I Want to Open a Sea 2

"I, the Emperor, Want to Open the Seas", also known as "The Imperial Domain Dynasty's Love of the Sea: Old Master Fu" Volume One: Seeking the Way in Disappointment

An emperor spent five years compiling a book that locked him in place, then set out to find its cracks with his own hands.

In the fifteenth year of the Hongzhi reign, Zhu Youhuang finally completed the Great Ming Code, a work five years in the making. Two hundred and seventeen officials and eighty-six thousand four hundred and thirty-seven taels of silver had gone into it. Yet in the section on the Maritime Trade Office, only six characters had never changed: No single plank may go to sea.

On the third day of the first month, he slipped alone into the Inner Treasury archives and sifted through the dust for three days.

On the fifth, he found a memorial wrapped in yellow silk. It was signed: The third year of Jianwen, the condemned commoner Zhu Dingmin. One hundred and one years ago.

Its author was a down-and-out prince, stripped of his fief and exiled to Zhangzhou. He did not cry injustice or beg to have his title restored. He wrote only of a pomelo, a wampee, and a way for the people by the sea to survive.

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

But at court, not one person could answer him.

So, on the eighth day of the first month, in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, he separated a wisp of imperial dragon aura and made it into a man named Zhu Youfu. Carrying a brocade box containing the memorial, a golden lion seal, a sixteen-character imperial decree, and a bowl of bird's nest porridge from Xingtai Hall, Zhu Youfu headed south on his behalf.

He would travel through Quzhou, Jianchang, and Zhangzhou, gathering twelve people to seek out that pomelo, that mandarin orange tree, that wampee, and the harbor called Yuegang.

Only when they reached the Huiwei Temple before General Mountain in Yunxiao, Zhangzhou, and cast three holy divination blocks would the name "Old Master Fu" enter the world.

The imperial fief will raise its banners, bringing the foreign lands together and uniting their people.

The court has no answer, but the people have a way forward.

I entrust this path to you.