The Maritime Frontier.
The Sea Border Pass.
When Zhuge Liang finished his explanation, Liu Bei was startled awake—as if someone had struck a bell inside his chest.
For a brief moment, his breathing quickened.
Opening new frontiers is easy enough…
But could Shu-Han truly become the first dynasty to open the sea frontier?
The thought alone made his blood stir.
But Liu Bei quickly forced himself to calm down.
They were not people of later ages—those who studied science until it bordered on the miraculous. The reality before them was brutally clear.
Guanzhong, once fertile and prosperous, now lay broken.
The Hexi region was fragmented, dominated by local strongmen who obeyed no one.
The Central Plains were firmly in Cao Cao's grasp.
Even rich Jingzhou was no longer what it once had been.
And the plans laid out before them—
From sugar workshops and iron foundries below,
To shipbuilding and overseas voyages above—
Every single step demanded people. Skilled people. Vast numbers of them.
At this moment…
After Zhuge Liang's reminder, Liu Bei's gaze shifted toward the southern seas on the map—and only then did he truly notice what made this map different.
In the direction of the South Sea, faint charcoal marks could be seen.
They mimicked modern offensive arrows.
Starting from the Yangzhou estuary,
passing Yi Province (Taiwan),
reaching Zhuyai (Hainan),
then advancing both by sea and land—
driving straight into a great plain on the Indochinese Peninsula.
From there, the arrows continued downward, finally converging on a heavily marked strait.
The plan was astonishingly simple.
Clear. Direct.
And judging purely from Liu Bei's instincts—
The feasibility… was not low at all.
He could not help but sigh softly.
"If, in this lifetime, one were fortunate enough…"
But he stopped himself mid-sentence.
That wish was too greedy.
In truth, if he could simply defeat Cao Cao, then when he stood before the Lord of Mount Tai in the afterlife, he would have no shame before the ancestors of the Liu clan.
What more could he ask for?
He knew himself well.
He was no Emperor Wu of Han, lacking that ambition to build foundations meant to last a hundred generations.
Leaving such dreams to later heirs of Shu-Han was enough.
One must not exhaust the people and empty the state merely for personal glory.
On this matter, the Tang dynasty's Gaozong had already provided too many cautionary examples.
He squandered national strength on the Korean Peninsula, fighting for more than ten years.
Decades of effort were wasted—
Only to end up clearing the path for Silla to defeat its enemies.
Yes, Silla ultimately became a vassal.
But if one judged the outcome against the original grand vision—
No matter how one looked at it, it could hardly be called a success.
With these thoughts, Liu Bei's state of mind gradually became even more tranquil.
[Lightscreen]
[But if one knows that from the Tang dynasty all the way to the Ming, Chinese maritime voyages mostly circled within the South China Sea, a natural question arises:
Why didn't we discover Australia, which was practically right next door?
Looking at a modern map, if you follow the Southeast Asian Peninsula southward, you enter the Java Sea—land on both sides—and from there, continue east, and you reach Australia.
Yet our textbooks tell us that it was the British who "discovered" Australia around 1700, then proclaimed it British territory in the name of their queen.
We were so close.
And yet, this new continent ultimately belonged to someone else.
It's hard not to feel regret.
Some people even joke that if Zheng He hadn't turned into the Malacca Strait during his voyages, Australia might have ended up as part of the Great Ming.
But—
And here comes the "but."
In reality, before Zheng He, there was already an extraordinary traveler during the Yuan dynasty: Wang Dayuan.
He undertook two long maritime journeys in his lifetime, spending a total of eight years at sea. He recorded everything he saw and heard in a book called Brief Accounts of Island Barbarians.
Later, a Ming dynasty man named Ma Huan read this book, accompanied Zheng He on his voyages, and cross-verified what he saw with Wang Dayuan's records.
Based on the reconstructed Island Barbarians, after Wang Dayuan ended his travels in 1342, his route map looks like this:
Most of his recorded places match modern geography almost perfectly.
Crossing Arabia.
Crossing the Red Sea.
Sailing the Mediterranean.
Reaching Morocco, then looping back to tour Africa.
His descriptions line up so well with modern knowledge that it's practically conclusive proof he was a world-class adventurer—one seriously capable of suffering.
There are only two places that remain controversial.
They concern a journey he made before heading toward Arabia.
According to records, Wang Dayuan first visited Guli Dimen (East Timor), praising the quality of its silver, ironware, and textiles. However, he noted that the local chieftain liked to sleep naked, and that the women were extremely promiscuous—something he found deeply unacceptable—so he promptly left.
He then continued southward to a place called "Mi Li Zhi," and from there turned southeast, arriving at "Ma Na Li."
If you trace this route on a modern map—
Isn't that Australia?
As a travel writer, Wang Dayuan also described the ports. He wrote that there were countless nanmu trees, oysters piled like mountains, thin soil, barren fields, and irregular climate.
He gave detailed ethnographic descriptions:
"Men and women braid their hair and tie it with straps, wear gold ornaments on their arms. They dress in short garments of five-colored silk, and wrap themselves in single-piece skirts made of pengjiala cloth."
This matches Darwin Harbour in Australia remarkably well.
Australia's climate is notoriously strange and infertile.
The indigenous people were dark-skinned and practiced hair-braiding.
But then Wang Dayuan wrote something that left scholars scratching their heads:
"The land produces camels, nine chi tall, used by the natives to carry heavy loads."
Australia had no camels at that time.
And so, to this day, whether Wang Dayuan truly discovered Australia remains unresolved.
There is, however, a more plausible explanation.
Wang Dayuan was not a ship captain. He traveled aboard merchant vessels, had an intense urge to record everything, and likely wrote down things he heard from others without personally seeing them—errors passed along as truth.
Professor Han Zhenhua's research suggests that "Mi Li Zhi" comes from a Malay term meaning "sea cucumber land." Based on Wang Dayuan's route, the place he visited was likely modern Melville Island, which is rich in sea cucumbers.
Even so—
Even if proven, Wang Dayuan would still not be the first to discover Australia.
After all, nearly a million indigenous people already lived there.
People who would later be slaughtered under British blades.
Moreover, even before Wang Dayuan set sail, Chinese sailors departing from Quanzhou had already brought back a name for the place:
"Jue Island"—the End Island.
This "End Island," whether by location or climate, could only be Australia.
According to the sailors, the name had two meanings.
First: sail east to this island, and beyond it lies nothing but ocean—the land ends here.
Second: the climate is bizarre, unsuitable for farming, filled with venomous creatures—a true land of death.
Seen from today's perspective, it's perfectly normal that ancient people disliked this place.
Even now, people joke that while the world has countless poisonous creatures, Australia alone contains half of them.
Miasma, extreme heat, taipan snakes, saltwater crocodiles—
All things ancient people avoided like the plague.
No wonder there was little interest in setting foot there.
After all, no matter how brilliant our ancestors were, they could never have imagined that this land would one day become one of the most important mineral regions on Earth.
Australia holds 47.5 billion tons of iron ore—
More than a quarter of the planet's total reserves.
And if Chinese maritime development hadn't been so tortuous—
This land would have been Asia's back garden.
Why would the Anglo-Saxons have ever gotten the chance to slaughter its natives?]
Zhuge Liang tried very hard to control his expression.
He really did.
Unfortunately, the numbers were too outrageous.
In the end, he failed.
He raised a hand, casually dug at his ear, as if suspecting it had malfunctioned, then turned slowly to Pang Tong. The two men locked eyes.
For a long moment, neither spoke.
Finally—
"…How much?"
Zhuge Liang asked, very politely.
Pang Tong blinked once.
Then blinked again.
"…Four hundred-plus hundred million tons?"
He paused, did a quick mental conversion, then corrected himself with visible despair.
"No—wait. Four tens of billions of tons?"
Zhuge Liang nodded faintly, his tone calm to the point of being dangerous.
"Roughly forty-seven and a half billion."
Pang Tong inhaled sharply.
Then exhaled.
Then inhaled again, slower this time, as if afraid his lungs might explode.
"…Let me make sure I understand this."
He raised a finger.
"If the world's iron ore is counted as one shi—"
"Mm."
"—then this so-called 'Australia' alone takes nearly three dou?"
"…Approximately."
Pang Tong went silent.
His gaze drifted off into the distance.
After a while, he murmured, voice hollow:
"So… Cao Cao is fighting over Guanzhong."
"So Sun Quan is fighting over Jingzhou."
"And meanwhile…"
He swallowed.
"There's a place overseas that could beat the entire Central Plains to death using raw materials alone?"
Zhuge Liang finally finished adjusting his expression.
He shook his head gently, sleeves fluttering, tone returning to its usual serene composure.
"What Australia?"
Pang Tong snapped back to attention.
Zhuge Liang pointed at the map with his feather fan.
"This is Jue Island."
He smiled faintly.
"By rights—"
"—it is China's back garden."
Pang Tong stared at the map.
Then at Zhuge Liang.
Then back at the map again.
After a long pause, he muttered:
"…If this gets written into history—"
"—future generations are going to think we lost it because we were blind, not because we were weak."