The Maritime Frontier.
The Sea Border Pass.
Liu Bei stood frozen. The charcoal map on the wooden table seemed to pulse with new energy after Zhuge Liang dropped those concepts into the conversation. Heat bloomed in Liu Bei's chest. His hands trembled.
Expanding the frontiers was the unspoken dream of every ambitious ruler. Crushing barbarians, pacifying the steppes, drawing new lines on the map. That was the standard path to claiming the Mandate of Heaven. Everyone did it. It was basically the ruler's version of a bucket list.
But drawing a border on the endless ocean? Claiming the deep blue water itself as Han territory? Setting up toll booths on the waves?
That was a different level of ambition. That was bordering on the divine. Could their struggling faction truly become the pioneers of maritime supremacy? Could a guy who started by weaving straw sandals really be the one to conquer the ocean?
The rush of excitement lasted for ten seconds.
Then reality came crashing back like a bucket of cold water. Liu Bei exhaled slowly, his posture slumping. He had to stop dreaming. They were not playing at being gods. They were barely surviving. They were the underdogs. The scrappy ones. The ones who were supposed to lose.
He reviewed the brutal state of the empire. The fertile plains of Guanzhong were a ruined wasteland, burned by decades of civil war. The fierce warlords controlling the Hexi Corridor had gone feral and declared themselves independent kings. The economic heartland of the Central Plains was gripped in Cao Cao's iron fist. Even Jingzhou, the prosperous province they were eyeing, was fractured and bleeding from constant skirmishes.
They had nothing. Their grand strategic plans read like a madman's wish list. They needed to build state-sponsored sugar refineries. They needed to construct blast furnaces for steel production. Now, they supposedly needed to build deep water shipyards and train a professional navy.
Every one of those industrial projects required one vital resource above all else.
Manpower.
They needed thousands of skilled artisans, tens of thousands of laborers, and an endless supply of silver. Right now, Liu Bei could barely afford to properly equip his frontline infantry. He could barely afford to feed his own army. And they were talking about building ships?
Who are we kidding? Liu Bei thought. We cannot even build a decent bridge across a river, and we are talking about crossing oceans.
Feeling old and tired, Liu Bei leaned forward and focused on the map Zhuge Liang had just finished sketching. The map was based heavily on the futuristic projections they had seen earlier.
As Liu Bei studied the crude charcoal lines, his eyes widened. This was not a simple trading chart.
Zhuge Liang had drawn a series of thick arrows that looked exactly like the military invasion vectors the future generations used on their tactical displays.
The primary arrow started at the bustling river mouth of Yangzhou. From there, it shot directly across the strait, striking the island of Yizhou. The line did not stop. It hooked sharply southwest, piercing the island of Zhuya.
From that southern staging ground, the charcoal lines split. A coordinated amphibious assault route stabbed into the fertile coastal plains of the Indochina Peninsula. The final, heaviest arrow drove southward, anchoring itself into a narrow maritime chokepoint the future screen had called the Strait of Malacca.
It was brilliant. It was simple. It was a complete bypass of the northern meat grinder.
Looking at those bold lines, Liu Bei felt a pang of longing mixed with sorrow.
If only, he whispered, his voice cracking. If only I were granted enough years in this life to see even a fraction of this...
He cut himself off, pressing his lips together. He shook his head. He was being ridiculous. He was being greedy. He was getting ahead of himself.
The truth was, if he could just manage to shatter Cao Cao's armies and restore the Han Emperor to the capital, he could walk into the afterlife with his head held high. He could face his Liu ancestors without shame. He could finally get some peace. Why torture himself by grasping at impossible dreams?
He knew his own limits. He was Liu Bei, a man who started by weaving straw sandals. He was not Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. He did not possess that kind of psychotic, generational ambition that demanded the conquest of the known world at any cost. Emperor Wu was a madman. A brilliant, successful madman. But a madman nonetheless.
Leaving this grand maritime strategy as a foundational blueprint for his successors was fine.
He refused to bankrupt his struggling nation and grind his people into the dirt just to secure a shiny reputation in the history books. Let his descendants be the ones to build the navy.
He had enough on his plate.
When it came to the dangers of imperial vanity, the futuristic broadcast had already provided a spectacular negative example.
Liu Bei thought back to the records of Li Zhi of the Tang Dynasty.
That man had poured the immense wealth of a unified China into a seemingly endless war on the Korean Peninsula. He had burned through decades of time, drained the national treasury, and sacrificed countless elite soldiers, all to completely eradicate the regional powers and hand the entire peninsula to Silla.
Sure, Silla technically became a submissive vassal state in the end. But looking at the staggering cost in blood and gold compared to the actual strategic return on investment, it was a diplomatic disaster.
It was a textbook case of an emperor letting his ego write checks his empire should not be cashing. It was like spending your entire life savings on a winning lottery ticket that turned out to be a participation trophy.
Liu Bei took another deep breath, his heart finally settling into a calm rhythm. He would fight the battles in front of him. The ocean could wait. It was not going anywhere.
High above them, the light screen projection flared to life once more. The casual, slightly sarcastic voice of the unseen narrator echoed through the hall, seamlessly pivoting the topic.
[Lightscreen]
[Now, if we look closely at the naval history from the Tang Dynasty all the way through the Ming Dynasty, we notice a very distinct pattern. The fleets were essentially just sailing in circles around the South China Sea.
This localized loop naturally brings up a glaring question.
Why in the world did we never discover Australia? It was literally right there.
If you look at the map, the geography makes it seem almost impossible to miss. You sail south past the Indochina Peninsula. You enter the Java Sea, which is comfortably bordered by large landmasses on both sides. From there, you just keep sailing east, and boom. You hit the continent of Australia.
Yet, if you open a standard modern history textbook, it clearly states that the British officially discovered the eastern coast of Australia in 1770. They promptly planted a flag and claimed the entire continent in the name of their monarch. They claimed it for Great Britain.
The irony is painful. This resource-rich continent was sitting practically in our front yard for thousands of years. Yet, ultimately, this new land fell into the hands of a naval power from the opposite side of the planet. Looking back at it, you cannot help but feel a deep sense of historical regret.
It has actually become a running joke among modern historians. People love to say that if Admiral Zheng He had just forgotten to turn right into the Strait of Malacca and accidentally sailed straight, the entire continent of Australia would have been stamped with the Ming Dynasty seal.
However, you knew there was a "however" coming.
The truth is much stranger. Long before Zheng He was even born, during the Mongol-ruled Yuan Dynasty, there was an absolutely legendary Chinese traveler named Wang Dayuan.
This guy was the ultimate ancient backpacker. He was born around 1311 in Hongzhou, present-day Nanchang, and his courtesy name was Huanzhang. He embarked on two long-distance maritime journeys during his lifetime. His first voyage, from 1328 to 1333, took him through the South China Sea to Southeast Asia, South Asia, and even Australia, landing in areas near modern-day Darwin. His second voyage, from 1334 to 1339, reached North Africa and East Africa. He spent a total of eight grueling years living on the ocean and exploring foreign ports. He meticulously documented everything he saw, tasted, and experienced. He compiled his incredible adventures into a book titled "Dao Yi Zhi Lue," which roughly translates to "A Brief Account of Island Barbarians."
To prove how accurate this guy was, a Ming Dynasty scholar named Ma Huan actually read Wang Dayuan's book decades later. Ma Huan then joined Zheng He's fleet on their famous voyages as an interpreter. Ma Huan used the old book as a travel guide, actively verifying that the ports, customs, and geography matched Wang Dayuan's descriptions perfectly. In the preface to his own book "Yingya Shenglan," Ma Huan explicitly stated that his travels with Zheng He confirmed the authenticity of Wang Dayuan's accounts.
Based on modern geographical analysis of "Dao Yi Zhi Lue," after Wang Dayuan finished his final voyage around 1342, his travel map looked absolutely insane.
Most of his recorded locations line up flawlessly with modern geography. He documented crossing the Arabian Sea. He wrote about navigating the Red Sea. He described sailing across the Mediterranean. He reached the coast of Morocco, turned around, and went on a sightseeing tour down the eastern coast of Africa. His descriptions of the local climates, trade goods, and geography are so accurate that modern scholars consider his accounts practically bulletproof. Some researchers even suggest he may have been the first Chinese person to visit Sicily, Italy, and East Africa. The man was a relentless, hardcore explorer.
There is really only one highly controversial section in his entire journal. It involves a very strange detour he took before heading toward Arabia.
According to his own writing, Wang Dayuan sailed to a place called Gu Li Di Men. Modern historians have identified this as East Timor. Wang Dayuan heavily praised the local economy, noting that their silver, iron tools, and woven fabrics were of excellent quality.
However, things quickly got weird. He noted that the local chieftains preferred to sleep completely naked. Furthermore, he was utterly scandalized by the local women, describing their behavior as incredibly loose and completely lacking in proper moral boundaries. As a proper, educated Chinese gentleman, Wang Dayuan found the entire cultural vibe completely unacceptable. He basically panicked, packed his bags, and fled the island as fast as the winds could carry him.
After fleeing East Timor, he recorded sailing directly south. He arrived at a place he called Mi Li Zhi. From there, he changed course, sailing southeast until he hit a region he named Ma Na Li.
If you trace those exact directional headings on a modern map starting from East Timor, you run straight into the northern coast of Australia.
Being a dedicated travel blogger, Wang Dayuan meticulously described the environment of this mysterious new land. He wrote about seeing tens of thousands of strange trees. He described towering mountains made entirely of oyster shells. He specifically noted that the topsoil was incredibly thin, the land was terribly barren, and the weather was chaotic and unpredictable.
He even provided a detailed sketch of the local inhabitants.
He wrote: "Both men and women braid their hair, tying it back with bands. They wear gold ornaments on their arms. They dress in short, multicolored silk shirts, and use a single piece of Pengjia cloth tied around their waist as a skirt."
Now, a lot of this actually lines up perfectly with the modern area around Port Darwin in northern Australia. Because of its unique geographic position, that region does indeed have bizarre weather and terrible agricultural soil. The indigenous aboriginal population matches his physical descriptions, including the practice of braiding hair.
But then, Wang Dayuan completely derailed his own credibility with one sentence. He wrote: "The land produces camels, standing nine feet tall. The locals use them to carry heavy loads."
This caused modern scholars to collectively pull their hair out. Why? Because camels did not exist in Australia during the fourteenth century. They were introduced by European settlers much later. Therefore, the debate over whether Wang Dayuan actually set foot in Australia remains a historical mystery.
However, there is a very pragmatic, highly probable theory that explains the discrepancy. Wang Dayuan was not a ship captain. He was essentially hitchhiking on various merchant vessels. He also had an obsessive need to record everything. It is highly likely that he never actually saw the continent himself. He probably sat in a tavern, listened to some drunken sailors swapping tall tales about the mysterious southern lands, and just blindly wrote it all down as fact.
This theory is supported by the name itself. According to the research of Professor Han Zhenhua, the name "Mi Li Zhi" is likely a phonetic translation of the Malay word for "Sea Cucumber Land." If you follow Wang Dayuan's navigational notes, the specific location he was describing perfectly matches modern-day Melville Island, which sits just off the Australian coast and is famous for its sea cucumber populations. The Tiwi people have lived on Melville and Bathurst Islands for 15,000 to 20,000 years, and the area was well-known to Macassan trepang fishermen from Sulawesi who visited regularly to harvest sea cucumbers.
But let us be completely honest here. Even if we somehow proved that Wang Dayuan stepped onto the beach, he would not be the first person to discover Australia. There was already a thriving indigenous population of nearly a million people living there.
Sadly, almost all of those original inhabitants were eventually slaughtered by British colonial blades and European diseases.
The tragic reality is that long before Wang Dayuan ever set sail, seasoned Chinese sailors operating out of the port of Quanzhou had already brought back rumors of a southern continent. They gave it a very specific, terrifying name: Jue Dao. The Absolute Island. The Dead End.
Based on their descriptions of the navigational headings and the brutal climate, Jue Dao was undoubtedly Australia.
According to the ancient mariners, the name Jue Dao carried a double meaning. First, it meant the literal end of the earth. Once you sailed east past that island, there was nothing but endless, empty ocean. The land simply ceased to exist.
Second, the name referred to its lethality. The climate was considered deeply unnatural and hostile. The soil refused to yield crops. The land was crawling with horrific, venomous creatures. To a Chinese sailor looking for a comfortable place to farm or trade, it was a literal dead zone. A place of absolute despair.
Looking at it through a modern lens, you really cannot blame the ancient sailors for taking one look at the shoreline and screaming in terror. There is a very popular modern internet joke for a reason: The world has ten thousand deadly species, and Australia houses exactly half of them.
The ancient mariners were utterly terrified of miasma, tropical fevers, and demonic beasts. Australia was packed with all of their worst nightmares. Saltwater crocodiles that could snap a small boat in half. The Coastal Taipan, a snake so venomous a single bite could drop a horse in minutes. Unbearable heat and humidity. It is completely understandable why the ancient Chinese took one look at the place, labeled it a cursed wasteland, and refused to ever go back.
They simply did not know. Even with all the accumulated wisdom of our brilliant ancestors, they could never have possibly imagined the truth hidden beneath that cursed, venomous dirt.
They could not have known that this terrifying wasteland would eventually become one of the most important, highly valued mineral deposits on the entire planet.
Currently, that barren island holds an estimated forty-seven point five billion tons of high-grade iron ore.
Let me repeat that. Forty-seven point five billion tons. That single landmass holds more than one quarter of the entire global supply of iron.
It makes you want to scream. If the development of Chinese maritime technology had not been so violently suppressed and tortured by internal politics. If our fleets had just kept pushing south. That iron-rich continent would have easily become the private, heavily fortified backyard garden of the Asian sphere.
If we had claimed it, the Anglo-Saxons would have never had the chance to sail in and massacre the indigenous people.]
The command center in Chengdu went completely still.
It was not the comfortable stillness of strategic planning. It was the stillness of a man who had just been told the moon was made of gold and was trying to decide if he should laugh or vomit.
Zhuge Liang, a man renowned for maintaining emotional control even while staring down an army of a hundred thousand men, was physically struggling. His left eye twitched. Once. Twice.
He slowly reached up and rubbed his ear with a single finger, as if trying to clear a physical blockage. Maybe he had misheard. Maybe the future narrator had slipped. Maybe this was all an elaborate prank.
He turned his head rigidly, his neck creaking like an old door.
He locked eyes with Pang Tong.
Pang Tong looked like someone had just hit him in the back of the head with a wooden mallet. His mouth was hanging open. His eyes were glazed over. He was doing math in his head, and the math was winning.
Zhuge Liang's voice was uncharacteristically tight. It sounded like it was being squeezed through a straw.
"How much?"
Pang Tong swallowed hard. The tactical genius was barely able to process the numbers he was hearing. To a military command that routinely melted down old farming tools just to forge enough cheap arrowheads for a skirmish, the concept of billions of tons of iron was incomprehensible. It was like trying to count the stars by looking at them directly.
"Forty..." Pang Tong stammered, his eyes wide and unblinking. "Over forty billion... tons?"
He closed his eyes, desperately trying to contextualize the scale of the wealth using terms he understood. His fingers trembled as he did the terrifying mental math.
"If we imagine all the iron in the entire world as a single, ten-dou stone measure," Pang Tong muttered, his voice trembling slightly, "this single, cursed island... this 'Australia'... it holds nearly three whole dou all by itself?"
Three dou out of ten. A quarter of the world's iron. Sitting in the dirt. Waiting.
Zhuge Liang's hand tightened around his feather fan so hard the bamboo frame creaked.
For a moment, just a moment, the mask slipped. His face contorted into something between horror and ecstasy. His mind was racing, calculating the geopolitical ramifications, the logistical hurdles, the overwhelming potential of this revelation. The numbers were spinning in his head like a whirlwind.
Then, with visible effort, he reined it in.
He took a slow, deep breath, smoothing out the wrinkles in his long robes with trembling hands. His face shifted back into a mask of serene authority, though his eyes still burned with something dangerous.
He waved his feather fan once, a sharp, dismissive gesture aimed at the glowing screen above them.
"What is this nonsense about 'Australia'?" Zhuge Liang said, his voice ringing with cold clarity.
He entirely rejected the foreign name. It was too small. Too insignificant. Too... foreign.
His eyes narrowed, gleaming with ruthless ambition. The twitch in his eye was gone. In its place was something far more terrifying: absolute certainty.
"This land is Jue Dao," Zhuge Liang declared softly, his voice carrying the weight of destiny itself. "And it is the backyard garden of our civilization."