By the time villages had taken root,
this land had changed.
Paths connected settlements.
Salt and fish sustained life.
People stayed,
returned,
and remembered.
What began as movement
had become structure.
Along the coast,
boats no longer passed only by chance.
Routes became familiar.
Stops became expected.
The shoreline was no longer just a boundary.
It was a meeting point.
Villages supplied food.
Paths carried goods.
The sea linked places beyond sight.
Slowly,
this region shifted from passage to position.
It was not yet a port.
There were no docks.
No customs houses.
No official trade names.
But the conditions were in place.
People knew the tides.
They understood shelter and depth.
They had learned where ships could anchor,
and where they could not.
Exchange increased.
Not in volume,
but in reliability.
What mattered was consistency.
This land was becoming useful
not only to those who lived here,
but to those who came from elsewhere.
Before maps marked harbours,
before foreign ships arrived,
before history turned outward,
Hong Kong stood ready.
Quietly prepared
by centuries of movement,
labor,
and settlement.
At this threshold,
nothing dramatic happened.
And yet,
everything was about to change.
This is where Season Two ends.
At the moment just before
Hong Kong
entered the wider world
as a port.