A Dragon’s Roar Across the Four Seas: The Ming Dynasty’s Voyages

In the first year of the Longqing era (1567), an imperial decree opened the seas to trade. A thousand ships set sail from Yuegang in Zhangzhou, making it the “greatest port in the East.” Sixteen-year-old Lin Ji, the second son of the Lin family, carried the ancestral blade Cangming at his waist. Together with his eldest brother Lin Song, whose wisdom was renowned throughout the South Seas, and his two sisters, both skilled in commerce, he helped safeguard the family business that spanned the world’s oceans. During a clove deal with Portuguese merchants, Lin Ji crossed paths with a group of extraordinary foreign youths: Ao Feng, a prodigy of the Grain Transport Gang who wielded a forged-iron anchor; Dongfang Jingshu, a genius girl versed in Mohist mechanisms; Ouyang Qing, a Persian-Chinese physician fluent in the secret codes of seven kingdoms; and Yu Chen, a fisherman's son who ruled the Qiongzhou Strait with nets woven from heavenly silkworm silk. Bound by shared ambition, the youths set sail aboard a modified Fuchuan, carrying Dehua porcelain and Wuyi tea from Yuegang’s golden docks toward the starry seas once conquered by Zheng He’s fleet.

From the spice wars of Luzon and the struggle over the Buddha’s tooth in Ceylon to the golden trade routes of Arabia and the porcelain craze in Lisbon, they made friends through combat and broke deadlocks through trade. Amid towering waves and raging storms, they unraveled the mystery of the “star-guiding woodcarving” left behind by the eunuch Sanbao. When Lin Song used game theory to solve the crisis in Malacca, and when Dongfang Jingshu’s improved “Thousand-Mechanism Sails” broke through a hurricane’s eye, the young adventurers would prove that beyond the seas of the Great Ming, a vast starry realm still awaited China.