In the twentieth year of the Kangxi reign, a waterspout swept modern military-industrial expert Fang Yuan into a blood-red sea. From using a Glock pistol to cow a gang of bandits to tempering thirty elite fighters in the fires of battle on Qingjiao Island, he raised the banner of the “Zhenhai Guard” on Guibei Islet. A poisoned dagger pressed to pirate chieftain Zheng Haijiao’s throat, Fang Yuan declared, “In this world, the human heart is a sharper weapon than guns and cannons.”
Armed with firearms stashed by the pirates and their smuggling records, Fang Yuan used modern military-industrial thinking to revolutionize warships and artillery. Formations of flintlock rifles shredded the Eight Banners’ iron cavalry, while accurate ballistic calculations sank the Fujian navy. When the tulip flag on Dutch warships turned to ash in the flames of incendiary bombs, the remnants of the Ming loyalists hiding in Taiwan realized the truth: this “Sea Yama,” who had taken the Zheng family’s heir hostage, was using The Influence of Sea Power to overturn the whole tribute system!
The ink on the Forbidden City’s ban on maritime trade had barely dried when Fang Yuan led his ironclad fleet straight through Japan’s isolationist barriers. Manila’s silver and Nagasaki’s copper mines, the lifelines of the world, all lay within the reach of the Zhenhai Guard’s sextants. Amid a storm of chain shot at Tianjin, the Eight Banners navy’s dragon flags were shredded; beneath a rain of incendiary bombs at the mouth of the Yangtze, the Viceroy of Liangjiang’s great ships became blazing dragons. When the Kangxi Emperor’s imperial edict offering amnesty was loaded into a naval cannon, Fang Yuan raised his spyglass toward the seething coast. “The glazed tiles of the Forbidden City could use a good coating of smoke from a steam engine.”
This is a three-century leap in technology, an overwhelming assault from the future:
◆ Hard-Core Naval Warfare: From boarding parties locked in hand-to-hand combat to clashes between ironclads, gunpowder and equations tear down the divide between cold weapons and firearms.
◆ Blood-Soaked Power Plays: He navigates the Qing court, pirates, Western powers, and the Heaven and Earth Society, turning the tables by playing the predators at their own game.
◆ The Rebirth of Civilization: When black powder ignites the fuse of the Industrial Revolution, China’s maritime ambitions set sail once more for the stars and the open sea.
