Shen Le: Zheng He looks like that? You're kidding me?!

A large force was coming.

However, they had not come as Shen Le had hoped—imposing, murderous, fully manned, fully equipped, and in peak condition.

Dozens—perhaps nearly a hundred—of towering warships charged across the sea.

Smoke billowed, flames raged, and battle cries rang without pause.

Besides the fleet flying golden banners emblazoned with the character "Ming," there were also some bizarre-looking vessels, clearly unlike Ming-style warships, pressed tightly against them amid waves of shouting.

Most were small boats, clinging to the elephant-like giant ships like a pack of wolves, harassing them, firing arrows, throwing grappling hooks, and setting fires.

But some ships were roughly the same size as the smaller warships in the Ming Army fleet. They pressed alongside the warships, boarded them, hacked and slaughtered, smashed with battering poles, and used various devices to hurl stones—

In short, in one-on-one engagements, the two sides were still fairly evenly matched.

But when the enormous treasure ships rode the wind and waves, crushing forward, those small warships that charged at them shattered one after another like eggs striking boulders!

"This is the crushing advantage of big ships over small ones!"

Shen Le's blood surged as he watched. When Zheng He sailed westward, the treasure ships that represented the Ming Dynasty's peak productive power

were an utterly overwhelming force against Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and even East Africa.

Unfortunately, those idiotic civil officials had ten thousand tons of water in their brains. Not only did they push for a maritime ban, they even burned the treasure ship construction records and nautical charts.

In the end, the entire legacy was severed. When foreign warships came sailing in with overwhelming force, we had shut ourselves off from the world and could not build large ships, leaving us with no choice but to take the