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Preface: If the wheel of history takes another fork in the road... Dear readers, please put aside the familiar past for a moment. In 1402 AD, in the smoke of the Battle of Jingnan, the river of time suddenly bifurcated: Zhu Di failed to reach the top, and the Ming Dynasty split into sixteen kingdoms - Yanning, Jinqi, Qin, Liang, Dian, Shu, Wu, Yue, Zhou Wei, Fujian, Guangdong, Liang and Chu, each establishing its own foundation and competing for the world. This is an era when the old order collapses, and it is also the soil where new possibilities sprout: the wave of mercantile commerce hits the agricultural embankments, women break free from their restraints, and ocean sails sail towards the unknown with their ambitions. Technology spreads along unexpected paths, cultures intersect in heterogeneous soil, and countless extraordinary people write legends in the fissile East. This is not a simple historical hypothesis, but a thought experiment on the possibility of civilization: If centralization is loosened early, will the mercantile and pioneering spirit mature prematurely? If the collision between East and West takes another form, what kind of sparks will be sparked? The details in the book - the lineage of monarchs, technological chains, and species naming - are all carefully woven to build a logical and self-consistent world in the imagination. The events advance according to the timeline and geographical logic. The former is the cause and the latter is the effect. Please step into this familiar yet unfamiliar world. Although history has turned, the glory and darkness of human nature, the wisdom and folly of machinations, and the blending and conflict of civilizations are still shocking. The story begins... --Editor's Preface