The continental map of this world was nothing like Earth's.
Europe, Asia, and Africa, for instance, were all separated from one another, with no land connections between them. Europe itself was considerably larger as well. Centuries of continuous warfare across the European continent had pushed its people to unlock their potential and driven their development at a remarkable pace—they were the first to venture beyond their own landmass. Some of them first reached the nearby territory of Tsarist Russia, but rather than being conquered, Russia instead learned from their technology and joined the ranks of the great powers itself. Advances in seafaring then enabled them to undertake oceanic voyages at nearly the same time, and they simultaneously began their campaigns of aggression against the western and southern reaches of Asia, Africa, Australia, the Americas, and elsewhere.
That covered the major continents, but there were also many smaller landmasses and islands besides. The outside world was so vast that for the past hundred years or so, everyone had been too busy scrambling to seize territory to have finished dividing it all up. Among themselves, the great powers had not seen any large-scale conflicts for roughly a hundred years.
By year's end, the fleets of the four great dynasties had each set sail in turn. The very first wave dispatched every ocean-going vessel they had, along with a combined force of approximately five hundred thousand troops. Shipyards had been constructed as well, and with steel purchased from Longcheng, new warships were being built around the clock.
The navy was an entirely different beast from the army—the differences were vast. An army could carry on with ordinary life in peacetime, and when war broke out, you sounded the call and everyone who could fight would show up; it didn't take much time at all. But the navy was different. The navy was a branch of service that required time to build up. There was no such thing as a sudden surge of naval strength.
A single ship took a long time to construct. If you only started building when war broke out, the enemy could already be knocking at your door before your first vessel was finished. Under normal circumstances, if you built ten ships this year, your combat strength this year was ten. Build ten more the following year, and your strength became twenty. A decade later, you might break a hundred. Several decades on, you would be a formidable force of several hundred.
The great powers of today may have looked imposing, with so many ships it seemed they had enough to spare for fishing. But that was the accumulated result of several decades without a major war. Let a truly devastating, evenly matched conflict break out, and you would see what was what.
The several great dynasties, meanwhile, possessed enormous potential but very little actual strength. Unlike the other great powers, which had been developing for decades or even over a century, their naval strength was nowhere near catching up anytime soon. But their land forces were another matter—there was at least a chance to measure themselves against the rest.
Each of the great powers had a population in the tens of millions, and if fully mobilized, could conceivably field several million soldiers at a stroke. The several dynasties had populations at roughly the same level too! But with such weak navies, there was no choice—objectives had to be clear: abandon continental colonization for now, and focus first on seizing subcontinents and large islands. The output from such places might not match that of full continents, but their strategic value was immense.
This was the strategy Longcheng had advised. Get a seat at the table first, learn the rules of the game, get a feel for everyone's strength, wait a few years to build up enough power, and then go after bigger prizes.
As for Longcheng itself—any surplus capacity would be directed into the deserts of southwestern Asia. Within the next hundred years, that region would without question be the most valuable piece of ground in the world. Naturally, it had to be held firmly. Longcheng had made its decision: that three-million-square-kilometer expanse of desert—Longcheng was taking it.
As had been said before, a place doesn't belong to you just because you say you want it. So Longcheng would build a perimeter all the way around the desert, encircling it completely. After that, anyone who wanted in would have no choice but to fly.
News that four hungry wolves had come charging out of the Central Plains spread quickly among the nations, but no one paid it much mind. There was only mild regret that the chance to claim that fertile land might now be lost. As for the wolves' actual strength, the great powers regarded it with contempt. In their eyes, these were no fearsome wolves—at most, a few stray dogs. They had just arrived on the great chessboard of the world and were pitifully weak. At least they had the sense to slink into the corners and scavenge scraps. Otherwise, anyone would have been happy to teach them a lesson. After all, the pleasure of bullying children was something ordinary people couldn't appreciate.
And so it was that shortly after the Ming Emperor's two hundred thousand troops had set out to sea, one of his squadron divisions was attacked by the Italians. The losses were severe. Some time later, Italy sent a few men to Liujing with a single message: sorry, we mistook you for someone else.
No compensation. No real apology. Just that flippant dismissal—it drove the Ming Emperor into a fury. This was nothing but a bully picking on the weak just because they could! Were the Italians really so contemptible?
Consumed with rage, the Ming Emperor issued his order immediately: all forces deployed overseas were to converge on Italian Africa.
This was war! This was war!
On the open ocean, we are indeed still too weak!
Then let us settle this on land!