Chapter 40: The Unscientific Eastern Continent

After Sun Li established the ruling order of the British Isles through the brutal campaign to capture the capital of England, the entire continent of Europa once again revised its estimation of Song—a nation that had once been a small, remote country.

Amasya von William was undoubtedly the one among the leaders of the various powers who understood Sun Li best. This treacherous and cunning grand knight, who had risen to power through a coup, had become the unquestioned dictator of the German Republic under the prestige of his victories. The common people, moreover, strongly supported him.

One only had to look at the high-spirited German Imperial Guard to see how popular Amasya von William truly was.

Yet ever since Sun Li landed on the British Isles, Amasya von William had been unable to feel cheerful again. Having personally witnessed the rise of Song on the Orc Continent, he understood all too well how terrifying this nation, founded on military power, could be.

Although he could not understand how Sun Li had trained such a ruthless and battle-hardened army, the fearless soldiers who dared launch bayonet charges against enemies ten times their number truly existed—and their ranks were growing larger by the day.

Amasya von William had a premonition that the Song army had yet to reach its full potential. Sun Li could still recruit more fearless Song soldiers.

That was what frightened Amasya most of all. A nation capable of producing elite troops without end, ruled by an ambitious dictator—and he himself was one of that dictator’s next targets. Could anything be worse?

For this reason, Amasya was also the human monarch most eager to send troops to support the Dwarven Empire. Unfortunately, the Dwarven Empire was deeply wary of humanity. After all, humans had once been one of the principal races to betray the Dwarven Empire.

The Dwarven Empire naturally had no intention of sitting back and waiting for death. Its emperor dispatched most of the nation’s elite forces and stationed nearly two hundred thousand troops in the Funibo region, opposite the British Isles. The Dwarven Empire also possessed the most advanced technology in the world, including a plentiful supply of grenades comparable to Song’s.

It was the only power on the entire continent of Europa without a technological gap separating it from Song.

With two hundred thousand elite dwarven troops facing Song’s one hundred thousand veterans, the emperor of the Dwarven Empire did not believe he could possibly lose.

The Dwarven Empire’s sole concern was that, after suffering heavy casualties while repelling Sun Li’s invasion, the three human powers behind them might seize the opportunity to stab them in the back.

That was why the Elven Empire had deployed its forces along the border of the Kingdom of Light. Faced with humanity, an enemy that continually produced formidable figures, the only two races capable of resisting mankind had unsurprisingly joined forces—and their alliance was even more stable than the Triple Alliance.

Thus, while the various powers of the continent of Europa appeared united in opposing the outside threat and jointly guarding against the notoriously expansionist Sun Li setting foot on the mainland, a delicate balance had formed beneath the surface.

While the nations of Europa were on guard against Song and still reeling from the revelation of its strength, Sun Li was speaking face-to-face with a human who also possessed black hair and black eyes.

England, being a country with highly developed trade, naturally attracted all kinds of foreign merchants. Among them was a very small number of traders from the mysterious Eastern Continent. There were not many of them, and they seemed to belong to a single power. To avoid trouble, they did business only with the English, whose maritime commerce was the most advanced.

English merchants were delighted to purchase the Eastern Continent’s various exotic products and resell them for a handsome profit. Naturally, they had no intention of revealing the Eastern merchants’ secrets to other countries.

After occupying the British Isles, Sun Li quite naturally discovered the Eastern merchants who had been stranded there by the war.

Looking at the merchant before him, dressed in robes resembling the ancient Confucian attire of China, Sun Li felt a surge of novelty. He had seen countless styles of clothing utterly unlike those of Earth, but when he suddenly encountered traditional garments with such distinctly Chinese features, he was inexplicably filled with a sense of familiarity and curiosity.

“You say you come from the distant Eastern Continent? What nations and powers exist there? Can you tell me about the situation in detail? Look at us—we are of the same race and complexion. I have always been deeply interested in people of my own kind. If you introduce me to the situation on your continent, I will reward you handsomely.”

Sun Li smiled as he spoke to the merchant seated before him.

The Eastern merchant’s clothing was not particularly fine. From his plain attire, Sun Li could easily tell that he was not a wealthy trader and was probably only an assistant. After all, a power capable of crossing an ocean to conduct trade could not possibly be represented by a mere lone peddler.

“I am deeply sorry, Your Majesty, the great Emperor of Song. I am only a low-ranking merchant from the Eastern Continent and do not know very much. I can tell you only that our continent contains a single unified nation, whose name is Qin.”

The merchant answered respectfully. From his cautious manner, it seemed he truly knew very little.

But how could Sun Li be satisfied with a mere national name? Qin sounded imposing enough, but that information was of little practical use to him.

What followed was Sun Li’s familiar combination of threats and inducements. A man determined to conquer the entire world could hardly ignore the last known continent on it.

The Orc Continent, the Golden State Continent, the continent of Europa, and the Eastern Continent—these made up the entire known world. After centuries of circumnavigation and exploration by the nations of Europa, it had essentially been confirmed that no other continents existed. A few insignificant islands were not even worth placing on Sun Li’s conquest list.

After the Gestapo joined the interrogation, Sun Li obtained a great deal more information from the merchant—or perhaps it was more accurate to call it common knowledge.

The so-called Eastern Continent was not mysterious at all. The libraries of every country contained brief records about it. The reason it had gained such a mysterious reputation was its utterly unreasonable policy of isolation.

It was even more thorough than the isolation imposed by the Qing dynasty in Sun Li’s memories of Earth.

Every foreign power and every foreigner—he meant every single one—was forbidden from landing on the Eastern Continent. If anyone did manage to land there, congratulations: they could forget about ever returning home.

Long ago, the Great Dwarf Emperor had been unable to tolerate the Eastern Continent’s absurd policy of isolation. They had even dared detain his diplomatic envoys. Did they truly think the Great Dwarf Emperor was someone to be trifled with?

The result had been a great military expedition by the Great Dwarf Emperor.

And then came a crushing defeat.

The dwarven soldiers who escaped and returned were among the very few foreigners ever to make it out of the Eastern Continent alive.

Although the Eastern Continent was extremely strict in its exclusion of outsiders, the power of gold was infinite. The two continents possessed entirely different cultures and specialties, and the profits generated by their trade were enormous. Thus, every year, the ancient Qin government of the Eastern Continent sent a merchant fleet to trade with the continent of Europa.

Naturally, it did so solely to make money. Every other form of diplomacy was out of the question.

After witnessing the disastrous defeat of the Great Dwarf Emperor, the nations of Europa did not make things difficult for the Eastern merchants. Once questioning revealed how little these merchants knew about the wider world, the Europeans abandoned any attempt to communicate with the Eastern Continent.

After all, the Easterners were apparently powerful enough, showed no intention of invading, and were best left undisturbed.

However, under the Gestapo’s interrogation, Sun Li was astonished to discover that the Eastern Continent was not technologically advanced, nor did it possess overwhelmingly powerful armies or legions of hardened elite soldiers.

It was nothing like what Sun Li had imagined.

Indeed, it was completely illogical. It was behind the continent of Europa in every respect.

That was the Eastern Continent described by the merchant.

Not only was its productive capacity still at the level of the cold-steel age, but its armies consisted almost entirely of archers and crossbowmen. Heavy swordsmen and similar troops were straight out of Song’s feudal era—or, in some cases, were even less advanced than certain troops from Song’s feudal periods.

At the very least, Sun Li had never heard that Qin of the Eastern Continent possessed longbowmen capable of shooting beyond one hundred meters. Its long-range striking capability was simply pathetic.

Its melee forces were not particularly impressive either. According to the merchant, Qin had ruled for more than a thousand years, and no large-scale war had taken place anywhere on the continent during that time. Its military preparedness could naturally be imagined.

To put it plainly, Qin’s army was not meant for war at all. It existed to control the common people.

Of course, against bandits and the like, Qin’s backward army was more than sufficient.

This should have been good news—good news in every possible sense for Sun Li.

But then a problem emerged.

The Great Dwarf Emperor had launched his invasion with an entirely firearm-equipped army.

The situation was rather absurd. Most of the current technological level of the continent of Europa had been inherited from the achievements of the Great Dwarf Emperor. There had been little real technological development since then.

Even the flintlock had appeared as a new weapon during the later years of the Great Dwarf Emperor’s reign.

It had taken humanity and the other races several centuries merely to digest the Dwarven Empire’s technology, which had leapt across entire eras.

That was also the greatest reason the surviving Dwarven Empire looked down on humanity.

And yet the Great Dwarf Emperor had been completely annihilated by a Qin army armed with cold weapons—an army that was weak even by the standards of the cold-steel age. The emperor himself had died in a foreign land.

It made no sense at all.

Sun Li strongly suspected that the merchant was lying.

The merchant consequently suffered for it.

Under the Gestapo’s interrogation, he ended up confessing even the color of his wife’s underwear.

Yet the genuinely useful information remained unchanged.

It seemed Qin truly was a backward nation that relied on cold weapons. As for how it had defeated the army of the Great Dwarf Emperor, Sun Li simply could not imagine.

Could it have been like the Mongols’ expedition against Japan, with a storm carrying the invaders down into the depths of the sea? But the records left by the dwarven soldiers who escaped did not describe anything of the sort.

After ordering that the Eastern merchants be placed under strict house arrest and instructing his people to uncover every possible piece of intelligence about the Eastern Continent, Sun Li had no choice but to set aside his curiosity.

No matter how inexplicable it was, he would have to wait until the continent of Europa had been pacified.

When that time came, he would personally lead an army to see what was truly so mysterious about the Eastern Continent.