Pang Tong's joke wasn't exactly funny, but it did the job, slicing through the heavy reverent atmosphere like a dull knife through thick silk.
The tension in the side hall of the Gong'an County Office slowly bled away, replaced by an easy, shared understanding.
Zhuge Liang took the silk handkerchief Huang Yueying offered. As he dabbed at the corners of his eyes, he offered a modest, self-deprecating smile.
"That man on the screen... is the Prime Minister of Shu Han, Zhuge Liang."
"And you," Liu Bei cut in at once, his voice ringing with pride and affection, "are the Strategist beneath my banner, Zhuge Liang!"
The others joined in almost at once, their voices rising together and echoing off the rafters.
A wave of genuine laughter swept through the room, grounding the celestial revelations back into the reality of their present struggle.
Kongming merely shook his head with a soft chuckle and did not bother defending himself further.
Deep down, however, a strange warmth spread through his chest.
Words carried intent.
Writing preserved emotion.
Even from nearly two thousand years away, he could feel the genuine concern those future people held for him.
It pressed on him.
But it was a warmth he did not mind carrying.
Jian Yong stretched his legs atop his plush cushion, looking as relaxed as a cat basking in the sun.
"Seriously, Kongming, you need to start taking care of yourself. Our Lord here survived more than a dozen defeats and is already past sixty, yet he's still standing. You, on the other hand, took the reins of power only to burn out like a spent candle at fifty-four. That's just poor management."
The issue of his health had been brought up so many times now that Kongming could only respond with a sheepish look.
He cleared his throat and adjusted his feather fan.
"Recently, with Shiyuan assisting me, I have not stayed up past midnight to finish reports for several months now. I believe I am making progress."
At last, the group truly relaxed.
In the words of the Light Screen, this man was the literal incarnation of wisdom.
Equal to Zhang Liang?
No.
The screen seemed to suggest he had surpassed even that.
The Light Screen shimmered.
The narrator's voice returned, carrying the weight of a tragedy waiting to unfold.
[Lightscreen]
[In the year 223, the year following the disaster at Yiling, Liu Bei passed away at Baidicheng. The great state of Shu Han stood on the verge of collapse.
After the deaths of Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, Liu Bei had staked the remnants of his strength on one final gamble against fate, and he had lost.
In the third year of Zhangwu, the founding Emperor of Shu Han came to the end of his life, a man who died with a heart full of regret.
Upon his death, Liu Shan ascended the throne. He enfeoffed Zhuge Liang as Marquis of Wuxiang and granted him the authority to establish his own office and oversee state affairs.
By the following year, Zhuge Liang was appointed Governor of Yizhou. The historical record put it rather simply: in matters of government, great or small, everything was decided by Zhuge Liang. Basically, Liu Shan just said, Prime Minister, do what you want to do.
The deathbed entrustment at Baidicheng and Liu Shan's extraordinary trust in him transformed the regrets, dreams, pressure, and burdens of a battered state into a mountain that settled squarely upon Zhuge Liang's shoulders.
From that moment onward, the Prime Minister carried Shu Han upon his back and began the long, exhausting work of governing the land of Shu.]
Liu Bei's face went pale.
Guilt and sorrow crossed his face.
Seeing this, Jiang Wan, ever the most empathetic among the administrators, softly recited a line that seemed to have drifted in from the future itself.
"The world is divided in three, and Yizhou is exhausted; this is truly a moment of life and death."
Pang Tong, however, was more interested in the raw facts.
He shook his head, his mind already racing through countless tactical variables.
"Half the military strength was lost at Yiling, the treasury was in ruins, and the Nanzhong rebellions we saw earlier most likely erupted precisely because they smelled weakness."
"The screen is not exaggerating. Shu Han wasn't merely in trouble. It was in a state of total structural collapse."
No soldiers.
No grain.
No money.
Now think about it. If you were in Zhuge Liang's place, how would you win a game when there were no pieces left on the board?
[Lightscreen]
[The first crisis the Prime Minister faced after taking over this mess was the severe lack of resources.
The defeat at Yiling had dealt another brutal blow to an already struggling state. But Zhuge Liang appeared to have formed a plan before the funeral rites had even concluded.
A plan for an invisible war.
This war would not be fought with swords or spears. It would not begin with soldiers marching across a battlefield.
It would begin with money.
And for that war, Zhuge Liang needed a weapon.
In the turbulent years that followed, the Prime Minister issued his famous Decree on Brocade:
"Now the people are poor and the state is empty. The resources to defeat the enemy depend solely upon brocade."
At the time, no one could have imagined what he was trying to accomplish.
Shu Han was surrounded by enemies and desperately short of resources. Shu brocade was a luxury good.
You couldn't eat it.
You couldn't fire it from a bow.
You certainly couldn't throw it at Wei and expect the enemy to surrender.
So what exactly was the point?]
Liu Bei looked thoroughly confused.
His brows knit tightly together as he tried to grasp the logic.
Pang Tong fell into deep thought.
Come on, brain. Do your thing. If Kongming came up with this, then Fengchu absolutely had to crack it. Reputation on the line here.
Mi Zhu, however, recalled the Light Screen's earlier mention of currency warfare and immediately felt a spark of realization.
Zhang Fei simply turned toward Kongming with wide eyes.
"Kongming, we have no money and no food. How is weaving silk supposed to help us kill Cao Pi?"
Kongming chuckled softly and flicked his fan.
"Patience, Yide. Keep watching. The logic of merchants is sometimes sharper than the edge of a blade."
[Lightscreen]
[Almost immediately after issuing the decree, the Prime Minister established the office of Jin Guan, the Brocade Office.
Just like the state monopolies on salt and iron, Shu brocade was now placed under official government monopoly.
It could only be purchased in government-sanctioned markets. And what currency was used in these markets?
The Zhi Bai coin, the Value-of-One-Hundred coin established by Liu Ba. At this moment, the trap was set.
The weapon was ready. In 224, Deng Zhi was sent to Wu to negotiate peace.]
"Ahh, I get it!" Zhang Fei slapped his thigh.
"We use the silk to buy grain, right!"
Pang Tong immediately shook his head.
"Nope, too fast, Yide. If it were that simple, the screen wouldn't be calling it an invisible war."
His attention shifted to the diplomatic implications.
"So Sun Quan and Cao Pi were only pretending to be allies."
"The renewed alliance between Wu and Shu is what forced Cao Pi to disregard Jia Xu's advice and launch that failed invasion."
Pang Tong let out a dry laugh.
"To possess a talent like Jia Xu and still ignore his advice... truly inspiring leadership. Cao Pi really is the master of self-sabotage. Congratulations. You managed to turn wisdom into decoration."
[Lightscreen]
[Wu merchants flooded into Shu, eager to purchase the legendary Shu brocade.
But because of the government monopoly, they could only buy it using Shu's Value-of-One-Hundred coins.
Now here's the problem. How were they supposed to obtain these coins? The Prime Minister offered a simple answer. Bring us your grain and raw materials.
We will give you our coins. Then use those coins to purchase our silk. Simple, is it not?]
Mi Zhu's eyes lit up.
Now he fully understood. This wasn't commerce, this was extraction. This was economic warfare.
"The pricing power..." Pang Tong muttered.
"That's the core."
Because it was a monopoly, Shu could determine the price.
As long as it wasn't absurdly impossible, the vanity of nobles in both Wu and Wei would ensure payment.
By forcing the use of Shu currency, Kongming was effectively harvesting enemy wealth to rebuild Shu Han.
"Kongming, that's a god-tier strategy!"
Mi Zhu's merchant instincts were nearly trembling with admiration.
"By using the Zhi Bai coin as the sole medium of exchange, we're effectively trading a piece of stamped bronze for a hundred times its value in actual goods."
"We're draining Wu's bronze to fill Shu's granaries."
Liu Bei still looked somewhat confused.
"Hold on. What? Why do I still not understand any of this?"
Pang Tong glanced at him and translated it into soldier's language.
"My Lord, think of it like the salt tax."
"If the officials say one bolt of silk costs ten sacks of grain, then it costs ten sacks."
"Unless the nobles of Wei and Wu are willing to walk around naked, they have no choice but to pay."
[Lightscreen]
[Lightscreen]
[But the Prime Minister did not put all his hopes on commerce, because there was a rather obvious problem with having a full treasury: you still had to feed the people who filled your armies.
And for that, Shu needed something much more important than coins.
Water.
Long before Zhuge Liang came along, the Qin administrator Li Bing had already figured out that the Chengdu Plain could become extraordinarily productive if its water was properly managed. His Dujiangyan irrigation system redirected and distributed the waters of the Min River, protecting the region from destructive floods while supplying its farmland with a steady source of irrigation. Over generations, this helped turn the Chengdu basin into what Chinese tradition would celebrate as Tianfu, the Land of Abundance.
It was an incredible piece of infrastructure, especially for the ancient world.
There was just one slightly annoying detail.
You had to maintain it.
Rivers have a habit of carrying silt. Embankments erode. Channels become clogged. Floods do not care whether the government is having a good year or a terrible one. An irrigation system could make the difference between an abundant harvest and a disaster, but only if somebody was actually out there every year making sure the water still went where it was supposed to go.
Zhuge Liang understood that very well.
During his northern campaigns, the Dujiangyan system was treated not as some old engineering achievement that everyone could admire while doing absolutely nothing about it, but as critical state infrastructure. The historical tradition records that Zhuge Liang regarded the irrigation works as the foundation of agriculture and a resource upon which the state depended. He established a yan guan, a waterworks official, and assigned 1,200 men to protect and maintain the system.
That number is significant because it tells us something about how seriously Shu treated water management.
These men were not there to stand around looking impressive beside a dam. They were part of the practical machinery that kept the irrigation network functioning, dealing with the unglamorous jobs that ancient states could not afford to ignore: clearing channels, maintaining embankments, managing the waterworks, and keeping the farmland supplied.
And this fitted perfectly with the rest of Zhuge Liang's economic policy.
The government could regulate markets and improve its revenue. It could control valuable commodities such as salt, iron, and potentially the lucrative Shu brocade industry. Liu Ba could introduce the Zhi Bai coin and make the treasury considerably healthier.
But none of that meant much if the fields stopped producing grain.
The entire thing was connected.
The brocade workshops brought in wealth. The markets helped turn that wealth into state revenue. The treasury supported the government and its armies. But underneath all of it was the agricultural base of Shu, and underneath that agricultural base was water.
In that sense, Dujiangyan was doing something rather similar to the Zhi Bai coin, although nobody was going to accuse a river of monetary policy.
Both were tools that allowed the state to extract more value from the resources it already possessed.
The coin made economic transactions more useful to the government.
The irrigation system made the land itself more productive.
One strengthened the treasury.
The other strengthened the harvest.
And together, they gave Shu something it desperately needed: the ability to sustain a state that was smaller than Wei without immediately collapsing under the cost of running it.
That was the less glamorous side of Zhuge Liang's statecraft.
While everyone remembers the battles, the famous generals, the diplomatic missions, and the grand plans for restoring Han, there was also a man somewhere in Shu whose job was probably much less exciting: making sure a river did not ruin next year's harvest.]
A stunned hush fell over the hall. The generals did not fully grasp the economics, but they understood power, and they could hear it in the scale of these policies.
Jiang Wan and the other scholars were completely speechless. Most officials would be fortunate if a single policy survived for a century, yet this man seemed to casually establish legacies that endured for a thousand years.
Was making money truly this simple? Was governing truly this easy?
Then they remembered the title bestowed upon him by the Light Screen, The Incarnation of Wisdom, and suddenly it all felt inevitable.
Pang Tong lowered his head and stared at the floor, while his mind screamed inside.
This is not fair. You cannot compare a normal genius to a monster like that.
[Lightscreen]
[With food and wealth secured, the Prime Minister finally turned his gaze southward. Nanzhong had been unstable ever since the defeat at Yiling.
But Zhuge Liang understood priorities. You do not chase rebels through mountains while your own people starve.
That is merely a faster route to ruin.
He spent the years 223 and 224 restoring the economy, repairing the waterways, and stabilizing the alliance with Wu.
Only in 225 did he finally march south.]
Zhang Fei frowned.
"Wait, they only had two thousand men? Why did it still take seven months? I could scatter that many with one good roar."
Ma Liang shook his head.
"The terrain in the south is a nightmare, Yide. The real problem isn't beating them. These people know every mountain path, every hidden valley. You win one battle and they vanish back into the hills. The moment you turn around, they come right back."
Zhao Yun nodded.
"Fighting them is simple. Keeping them pacified is the hard part. That's why Kongming couldn't just march in and smash everything. He had to make sure they stayed down."
Kongming stared at the Light Screen without a word.
For some reason, he had the sinking feeling that the true cost of this legacy was something he was not going to enjoy hearing.
---
Fun Fact: Jinli
Ever wondered why Chengdu has a famous street called Jinli?
The name goes way back to the days when Shu brocade was one of Chengdu's big-money industries. Ancient records connect Jinli with the city's famous brocade workshops and preserve a rather charming belief that brocade washed in the Jin River came out brighter and more beautiful than anywhere else. Whether the river actually had magical laundry powers is up for debate, but the story was famous enough to stick around.
And Shu brocade was serious business. A surviving quotation attributed to Zhuge Liang says that when the people were poor and the state treasury was empty, the resources needed to fight the enemy depended on brocade. In other words, when Zhuge Liang looked at silk, he wasn't thinking about fashion. He was thinking about military funding.
Now here's the funny part: the Jinli you can visit today isn't a 2,000-year-old street preserved perfectly since the Three Kingdoms. The present-day street was reconstructed and opened in 2004, right beside the Wuhou Shrine, with traditional-style buildings, food stalls, performances, and enough lanterns to make your camera work overtime.
So the buildings are new.
The name isn't.
More than 1,800 years later, Chengdu is still using the memory of its old brocade industry to sell you things.
History, apparently, has excellent marketing.