Seven Seas Beacon Fire

"General Sa, our army was defeated by the Colombian and Victorian allied forces despite having a numerical advantage?"

“Your Highness, the navy is different from the army. Although we will have to send two more ships, the total tonnage and individual ship weight of the Colombian and Victorian allied forces are superior to ours.” Sa Dingming couldn't allow the navy to leave a bad impression on the Prince of Jin due to the Prince's lack of understanding of naval technology, so he immediately explained:

"Although the combined forces of Colombia and Victoria are small in number, the warships they have deployed are all cutting-edge and advanced. In particular, the Royal Victorian Navy's Queen Elizabeth-class battleships are among the most powerful battleships in the world, with eight 15-inch guns and 13-inch armor! Their tonnage is estimated to be in the 30,000-ton range."

The Renown-class battlecruisers displaced nearly 40,000 tons. Compared to the Queen Elizabeth-class battlecruisers, they not only boasted the world's fastest speed of 32 knots, but also, despite having only two fewer main guns, offered superior protection. Even the two Tiger battlecruisers, displacing over 30,000 tons, were equipped with eight 13.5-inch guns. Their armor was so strong that they were immune to our 280mm guns.

The combined fleet of the Victorian Empire and the United States of Colombia comprised all twelve battlecruisers, all of them super-dreadnoughts, and they suppressed our fleet from the very beginning.

After listening to Sa Dingming's introduction, Li Che's eyelids twitched involuntarily. In his impression, the Renown-class battlecruiser from another world was fragile, but in his own world, it didn't sound like a Renown at all. Instead, it sounded like a six-gun version of the Hood! Even the Tiger's armor seemed to have been strengthened.

No wonder the Ming Dynasty's Royal Navy lost this battle. Considering the British still had the Vengeance-class battleships equipped with 15-inch guns on their home turf, it's truly regrettable that the Victorian Royal Navy wasn't allowed to unleash its full power...

Now everyone understood that the numerical advantage was nothing compared to the difference in the quality of the troops. General Deng Zhengqing only had 6 super-dreadnought battlecruisers under his command, and the super-dreadnoughts currently in service with the Ming army were generally equipped with 330mm naval guns jointly developed with Letania before the war. Although the performance of the guns was quite good, they were obviously not qualified to compete with 15-inch naval guns.

Although the Ming Dynasty's old-fashioned battleships, equipped with 280mm naval guns, had a numerical advantage, they could not inflict any effective damage on the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships, which had superior firepower, mobility, and protection, and whose overall combat capabilities were second only to the Bavarian-class battleships. They could only rely on their decent protection to hold on.

As early as the Battle of Jutland, the Leitanian High Seas Fleet's warships equipped with 280mm main guns had already proven that such guns could only threaten the Britons' fragile battlecruisers with only six inches of armor. Even the Lion-class battlecruisers with nine inches of armor were not easily challenged by 280mm guns.

"...In addition to the lack of manpower, the gun control systems of our warships are inferior to those of the Victorian warships. Our fire control consoles are only equivalent to the early models of the Victorian Polon fire control consoles, while the Victorian warships are generally equipped with later models of the Polon and Drell fire control consoles. In addition, our warships are in unfavorable positions on the battlefield, backlit and windward, which greatly hinders our visibility and communication, resulting in extremely low shelling efficiency. In less than an hour after the start of the battle, three battleships sank and one battlecruiser withdrew from the battle line. The situation is already very precarious."

"At that time, I was in the command tower of the battleship Haikang. I was prepared to fight to the last bullet. However, when Deng Zhengqing saw that the battle was going badly, he ordered the forward battlecruisers to increase their speed and charge diagonally towards the front of the Victoria fleet in order to get the rear battleships out of the battle line and preserve them."

Hearing that Deng Zhengqing led six battlecruisers to attack an entire enemy battleship, everyone's emotions seemed to be infected by General Deng Zhengqing's heroic deeds. Although Sa Dingming was only calmly describing the course of the naval battle, it was even more exciting than the most thrilling storytelling they had ever heard before.

"The Victorian forces used four ships, including the HMS Renown, to intercept them. Bullets rained down on Deng Zhengqing's flagship, the battlecruiser 'Zhiyuan.' By 3:30 p.m., General Deng Zhengqing saw that they had attracted the vast majority of the Victorian forces' firepower. Therefore, he hoisted a signal flag on the battlecruiser 'Zhiyuan' and ordered all the battlecruisers to make a 180-degree turn on the spot to prepare to withdraw from the battlefield. The 'Zhiyuan,' which was originally the lead ship charging at the forefront, now fell to the rear to cover the rest of the army."

At this point, Sa Dingming's voice choked with emotion, and he couldn't help but take another sip of hot tea: "But when the Zhiyuan was about to complete its turn, it suddenly exploded, and no one on board survived. General Deng Zhengqing also perished with the ship."

It can be said that the successful withdrawal of the remaining battlecruisers in the vanguard and the remaining battleships in the rearguard to Surabaya Harbor was entirely due to General Deng Zhengqing's desperate final charge. When our forces retreated to the outside of Surabaya Harbor, the main force of the Federal Navy's battleships arrived just in time; any later and we would have been blocked outside the harbor by the Federal Navy's main battleships.

Hearing this, everyone couldn't help but feel a little scared. It was clear that the Victorian Empire and the United States of Colombia were planning to use battlecruiser squadrons as "quick knives" and battleship squadrons as "anvils," but General Deng Zhengqing's heroic actions disrupted their plans.

"I had great respect for General Deng Zhengqing after hearing about his martyrdom, but I never imagined that he would be so heroic."

Li Zongdi sighed in admiration, then slammed his hand on the table and said to Li Che, who was sitting at the end of the table, "Boy, go out and pour me a cup of wine. Today, I, your grandfather, will break the rules and regulations and offer a toast to General Deng Zhengqing from afar."

Chapter Fourteen: Sa Dingming's "Chrysanthemum Water Special Attack"?

After learning in detail about the events leading up to and following the Battle of the Java Sea, and hearing firsthand the heroic story of General Deng Zhengqing, most of the attendees felt a sense of honor and respect for the hero.

The problem is that although everyone has gained a lot of information from Sa Dingming that they didn't know before, there is one thing that has not been resolved: how to defeat the current enemy?

Although we can learn from Sa Dingming's words and summarize the lessons of the navy's past failures, and gain spiritual inspiration from Deng Zhengqing, these may become valuable spiritual assets for the army in the future. This kind of thing will be the key to an army's ability to maintain its combat effectiveness and prosper in the long term.

But this is not what everyone urgently needs right now.

When a person faces a robber about to break into their home, all they need is a weapon they can use to defend themselves immediately. This could be a sharp knife, or even just a brick, not an AR-15 that they ordered online and will be delivered by a courier company days later.

When Li Zongdi asked Sa Dingming what the navy could do after receiving supplies, Sa Dingming proposed both a safety net plan and an aggressive plan.

The so-called fallback plan was the rat transportation plan that Sa Dingming had already devised beforehand. The name was unpleasant, but it was very practical. This plan guaranteed a minimum level of resistance against the Victorian Empire and the United States of Colombia, at least ensuring that the troops still resisting in Luzon and Yanping would not be completely isolated and helpless.

Another, more aggressive battle plan was devised specifically for the United States Army in Silla.

Sa Dingming was not the kind of general who only focused on the sea. Before the Prince of Jin decided to launch a rebellion, Li Zongdi had already led a large army into Silla and dealt a heavy blow to the allied forces that had just seized the Yingzhou Islands by betraying the Ming army and the shogunate army, and who were now plotting against Silla.

Although the United States Army joined the European War a year earlier than historically, and many officers had been tempered on the European battlefield, after losing the Victorian Army and the Gallic Army, the quality and combat experience of the United States Army's soldiers could not compare with the field army under the Prince of Jin.

Not to mention that Andre Walker Brewster, the commander of the Federal Silla Task Force, who was originally a cavalryman, was clearly far inferior to Li Zongdi in the use of infantry and artillery. In the Battle of Pyongyang, the Gallic M917 155mm heavy howitzers, which were the mainstay of the United States Army's firepower, were actually suppressed by the Ming Army's 105mm howitzers.

During the Jingnan Rebellion, the situation on the Silla battlefield had been reversed. Yi Cheol's second uncle, Yi In-hee, and third uncle, Yi In-sui, led troops to successfully divide the United States army on the Silla battlefield. One part compressed the area towards Wonsan, while the other part moved south to capture Seoul and then prepared to push the United States army further towards Busan.

This battle plan is the most complete battle plan that Sa Dingming has come up with after revising the original plan for transporting rats on the spot.

He knew that the Prince of Jin had high expectations for the navy, so he did his best to enhance the navy's initiative within what he believed was within its capabilities.

Therefore, the battle plan proposed by Sa Dingming can be described as a suicidal scheme, which is to use the old pre-dreadnought ships of the Beiyang Fleet in Vladivostok, choose bad weather to sail secretly, and sail along the bays off the coast of Silla, hiding during the day and sailing at night, to reach the landing site of the United States Army at Wonsan Port under the cover of darkness.

Then these old guys will collectively storm the beach, transforming into an unsinkable steel fortress on the beachhead, using their artillery to bury the Federation forces already surrounded in the Yuanshan area, cooperating with the army on the shore to fight a battle of annihilation against the Federation here, and wipe out the hundreds of thousands of people surrounded here!

Vladivostok was originally one of the important naval ports of the Ming Dynasty's Beiyang Fleet, but it had already become the "Beiyang retirement home" before the outbreak of the last war. These old battleships were already outdated before the outbreak of this world war. However, these old ships, which are over thirty years old and about to reach forty, have been entrusted with such a heavy responsibility when the country is in turmoil.

This is reminiscent of the magnificent fleet of the Ming Dynasty before this great war, which consisted of "eight hundred warships and three thousand sea eagles." Now, the main force is divided among several ports in the south, forcing these older ships to go to the front lines to carry out a mission that is destined to have no return.

Anyone with even a little knowledge of the navy knows just how likely these old ships are to successfully storm the landing zone. Sa Dingming knows this even better than others. But if just one or two ships can successfully beach themselves, then they will become a fortress that will give the enemy a headache.

In this war, the turning point from prosperity to decline for the Ming Dynasty stemmed from the navy's defeat at sea. Sa Dingming's battle plan was also formulated with a mindset of atonement and revenge.

Li Zongdi certainly saw this as well. After listening to Sa Dingming's account, he frowned slightly. Although the Prince of Jin, who did not understand the navy, was not very clear about the probability of the battleships successfully beaching, even if this kind of central attack tactic was successful, the officers and soldiers on those ships would probably suffer heavy casualties, and might even be completely wiped out.

"Is such a disastrous battle plan all the navy can come up with?" Li Zongdi asked. "Doesn't the navy still have 25 capital ships? Can't these ships play a role?"

"Your Highness, before the Jingnan Campaign, you must have given instructions to the two princes who were leading troops in Silla. One of them should have been to annihilate the United States army, which is now being gradually compressed into the area around Wonsan, right?"

Instead of directly answering where Li Zongdi's 25 main warships were, Sa Dingming made a bold guess about Li Zongdi's deployment on the Silla battlefield.

“That’s right. I’m prepared to kill a million Federation people on the battlefield. Only by hurting them and making them suffer can we possibly force them to withdraw from the war.”

The United States army on the Silla battlefield has been divided into two parts. More than 10 United States troops have now been cut off from their retreat to the south and are compressed into the Wonsan area. The possibility of these United States troops breaking out to the south by land is very low. At present, everyone can see that after Li Zongdi sent his son to lead troops to surround this piece of meat, the next step is to eat it.

If the Federation wanted to rescue this part of the force, they could only retreat by sea, which is why Sa Dingming devised a tactic of having the old battleships beach themselves.

As for why not use the navy's newer and more advanced dreadnoughts, or even super-dreadnoughts...

"Can Your Highness wait for half a year?"

Half a year?

Li Zongdi shook his head: "It will take at least a month and a half, and at the latest no more than two months. I have to close the net, otherwise the Federation will withdraw the surrounded troops from the sea."

"That's the problem. In such a short time, we can only restore the navy's few battleships that have suffered relatively minor damage and are in relatively good condition to full combat capability."

Even disregarding the battlecruisers surrounded in Surabaya harbor, restoring the remaining battleships to near-combat readiness, assuming ample supplies and robust logistical support, would require at least six months of thorough repairs to many of the larger surface ships.

Sa Dingming revealed the fundamental reason: it is true that the navy has 25 capital ships on paper, but it is simply impossible for the navy to deploy so many capital ships in battle.

Putting aside other things, the battlecruisers and several dreadnoughts that retreated to Surabaya Port during the Java Sea naval battle have been trapped in the port and have not yet been fully repaired. You certainly can't expect these warships to be combat-ready, can you?

In the best-case scenario, the navy could only recover to half the number of combat-capable capital ships it currently possesses, and even then, it would take at least six months.

Therefore, the reason why Sa Dingming came up with this suicidal battle plan was simply because he had no better options at the moment.

Chapter Fifteen: The Key to Victory Lies Within (1)

This is just like the Kikusui Special Attack!

After listening to Sa Dingming introduce the two battle plans to Li Zongdi, Li Che could only say that he had a strong sense of déjà vu.

However, he couldn't really accuse anyone. When the Old Yingzhou Empire formulated the Kikusui Special Operations plan, the high-ranking IJN officers responsible for formulating the plan didn't personally pilot kamikaze pilot planes to crash into Federation warships.

However, in Sa Dingming's battle plan, he was indeed prepared to personally lead those outdated pre-dreadnought ships in Vladivostok to launch a fierce assault on the Federation's landing site.

Perhaps when Sa Dingming saw the smoke and clouds from the explosion of Deng Zhengqing's ship behind him during the retreat in the Battle of the Java Sea, he already had the thought of not wanting to live any longer.

However, with so many naval affairs weighing on his shoulders, he had no choice but to reluctantly shoulder them all, even bearing the title of a defeated general in the Java Sea naval battle.

Li Zongdi solemnly stated that he would seriously consider the battle plan proposed by Sa Dingming and would give him a formal reply within a few days. This basically reassured Sa Dingming—the Prince of Jin had essentially given preliminary approval to the battle plan, and the rest would basically involve some more detailed coordination and adjustments.

Moreover, compared to Li Zongdi's proposed operational plan for the Wonsan Port landing site, Li Zongdi was more interested in using the navy's high-speed ships to maintain supplies and support to Luzon and Yeonpyeong. Although this rat-moving-house-like maritime transport operation plan was unsightly, it also showed that the Prince of Jin did have greater ambitions for the future development of the war.

His campaign was not intended to be limited to Silla alone. The former Ming dynasty's overseas vassal states, the Three Xuan and Six Wei in Southeast Asia, were clearly areas that Prince Jin wanted to preserve as much as possible. This was undoubtedly great news for the navy—what did temporary humiliation matter? As long as Prince Jin needed the navy, the navy would eventually be able to rise again.

"Does it have to be this way?"

Just as Sa Dingming had finished explaining his battle plan and Li Zongdi had basically given his approval, and the hotpot meal was about to end, a somewhat abrupt voice rang out.

Looking in the direction from which the voice came, it was not surprising that the speaker was indeed the grandson Li Che. Grandchildren are always more "unrestrained" in front of their grandparents. Therefore, at this dinner party, which was essentially Sa Dingming "offering advice" to Li Zongdi, only Li Che could make such a somewhat rash statement.

Li Zongdi thought that his grandson was still too young and felt that such tactics were too brutal. He believed that most of the personnel on the old battleships and escort ships would have a hard time surviving, which meant that more than a thousand people would be thrown in at once.

So, just like when he used to teach his grandson, he no longer spoke to him in a casual tone, but rather said more solemnly: "Zhi'er, people always die in wars. As a general, you need to avoid unnecessary sacrifices, but sometimes the sacrifices you have to make can bring more soldiers back from the battlefield alive. This is what is meant by 'a merciful general cannot command an army.' You can't be soft-hearted at crucial moments, and you must be able to fill in yourself when necessary."

“Grandpa, General Sa, you’ve probably misunderstood me.” Li Che then abandoned his casual conversation from the dinner table, stood up, and solemnly bowed. “I just have some personal insights on how to utilize the surviving naval forces, and I’d like to share them now in the hope that General Sa can offer some corrections.”

No one expected that Li Che would actually offer advice from a "professional" perspective. Li Renzhi almost wanted to stand up and tell the kid to stop fooling around. Although Li Che had been exceptionally intelligent since childhood and even had a reputation as a child prodigy, as the saying goes, everyone has their own expertise.

Imagine you're a football prodigy who showed talent comparable to Messi and Ronaldo from a young age, scouted by a Champions League powerhouse and joined their youth academy, displaying exceptional talent on the field at 18. But you've hardly ever had a proper education, and suddenly one day you pick up a pen and want to participate in the Advanced Mathematical Olympiad. What? Are you also Jiang Sheng?

But before he could react, Li Che had already spoken, and surprisingly, he spoke with remarkable clarity and order: "My idea is to use surviving large armored cruisers, first-class light cruisers, and ocean-going submarines for long-range commerce raiding, and various light warships for near-shore counterattacks. I call this an 'asymmetric confrontation' strategy..."

Lee Che himself was quite satisfied with the term "asymmetric confrontation," and the name wouldn't seem out of place in the operational plans proposed by the United States Army in the 21st century. What? The Federation really proposed an asymmetric confrontation plan against Dongda in the 21st century? That only makes one sigh at how the Beacon Army has fallen so low.

Li Che's remarks surprised Sa Dingming, because he found the things Li Che said to be both strange and familiar.

Since the advent of the steam-powered ironclad warship era, battles between surface ships at sea have always seemed to follow the same outcome: the side with a clear advantage in artillery, tonnage, and steel has won, and this has been almost without exception for half a century.

Therefore, when Sa Dingming was formulating the battle plan, he still tried his best to think about how to make the most of the capital ships—even though they were old ships that had been in service for 30 years.

The reason it is familiar is that this operational plan clearly incorporates the ideas of the Gallic Greenwater Navy. Cruiser warfare, as a typical tactic for a weaker navy to deal with a stronger navy, first emerged in the Commonwealth War of Independence and was gradually developed and popularized by the Gallic Navy at the end of the 9th century. It can be said that its vitality has always been very strong.

However, very few people still mention the Green Water Navy now, because even the Gauls Navy, which proposed this theory, has abandoned it.

The fundamental reason why the Gallic Navy completely abandoned the idea of ​​a green-water navy was that in the age of dreadnoughts, especially in the face of the British battlecruisers, the strategy of winning by disrupting trade routes quickly failed.

The Royal Victorian Navy's encirclement and suppression of the two armored cruiser squadrons led by Earl Spee demonstrated the dominance of battlecruisers over traditional armored cruisers.

Although the Emden occasionally had some impressive moments, its performance was not enough to turn the tide of the battle.

However, Li Che's approach to commerce raiding was quite different. In his later detailed explanation, he referred to this commerce raiding as "offensive commerce raiding."

The current situation on the Pacific Ocean is indeed one where the Federation holds an absolute advantage in fleet strength, but your Federation Navy's battlecruisers have been almost completely lost!

What? You mean the Federal Navy still has two battlecruisers? Oh, those two ships, like the Invincible, which Rear Admiral Hood was on when he tried to stop the Leitanians from retreating during the Battle of Jutland, were subjected to concentrated fire while trying to block the Ming army from entering Surabaya.

The Commonwealth battlecruisers were clearly much more fragile than the British battlecruisers. One ship was set on fire off the coast of Surabaya, while the other was heavily damaged and sunk by a Ming submarine on its return voyage. By this time, the Commonwealth Navy had lost all its battlecruisers.

Although the Ming Dynasty Royal Navy suffered the most heavy losses in the Battle of the Java Sea and was undoubtedly the loser, the good thing was that it took away the last two battlecruisers of the Federal Navy.

Chapter Sixteen: The Key to Victory Lies Within (2)

Li Che's long and eloquent speech made Li Zongdi almost not recognize his own grandson.

Although this kid was known for his intelligence from a young age, and even when he was only eleven or twelve, he could, when I was testing his studies, draw parallels between the history of the European wars during the Napoleonic era and the situation in Europe at that time.

Furthermore, he stated in front of me, in a tone that was more of a guess than a statement, that a large-scale European war would definitely break out within a few years, and that the Ming Empire would likely be drawn into it because of its close relationship with Letania.

However, if the various extraordinary qualities this kid has displayed compared to his peers can be attributed to the category of "genius," and can be considered as him being more intelligent and precocious than ordinary people, then the familiarity with the navy he showed in his conversation with Sa Dingming about the navy at the dinner table today, at least in a theoretical way, is somewhat hard to understand.

After all, no matter how talented a person is, at most they can only learn something very quickly. Just like Gauss and Newton in the West, no matter how brilliant their achievements in mathematics and physics were, and how amazing their talent in these areas was, they still had to go through a period of study to acquire this ability.

However, after the boy came of age and volunteered to join the army, although the prince was busy with the war and could hardly see his grandson, the Prince of Jin always sent people in the army to keep an eye on his grandson. On the one hand, it was for the boy's safety, and on the other hand, he wanted to see how the boy behaved in the army.

After all, Li Zongdi did not want his grandson to be talented but immoral, and the boy's performance in the army did not disappoint him. He ate and lived with the soldiers, and after the initial adaptation period, he was no longer the pampered young master he once was in the palace.

Therefore, although the Prince of Jin seemed to be preoccupied with national affairs and military secrets all day long, he was actually very familiar with the situation of his grandson.

This kid definitely doesn't have the time or opportunity to learn about these naval expertise.

But the naval expertise this kid displayed today... could it be that there really is such a thing as being self-taught?

The Federal Navy does indeed possess the most powerful battle fleet in the Pacific Ocean, but those slow-moving iron turtles with a speed of only 21 knots are unlikely to be able to chase down those Ming Dynasty's last-generation armored cruisers and faster first-class light cruisers on the open ocean.

Although the former could not outrun battlecruisers, they were either equipped with the last generation of reciprocating triple-engines or even early steam turbines, with speeds ranging from 23.5 knots to 25.5 knots.

The latter are even faster. These first-class light cruisers are similar to "Hawkins" or "Aoba" from another timeline. From the perspective of the London Naval Treaty, they should be classified as heavy cruisers. They would be embarrassed to greet anyone if they didn't have a speed of 30 knots. The Federation's battleships would have even less chance of catching these ships.

It is precisely because of the fact that the Federation Navy's high-speed battlecruisers have been almost completely lost that this offensive commerce raiding has a basis for implementation. Unlike the traditional cruiser warfare of simply sending out some high-speed cruisers to carry out guerrilla warfare, the destruction under offensive commerce raiding will be carried out on a fleet-by-fleet basis.

Led by those last-generation armored cruisers and new first-class light cruisers (heavy cruisers), these commerce raiding fleets could easily defeat any cruiser formation of the Federation Navy, while also easily escaping the pursuit of any battleship of the Federation Navy.

What's even more surprising is that after listening to his description, General Sa Dingming didn't make any statements like "rockets can't be washed with water" to deny the professionalism of Li Che's battle plan. Instead, he earnestly questioned Li Che from a technical detail perspective:

"What if the Federation escorts the transport convoy with their battleships?"

In the later stages of the World War, the West, facing the threat of Leitanian submarines, began to adopt a convoy escort strategy. The Federation now had surplus capital ships, such as the Federation's earliest South Carolina-class battleships. These two earliest Federation dreadnoughts had a speed of only 16 knots and did not participate in any battles throughout the war, but wouldn't it be perfect to use them for escort now?

These two weakest battleships of the Federation were not even worthy of a challenge from any of the Ming army's last armored cruisers.

“If the Federation uses battleships for escort, then we will use submarine ‘wolfpack tactics’ to launch an attack.” Li Che responded with ease to the key question raised by Sa Dingming: “I emphasized from the beginning that submarines are also a crucial link in asymmetric warfare, and they are closely linked with surface ships.”

"Wolf pack tactics?" After listening carefully to Li Che's concise explanation of what wolf pack tactics were, Sa Dingming immediately realized the immense power of this tactic.

Submarines were a weapon that the Leitanians had just made a name for themselves in this world war; before that, they were simply a minor player in naval warfare.

This thing is like the FPV in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Before the war broke out, it was not valued by the mainstream military community. However, its outstanding performance in this world war silenced many who thought submarines were a side trick in naval warfare.

While this technology may not yet be able to play a crucial role in determining the outcome of a fleet battle, no one dares to underestimate the enormous role submarines can play in other areas. After all, one of the only two major battles achieved by the Ming army in the Java Sea was by submarines, which salvaged some face for the Ming Royal Navy.

Maybe it really works?

Sa Dingming realized that any part of Li Che's seemingly casually proposed asymmetric warfare was astonishingly well-developed in theory when viewed alone. Although he did not yet know how effective it would be in actual combat, many effective tactics were highly feasible once the mind was opened and they were simply conceived in his mind.