Jin. It was like saying, "I care about the common people," while handing the country over to the enemy.
We can put aside the question of how much gold this emperor was aggressively slapping on his own face to make himself look benevolent. Despite the blatant hypocrisy, his fundamental assessment of maritime profit was incredibly accurate.
The money was simply too big to ignore.
The Song Dynasty maintained strict control over the sea until the reign of Zhao Xu, Emperor Shenzong, who finally relaxed the restrictions in 1070 after his reforms.
Later, during the Southern Song period, Zhao Gou reimposed the Sea Ban in 1136. It remained in place until the total collapse of the nation.
In total, the Song Dynasty enforced maritime restrictions for two hundred and fifty-two years. That is a long time to keep people away from the water.
The subsequent Yuan Dynasty had a very short lifespan. They briefly attempted a hybrid system where the government owned the massive ships and rented them out to private merchants. It was a miserable failure.
The Yuan government ended up initiating four separate Sea Bans, totaling about nineteen years of closed ports. They could not even keep a consistent policy for two decades.
Then came the Ming Dynasty.
The Ming emperors looked at the catastrophic end of the Song and Yuan and decided to take drastic measures. Their paranoia was entirely justified by historical trauma.
When the Southern Song was collapsing, a massive population of foreign merchants and Central Asian immigrants living in the wealthy port city of Quanzhou decided to switch sides. Led by their superintendent, a man named Pu Shougeng, these foreign residents surrendered to the invading Mongol armies and proceeded to slaughter the remaining Song royal family and local officials in cold blood.
This horrific backstab, right in the economic heart of the empire, was a massive wake-up call. It severely traumatized all future Chinese emperors.
If you could not trust the people in your richest port, who could you trust? It was like your most trusted employee selling your company secrets to the competition.
Combine the bloody lesson of Quanzhou with the lingering remnants of Zhang Shicheng's rebel forces hiding out at sea during the early Ming, and throw in the endless coastal raids by Japanese pirates known as the Wokou later on. The result was inevitable.
The Ming Dynasty's Sea Ban grew stricter and more suffocating with each passing decade. It ultimately lasted for one hundred and ninety-seven years. Almost two centuries of "stay away from the ocean."
If you want to summarize the entire centuries-long history of southern China during the Ming Dynasty, it boils down to one sentence.
The central Ming government and the massive, wealthy maritime merchant syndicates completely failed to see eye to eye on how to split the profits. They were basically fighting over the same pie while the pie was getting smaller.
The situation became so dysfunctional that Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor, decided to bypass the private merchants entirely.
He monopolized the entire supply chain. He controlled the imperial silk weaving bureaus, the ceramic kilns in Jingdezhen, and the vast tea plantations. Then, he built the legendary Treasure Fleet and sent Admiral Zheng He down the Western Seas to deliver the goods personally.
The Emperor held every single link of the global trade network in his own hand. It was the ultimate power move.
This aggressive state monopoly completely shattered the relationship between the coastal merchants and the government.
In retaliation, the Ming civil bureaucrats, many of whom were heavily bribed by or directly related to the merchant syndicates, eventually forced a total shutdown of the state-sponsored fleets.
Meanwhile, the private merchants simply rebranded themselves. They formed massive smuggling cartels, allied with the Japanese pirates, and continued their lucrative trade under the radar.
The Ming court found itself in an awkward, paralyzed position, unable to control its own coastline. It was like trying to stop a river with your bare hands.
Here is the ultimate tragedy.
Building advanced warships, securing global sea power, and training a professional blue-water navy are tasks that require state backing.
A bunch of private smuggling cartels, no matter how rich, cannot build a modern navy. They could build smuggling ships. They could bribe officials. But they could not build a fleet capable of defending the nation. It was like expecting a local gang to build an aircraft carrier.
Furthermore, the Ming Dynasty had deliberately amputated its own most vital limb.
Mathematics was formally removed from the imperial civil service examinations in 1384. This disastrous policy caused Chinese engineering and hard sciences to completely stagnate.
The Ming could have easily compensated for this intellectual deficit through cultural and scientific exchange via the ocean trade routes. But because the ports were locked down, the knowledge never flowed in.
By the time the Ming finally reopened the seas two centuries later, the gap was too wide.
Brilliant scholars like Xu Guangqi started from absolute zero. Even though Xu Guangqi worked himself to the point of coughing up blood trying to translate Western science and rebuild the nation's mathematical foundation, it was simply too late. It was like trying to catch a train that had already left the station.
The tragic irony is that Ming Dynasty sailors had actually seen the massive, ocean-crossing Western Galleons up close.
From a modern historical perspective, the Galleon is widely considered the pinnacle of sixteenth-century naval architecture. The Spanish galleons were the kings of the sea. They were the Ferraris of the ocean.
These advanced, heavily armed foreign ships brought massive shock and awe to the Ming coastline.
The Ming military actually captured a few and attempted to reverse-engineer them. They absorbed several key design features and applied them to traditional Chinese ships.
But the core philosophy never changed.
The Ming adapted the tech strictly for navigating the familiar, comfortable waters of the South China Sea. They had zero ambition to push out into the deep ocean.
They copied the Ferrari's paint job but kept the old engine.
If you look closely at late Ming shipbuilding records, you can clearly see the ghostly influences of the Galleon.
You can find traces of the distinctive keel and rib hull structure, the adoption of soft canvas sails, and the use of bowsprit sails. They copied the hardware. But they never copied the mindset.
Then the Ming Dynasty fell.
The Qing Dynasty took over. The Qing looked at the restrictive Sea Ban and decided to take it ten steps further.
They initiated a policy of total national isolation. They closed the country completely. They basically put a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the entire coastline.
We all know how that ended.
Fast forward to the Opium War.
The British Empire arrived on the Chinese coast with twenty-eight advanced ships and an expeditionary force of fewer than twenty thousand men.
They completely humiliated and dismantled the Qing government, which had mobilized an army of over eight hundred thousand soldiers.
That brutal, one-sided slaughter officially ripped open the bloody pages of modern Chinese history.
It was the wake-up call that should have come two centuries earlier.
But by then, it was too late.]
Down in the Ganlu hall, chaos erupted the moment the detailed structural blueprint of the Galleon appeared on the glowing screen.
Yan Lide, the normally composed Minister of Works, lost his mind. He grabbed his younger brother by the collar and shoved his way through the front row of dukes and generals. He didn't care about protocol. He only cared about the ship.
"Brother! Table! Now!" Yan Lide barked, spotting a large wooden table nearby. He hauled it into the center of the room.
Yan Liben didn't ask questions. He just moved. The two master artisans possessed a terrifying synergy forged through years of collaboration.
Yan Lide slammed a sheet of blank white paper onto the surface. He exchanged a single glance with his brother.
"You take the rigging and sails," Yan Lide said, grabbing his brush. "I'll handle the hull structure and deck layout."
"Got it," Yan Liben replied, already dipping his brush in ink. "Start with the main mast?"
"Yes. And watch the angle of those square sails. They're not like our junk sails at all."
They established a rapid rhythm. Look up at the screen. Memorize a section. Look down. Draw. Repeat.
"Look at that hull," Yan Lide muttered, his brush flying across the paper. "Narrow top, wide bulbous bottom. What kind of physics is this?"
"Stability," Yan Liben replied without looking up, meticulously copying the complex rigging. "The weight distribution keeps it from capsizing in heavy seas. But how the hell do they manage those sails? There must be fifty crew members just handling the ropes."
"Probably," Yan Lide grumbled, squinting at the screen. "Or they are all slaves. Or demons. I do not know."
They worked in silence for a moment, the only sound being the frantic scratching of brushes on paper.
"Brother," Yan Liben said suddenly, his voice tight with frustration. "What's inside?"
Yan Lide's brush stopped mid-stroke. He stared at the light screen projection, his eye twitching.
"I don't know," he hissed. "The screen only showed us the exterior."
"But the internal structure! The load-bearing ribs! The deck supports! How is it built?" Yan Liben's voice was rising in pitch. "We can't just copy the outside! We need to know how it works!"
Yan Lide wanted to leap into the light screen projection, grab the smug narrator by the throat, and punch him in the face.
"Damn it! Would it kill them?" Yan Lide shouted at the screen, forgetting himself entirely. "Would it kill the future generations to just display a cross-section? Just one! Just show us the inside! Fuck!"
The hall went silent. Every minister, general, and duke turned to stare at the normally composed Minister of Works, who was now red-faced and screaming at a magical projection like a madman.
The screen, of course, did not respond. It just kept showing the same exterior angles.
"Brother, calm down," Yan Liben said, though his own hands were shaking with frustration. "Think about it. This is a warship from nearly a millennium in the future. Just being allowed to look at its silhouette is a blessing."
Yan Lide took a deep breath, forcing his hands to remain steady. "You are right. You are right. I am being greedy."
He stared at the screen for another moment. His eye twitched.
"...But I really want to hit his smug face."
"Remember the Dongfeng Missile?" Yan Liben said, trying to reason with him. "That was pure magic. We could not understand any of it. But this... this is still made of wood and canvas. We can understand this."
"True," Yan Lide muttered, returning to his sketch. "We do not need to build an exact replica. Just studying the hydrodynamic shape of the hull and the placement of the masts will give our shipyards ideas."
"Exactly," Yan Liben said, his brush capturing the intricate details of the sail rigging. "And look at this bowsprit. That is clever. Extending the sail area forward like that."
"And those cannons," Yan Lide added, sketching the gun ports along the hull. "They are not just decorative, right? They are positioned for broadside firing."
Yan Liben paused and squinted at the screen. "Broadside firing?"
They worked in focused for several more minutes, their brushes dancing across the paper in perfect synchronization.
"Brother," Yan Liben said quietly, not looking up from his work. "When we finish this, we're going to change everything."
Yan Lide smiled, a fierce, proud smile. "I know. The Tang navy is going to have a new toy."
"And the Japanese won't know what hit them."
Yan Lide laughed, a sound of pure professional joy. "Exactly. Now hurry up with those sails. I want to see how the stern castle is structured."
"Yes, brother."
They bent back over their work, two master craftsmen capturing the future, one brushstroke at a time.
Sitting a few paces away on his elevated dais, Emperor Li Shimin watched the Yan brothers work with a warm smile.
The Great Tang truly possessed an abundance of spectacular talent. To have artisans who could capture the secrets of the gods through mere observation, to have painters whose brushes could alter the destiny of the nation. These were not trivial skills. These men were the pillars of the state.
Because the Yan brothers had rushed the table so violently, several loose sheets of sketching paper had been knocked onto the polished floor.
Li Shimin leaned over to pick them up, intending to stack them back on the desk.
As his fingers brushed the top sheet, his eyes locked onto the image.
It was a sketch of an emperor.
The man was sprawling on a low couch, clutching his stomach, his mouth wide open in an undignified, roaring laugh.
The brushwork was immaculate. The figure felt alive, the pure hilarity bleeding right through the paper.
It was a masterpiece of emotional expression. If Li Shimin ignored the fact that the face on the paper looked exactly like his own, he would have praised the artwork.
He stared at his own goofy, laughing face for a long moment.
He slowly looked up.
The Yan brothers were still drawing like madmen, looking like they wished they could sprout a third arm just to copy the ship faster.
Without changing his expression, Li Shimin smoothly rolled the embarrassing caricature into a tight cylinder and slid it deep inside his wide silk sleeve.
He sat back down, acting as if nothing had happened.
Down in the front ranks of the civil officials, Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui were engaged in a fierce, whispered debate.
"If we follow the logic of the future generations," Fang Xuanling muttered, his brow furrowed. "This massive rebellion by the foreign Semu merchants in Quanzhou... does that mean the open, cosmopolitan policies of our Great Tang are inadvertently planting a catastrophic landmine for the future Song Dynasty to step on?"
Du Ruhui stroked his beard, his eyes dark with thought. "Our current policies regarding the administration and integration of foreign populations are unprecedented. We didn't inherit a working framework from the Sui or Han dynasties. We are building this system as we go. Naturally, there are structural oversights."
"Indeed," Du Ruhui continued, his voice barely a whisper. "If we encounter social and ethnic friction that previous dynasties never faced, we must proceed with caution. We cannot blindly trust the current peace."
Fang Xuanling nodded. "Every major state policy we draft from now on must include mechanisms for correction and containment. We cannot give these merchant syndicates freedom without accountability."
However, even as Fang Xuanling discussed the dangers of merchant rebellions, his economic mind couldn't let go of the other revelation regarding the Song Dynasty.
"Think about the scale of the wealth involved," Fang Xuanling said, his voice laced with awe. "The future records show the Song Dynasty suffered endless rebellions, possessed a notoriously weak military, and constantly paid massive ransoms in silver and silk to the northern nomads. Yet, despite all that financial bleeding, they managed to sustain their empire for centuries. Was all of that funded by the profit margins of the maritime trade?"
He had wanted to use the phrase 'highly profitable,' but that felt inadequate. If a single trade network could financially float an entire crumbling empire while paying off multiple hostile superpowers, the only accurate word was 'obscene.'
The subsequent history of the strict Sea Bans during the Yuan and Ming dynasties didn't surprise the two chancellors as much. They had already seen the writing on the wall.
Ever since the screen had revealed the existence of Champa rice, a miracle crop that ripened in fifty days, Fang and Du had spent hours analyzing the fallout. They looked back at the chaotic, bloody history of the Wei, Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties. They instantly realized a terrifying economic truth. The financial disparity between the North and the South was only going to widen.
The northern plains were cursed by geography. Not only did they bear the brunt of every nomadic cavalry invasion from the steppes, but they were also the primary battleground for every internal civil war. The infrastructure was constantly being burned to ash and rebuilt from scratch.
The South, however, was a fortress of prosperity. They had a miracle grain that allowed multiple harvests a year, overflowing their silos. They possessed the monopoly on global maritime trade, flooding their cities with silver. They faced zero foreign threats, and their internal geography made rebellion difficult.
When one half of the empire possesses all the food and all the money, while the other half possesses the political capital and the military burden, resentment is inevitable. Different wealth levels breed different cultures. Different cultures breed suspicion.
The two greatest minds of the Tang Dynasty looked at each other and let out a simultaneous, heavy sigh.
Ignorance truly was bliss. The wider their worldview expanded, the more terrifying the future became.
Meanwhile, Emperor Li Shimin was focusing on a different aspect of the Ming Dynasty's failure. He found the conflict between the central government and the merchant cartels laughable.
He scoffed, a sharp sound of aristocratic disdain echoing in the hall.
"This Ming Dynasty court," Li Shimin sneered, shaking his head. "If they possessed a truly invincible, ironclad naval fleet, do you think those pathetic merchants would dare to utter a single word of complaint?"
The underlying economic details might be complex, but to a hardened conqueror like Li Shimin, the core issue was identical to dealing with local warlords or entrenched noble families.
It was a simple equation. If your military is disciplined and terrifying, the local elites are suddenly transformed into patriotic, law-abiding citizens who eagerly pay their taxes.
If your military is weak, corrupt, and starved for funds, those exact same citizens suddenly evolve into arrogant warlords who ignore your laws and steal your revenue. The Ming emperors forgot that all authority flows from the edge of a blade.
Standing nearby, the famously stubborn censor Wei Zheng was staring at the final statistics of the Opium War in disbelief.
"The sheer lethality of those Western ships," Wei Zheng muttered, his face pale. "Is it truly that absolute? How can twenty thousand men on boats defeat an established empire mobilizing eight hundred thousand soldiers? The math makes no sense."
The seasoned generals in the room, however, were not surprised in the slightest.
Li Ji, one of the most brilliant tacticians of the era, stepped forward to explain the brutal reality of asymmetric warfare.
"Do not let the number eight hundred thousand fool you, Xuancheng," Li Ji said calmly, his eyes reflecting the cold logic of the battlefield. "Even if the Qing government managed to scrape together that many men, it is physically impossible to concentrate them in a single location. They would consume every grain of rice in the province within a week."
Li Ji gestured toward the map on the screen. "The British fleet, on the other hand, possesses strategic mobility. They can strike the port of Guangzhou today. If the Qing army rushes to defend it, the fleet simply sails away. Tomorrow, they can bombard the coastline of Hedong. The day after, they can appear outside Quanzhou."
Li Ji's voice grew hard. "They are essentially ghosts on the water. They use the wind to strike effortlessly, while the defending army exhausts itself marching back and forth along the coast. If the enemy encounters a heavily fortified garrison, they simply refuse to fight and sail away. If they find a weak point, they obliterate it. The Qing forces are forced into a purely reactive, static defense, frantically trying to protect thousands of miles of coastline. Under those conditions, how could the defending army possibly win?"
Wei Zheng closed his mouth, silenced by the flawless military logic.
---
Far to the southwest, inside the governor's compound in Chengdu, Zhang Fei was pacing around the room like a caged tiger. He was trying to wrap his head around the volume of money the screen was describing.
"This oceanic trade route," Zhang Fei said, scratching his bristly beard. "Can it truly be that disgustingly profitable? We are talking about funding entire dynasties here! That is not trade. That is... that is printing money!"
Zhuge Liang smiled, a confident light shining in his eyes. The man looked like he had just found a new toy.
"Yide, have you forgotten the history of the Anxi Empire? The Parthians?"
Zhang Fei paused his pacing. He dug into his memory banks. It took a moment. "Right. The empire out west. They controlled the Silk Road..."
"Exactly," Zhuge Liang nodded, waving his feather fan gently. "If holding the overland Silk Road was enough to sustain a sprawling empire in the arid deserts of the west, why is it so hard to believe that a global maritime route could feed a dynasty? The ocean is just a bigger, wetter Silk Road."
In his mind, Zhuge Liang was already compiling a logistical spreadsheet comparing land and sea trade. He was doing it entirely in his head, which was frankly terrifying. The advantages of the ocean were overwhelming.
First, the carrying capacity of a single deep water ship dwarfed a hundred camels or a thousand pack horses. You could fit an entire caravan's worth of goods on one ship. Maybe two.
Second, the overland route was a political nightmare. Merchants had to traverse a dozen different hostile kingdoms, paying extortionate tolls and bribes at every mountain pass and border checkpoint. It was like running a gauntlet of greedy officials. On the open ocean, the wind belonged to everyone. There were no toll booths. No border guards demanding "processing fees." Just open water and the occasional hungry shark.
Third, if a ship caught a strong, favorable monsoon wind, its daily travel speed would leave the fastest cavalry relay in the dust. A horse could only run so far before it needed to rest. A ship could sail day and night, as long as the wind held.
The only significant variable was the threat of piracy, but even factoring in potential losses, the net profit margin of sea trade would still crush the land routes. It was not even close.
For a brief, agonizing moment, Zhuge Liang felt a pang of geographical jealousy.
If only the path to Jiaozhou in the far south was a flat, paved highway instead of a treacherous, malarial jungle!
If only we had access to the southern ports...
If they had access to the southern ports, his grand strategy would change instantly. Forget marching north immediately. They would secure Hanzhong to block Cao Cao, then pivot south to conquer the coast. They would build shipyards, establish trade routes, and drown their northern rivals in an ocean of silver. Dealing with the Wei kingdom would become a trivial matter of outspending them. Just throw money at the problem until it went away.
Unfortunately, reality was cruel. They were landlocked in a mountainous basin, and deep water ports were currently a pipe dream. A beautiful, shiny, totally unobtainable pipe dream.
Despite his internal lamentations, Zhuge Liang's hands were moving with precision. He was holding a piece of raw charcoal and a wooden straightedge, rapidly recreating the Galleon blueprint on a large piece of silk. His movements were almost mechanical. Efficient. Terrifyingly focused.
He was not just drawing. He was utilizing every resource in the room.
"Shiyuan," Zhuge Liang called out to Pang Tong without looking up. "Focus on the rigging and the curvature of the main mast. Commit it to memory."
Then, without missing a beat, "Zichu," he addressed Liu Ba, "memorize the placement of the gun ports and the hull ratio. I am handling the foundational lines. We will cross reference and fill in the missing details once the projection vanishes."
He was treating his colleagues like human storage drives, breaking the complex visual data into manageable chunks. It was efficient. It was ruthless. It was pure Zhuge Liang.
Even while orchestrating this frantic intelligence gathering operation, Zhuge Liang still had the mental bandwidth to casually answer his lord's questions. The man was a machine.
Liu Bei, watching the drawing take shape, voiced a lingering concern. "Kongming, given all the chaos it caused in the future, should we enforce a Sea Ban if we ever gain access to the coast?"
Zhuge Liang did not miss a beat. The charcoal snapped against the ruler, drawing a perfect, sweeping arc for the hull.
"A Sea Ban? My lord, you are looking at the problem from the wrong angle."
Zhuge Liang finally looked up, a sharp smirk playing on his lips.
"The narrator just told us these merchants do not possess modern navigational tools like the sextant. That means they are terrified of the deep blue water. They are physically forced to hug the coastline to avoid getting lost. They are basically swimming in the shallows like children afraid of the deep end."
He tapped the charcoal against the map of the South China Sea.
"If they must sail along the coast, that means they must pass through narrow straits and predictable channels. Why would we ban the trade and let smugglers take all the profit? That is like owning a toll bridge and deciding to close it."
Zhuge Liang's eyes gleamed with ruthless efficiency.
"We do not ban them. We let them build the ships. We let them take the risks. And then, we build naval fortresses at every geographical chokepoint. Just as we collect taxes at the mountain passes on land, we will establish toll booths on the ocean."
He tapped the map again, this time with more emphasis. "The merchant ships will be the ones doing the heavy lifting. They will sail the seas. They will brave the storms. They will risk the pirates. And when they pass through our straits, they will pay us for the privilege."
Liu Bei blinked. "So we... we tax the ocean?"
"Precisely, my lord. We let the water work for us."