Singapore.
During the Song and Yuan dynasties, it had been called Sea City; in modern times, Xingzhou. It was a gathering place for the Chinese of Southeast Asia. Pu Mingyuan preferred the traditional name, Sea City, to Singapore.
Sea City's October air was hot and humid, as though the entire city had just been hauled out of warm seawater.
Pu Mingyuan stood on the rooftop deck of Marina Bay Sands. He could clearly see the lights of Marina Bay tracing an arc across the sultry night.
Looking farther into the distance, he could see Haicheng Port, where cranes and shipping containers blanketed the horizon as though they cost nothing.
Sea City was Pu Mingyuan's home base, and the place where the entire Nanyang Pu Clan had sought refuge in the late Ming Dynasty. After five centuries of operation, the Pu Family had long since taken control of a formidable share of Haicheng Port's maritime trade.
But with the rise of the great power to the north, Sea City's standing in the world had fallen far from what it once was.
Pu Mingyuan could sense it. Beyond the Ming Dynasty loyalists stirring up trouble in Sea City, the will of a nation was bearing down from the north like an unstoppable tide.
Before that tide, the entire Pu Family was a lone boat in a storm, liable to capsize at any moment.
But Pu Mingyuan had no way back. If they left Sea City, the Pu Family would lose its bargaining chip with the Illuminati.
Although the people at the meetings still seemed wary of him, Pu Mingyuan knew perfectly well that once they lost Sea City, the entire Pu Family would be served straight onto those people's dining tables.
Their only way to survive was to use the power of