Li Shimin fully agreed with Li Jing's judgment.
That agreement only made him treat this "maritime strategy" with even greater caution.
Before him lay two roads:
One was to follow the old path and create a glorious century-long golden age that would shine through Chinese history.
The other was to overturn national policy and lay down a chessboard meant to last a thousand years.
This was not a matter of personal merit.
It concerned the livelihoods of tens of millions of people.
Carelessness was not an option.
[Lightscreen]
[Thus, one could say that it was precisely the vast island chains of the South China Sea, along with their abundant resources, that shaped China's maritime development.
Because Chinese ships mostly sailed within island clusters,
and because coastal trade within those clusters relied on highly variable nearshore winds,
Chinese shipbuilders poured technology points like mad into fore-and-aft sails.
Nearshore winds were complex.
Coastal trade meant reefs everywhere.
As a result, watertight bulkhead compartments kept improving generation after generation.
Meanwhile, sails truly suited for monsoon-driven deep-sea voyages—square sails—received very little attention.
Why?
Because there was no demand.
And without demand, who does research?
By the time of the Ming dynasty, maritime problems had already become extremely complicated.
The most prominent of these was the maritime prohibition policy.
To be clear:
The Ming did not invent maritime prohibition.
They learned it from the Yuan.
The Yuan learned it from the Song.
And the reason the Song implemented it?
Simple.
"All of it is my money. Why should I share?"
A certain Song emperor—who absolutely did not want his name recorded, surname Wanyan—summed it up perfectly:
"The profits of maritime trade are the greatest of all.
The revenue often reaches millions—does that not surpass extracting it from the people?
This is why I pay close attention to it, hoping thereby to somewhat ease the people's burdens."
Now, whether this statement was slathered with several pounds of self-flattering gold powder is debatable.
But one thing was undeniable:
His understanding of maritime trade profits was spot-on.
The Song dynasty maintained maritime prohibition until the reign of Emperor Shenzong.
The Southern Song reopened it under Emperor Gaozong and kept it until the dynasty's fall.
Total duration?
252 years.
The Yuan dynasty was short-lived.
They tried an "official capital, private lease" system using state-owned ships—but it failed quickly.
They imposed maritime bans four times in total.
Combined duration:
19 years.
The Ming dynasty learned from both Song and Yuan.
Why?
Because when the Southern Song fell, the Semu people of Quanzhou—under their leader Pu Shougeng—defected to the Yuan and massacred Southern Song royalty and officials.
That backstab was so vicious it permanently traumatized later emperors.
Add to that:
Remnants of Zhang Shicheng rebelling in the early Ming
Japanese pirate raids in the later Ming
And maritime prohibition only grew stricter over time.
Final tally?
197 years.
Strip away the poetry, and the entire several-hundred-year history of Ming boils down to one sentence:
The Ming government and the maritime merchant clans never managed to pee into the same pot.
So Emperor Yongle chose a path that cut straight through the problem.
If maritime merchants were uncontrollable, then they simply would not be used.
Instead of bargaining with merchant clans, Yongle took the entire maritime system into imperial hands.
From upstream production—imperial weaving bureaus, ceramic kilns, tea plantations—
to downstream logistics—Zheng He's voyages delivering tribute goods door to door—
every link of the chain answered to the emperor alone.
For a time, this worked.
But this approach also meant one thing:
the maritime merchant class was completely excluded.
Their profits were taken.
Their channels were severed.
Their interests were ignored.
As imperial voyages expanded, so did the tension between officials and merchants.
After Yongle, later emperors no longer had the authority—or the capacity—to personally dominate the entire system.
Faced with corruption, smuggling, and an increasingly unmanageable maritime economy, the civil bureaucracy chose the simplest solution available.
A single stroke.
Total maritime prohibition.
One cut. Done.
Merchants, meanwhile, just slapped on the label "Japanese pirates" and continued smuggling as usual.
The end result?
The Ming court stood there awkwardly, pants around its ankles.
On maritime matters, however, certain things were simply beyond merchants.
Warships.
Seizing sea supremacy.
Building a true navy.
These were state-level undertakings.
And Ming China was missing the most critical leg of all:
Mathematics.
It had been removed from the civil service examinations.
Development nearly stagnated.
This leg could have been restored through cultural exchange along maritime trade routes—
But by the time the seas reopened, it was already two centuries too late.
Xu Guangqi had to rebuild from scratch.
Even coughing blood to fix that missing leg…
It was still too late.
In truth, Ming sailors had seen Galleon ships crossing the seas.
By modern standards, galleons represented the pinnacle of 16th-century ship design.
They shocked the Ming.
China attempted imitation and absorbed some of their strengths.
But the core concept never changed.
These ships were still optimized for trade within the South China Sea island chains,
not for true oceanic expansion.
The galleon's signature features—
Keel-and-rib hulls
Soft sails
Slanted masts
—all appear in Ming shipbuilding records.
After the Ming fell, the Qing went even further.
From maritime prohibition…
To total isolation.
And so, when the Opium War came—
Britain defeated the Qing with 28 galleons and fewer than 20,000 troops,
against a Qing mobilization of 800,000.
Modern history began there.]
Seeing the massive ship schematics, Yan Lide practically dragged his younger brother forward, brutally knocking aside dukes and ministers alike.
They seized a table, spread out a massive sheet of white paper, exchanged a single glance—
And began copying simultaneously.
The galleon's structure was enormous and complex.
Yan Lide knew he could never finish it alone.
Fortunately, he had his brother.
This wasn't their first time painting together.
They both knew exactly which sections the other excelled at.
After sketching the rough outline, their heads snapped up and down as details rapidly filled the page.
And the more Yan Lide drew, the clearer it became:
Tang naval power still had a very long road ahead.
This wasn't like horseshoes—you could understand those at a glance.
Nor like gunpowder—three to five months of focused research could yield breakthroughs.
This?
Why narrow at the top and wide below?
How were so many sails coordinated?
How was that rudder-like structure at the stern controlled?
And most maddening of all—
What did the interior even look like?!
Yan Lide nearly lost it.
He wanted to crawl into the light screen, grab the descendant by the collar, and scream:
"You already showed two diagrams—adding an internal layout would kill you?!"
But he quickly calmed himself.
This was a ship from a thousand years later.
To glimpse it at all was already heaven's mercy.
And even the exterior alone offered imitation possibilities.
Unlike that "Eastern Wind Express"—
From launch to cruise to explosion, not a single principle could be observed.
The galleon didn't need full replication.
Understanding why it was designed this way would already be of immense value to Tang shipbuilding.
Li Shimin watched the Yan brothers with deep satisfaction.
My Tang truly has talents, he thought.
Craftsmanship that touches the divine, painting that carries the Dao—none of this is a minor art.
In their rush, some sketches scattered to the floor.
Li Shimin bent down to tidy them—and froze.
On one page was an emperor laughing uncontrollably on his couch.
The likeness was vivid, the emotion leapt from the paper.
If not for the face bearing a nine-tenths resemblance to himself, Li Shimin might've praised it openly.
…Well.
Glancing at the brothers—who clearly wished they had an extra pair of hands—
Li Shimin calmly slipped the drawing into his sleeve and returned to his seat.
Up ahead, Fang Xuanling murmured to Du Ruhui:
"If later generations are right… then wasn't this Semu rebellion an explosive we Tang planted for the Song?"
Du Ruhui stroked his beard.
"Our foreign management lacked precedent. There were bound to be gaps."
Fang nodded.
"Then for problems unseen by earlier dynasties… policy must be doubly cautious."
"And decrees," Fang added, "must leave room for correction."
Yet Fang himself was shaken.
"The Song suffered turmoil and indemnities… yet endured for centuries."
"Was it really maritime trade profits?"
He almost said "considerable profit," but stopped.
Enough to sustain a nation—
Only windfall profits fit.
The repeated tightening of maritime bans under Song, Yuan, and Ming didn't surprise them.
After learning of Champa rice and recalling the chaos of the Wei–Jin period, both men realized:
The north–south economic divide would only grow.
The north faced foreign invasions and internal wars.
The Central Plains were battered again and again.
The south had fast-maturing rice and maritime wealth.
No external enemies. No internal chaos.
Inequality breeds resentment.
They sighed together.
The broader their vision grew, the heavier their worries became.
Li Shimin, however, just curled his lips.
"If the Ming had possessed an invincible navy…"
"Would maritime merchants dare talk back?"
Strip it down, and it was the same logic as suppressing powerful clans.
Strong army? Everyone pays taxes obediently.
Weak army? Everyone becomes a lawless tyrant.
Wei Zheng stared at the Qing's defeat, baffled.
"Sea power… can truly be this sharp? Twenty thousand against eight hundred thousand?"
The generals were unfazed.
Li Shiji explained:
"Eight hundred thousand sounds terrifying, but they could never be concentrated."
"Meanwhile, those English ships could strike Guangzhou today, enter the Yellow River tomorrow, and appear at Quanzhou the next."
"Using wind and sail, striking when strong and retreating when weak."
"How could they lose?"
Wei Zheng fell silent.
In Chengdu Prefecture, Zhang Fei struggled to imagine it.
"Maritime trade… can it really be that wealthy?"
Zhuge Liang smiled.
"Yide, have you forgotten how the Parthian Empire rose?"
Zhang Fei blinked.
"…Control the Silk Road."
Zhuge Liang nodded.
"If one road can sustain a vast empire, why couldn't maritime trade sustain a nation?"
Inwardly, he listed advantages one by one:
Ships carry more than horses or camels
No layered exploitation like the Western Regions
With favorable winds, far faster than land travel
The only issue was piracy—but even accounting for that, profits far exceeded land routes.
Zhuge Liang couldn't help sighing.
If only Jiaozhou were fully accessible…
After retaking Hanzhong, they could seize Jiaozhou, build ships, open trade—
Cao Cao would be crushed with one hand.
But reality was cruel.
Ports were hard to obtain.
Sighing inwardly, his hands never stopped.
With charcoal and ruler, he copied the galleon diagram from the light screen—
While instructing Pang Tong and Liu Ba to memorize the image for later correction.
He even answered Liu Bei mid-stroke:
"Should maritime prohibition be implemented?"
The charcoal curved smoothly.
"What is maritime prohibition?" Zhuge Liang replied calmly.
"My lord, you are the one confused."
"Merchants lack sextants. Without coastal sailing, they risk losing their way."
"The sea has chokepoints aplenty."
"Land has border passes."
"The sea should have customs stations."