I Want to Claim the Sea

I Want to Open the Sea

Also known as The Imperial Domain Dynasty: Love, Ahoy! Old Master Fu

In the fourteenth year of Hongzhi, Zhu Youhuang opened the Great Ming Code and came across six words: "Not even a single plank may go to sea."

Amid the city's brilliant fireworks, he couldn't stop thinking: The code contains the laws of our ancestors, but is there another way beyond it?

He said, "I want the Great Ming to see the sea sooner."

But no one at court could answer him.

He split off a strand of his imperial dragon lineage, took the assumed name Zhu Youfu, and headed south with a memorial that had lain dormant for a hundred years, searching for a way forward.

From the Grand Canal to Yuegang, he saw weavers whose silk was worth less than a bushel of rice, heard an old clerk say, "Even the government's sea has been cut off," and came across Xingtai Hall in Zhangzhou. Its hall seal was just like the bowl of bird's nest soup in the Forbidden City.

Chen Yinyi, keeper of foreign merchants' secret recipes; Chen Houxi, who told old tales with puppets; and Li Boyan, the self-proclaimed Doctor I Can, who said, "Yuegang is a trap." Then there were three fruits: the Yue Prince, trapped in his lands, planted pomelos; the Yi Prince planted mandarins to help the people; and the Min Prince, exiled, introduced wampee.

The court kept watch and covered things up, while Japanese pirates raided the coast and smuggled goods. Opening the sea risked chaos; closing it brought hardship to the people. Both sides had a point, and both sides faced difficulties.

He intended to establish the Imperial Domain Valley in Yuegang, linking seven docks, officials, merchants, commoners, and bandits, at home and abroad, into a single route. In his hands were a register of the Imperial Guard, a wooden puppet warm in his palm, and the religious name "Old Master Fu."

From Hongzhi to Longqing: sixty-five years. When Yuegang opened its gates in the first year of Longqing, the emperor trapped within his dragon robe had long since planted the lines on his sea charts as fruit trees covering the mountains.

The court had no answers, but the people had a way.

The imperial domains raise their banners, gathering foreign traders and joining them together.

Love the old self, find peace of mind and take joy in yourself.

This is not a fight for supremacy. It is a fight to stay alive.