"Emperor Suzong of Tang."
The title echoed softly through Ganlu Hall.
Li Shimin narrowed his eyes. The name felt familiar, but he couldn't place it immediately. After a moment, it clicked. Ah, yes. This was the specific descendant who eventually established the Military Temple.
Keeping his expression neutral, Li Shimin coughed lightly. "I wonder what Zhuge Wuhou thinks upon hearing this historical record."
Truthfully, Li Shimin had zero faith in this Fang Guan.
By now, he had developed a brutally simple method for judging the officials around Li Longji. The closer someone stood to the throne, the more likely they were a useless sycophant who spent their days backstabbing colleagues until everyone around them collapsed from exhaustion. The genuinely capable generals? All dead on the frontiers. The loyal ministers? Scattered across Changshan, Pingyuan, Hedong, and Luoyang, desperately holding the empire together with their fingernails.
As for Chang'an itself? Hardly a competent man left breathing.
So Fang Guan? A massive question mark hung over his head.
"A mediocre idiot like that exists solely to make Zhuge Wuhou sigh in frustration," Fang Xuanling muttered.
In his mind, Kongming would feel nothing but helpless exasperation hearing such a comparison.
Still, Fang Xuanling looked increasingly uncomfortable. He tugged at his sleeves, a nervous habit. "Hey... this Fang Guan shares my surname. Surely he's not connected to my clan, right?"
Du Ruhui immediately tried to comfort his old friend with some very questionable humor.
"Brother Xuanling, why trouble yourself over this?" he said calmly. "One of my own descendants eventually committed outright treason. Compared to that, a few useless descendants who only know how to enjoy wealth and slack off sound perfectly acceptable."
The logic was bleak, but strangely convincing.
Fang Xuanling thought about it for a moment, then slowly relaxed.
Honestly, even if this Fang Guan really did turn out to be his descendant, being a smooth-talking idiot was still far better than participating in the Li family's favorite recreational activity of murdering relatives during succession crises.
The thought itself felt vaguely treasonous, but the comparison was undeniably comforting.
The surrounding ministers also nodded one after another.
After all, with Du Ruhui's future traitorous descendant already serving as the group's cautionary example, everyone's standards for their future bloodlines had quietly dropped by several levels.
Meanwhile, Hou Junji was going through a rare moment of self-reflection.
After witnessing the absolute chaos of Xuanzong's reign, he suddenly realized just how fortunate he was to be serving under Li Shimin instead of some incompetent ruler who collected disasters like trophies.
Most of his usual arrogance had vanished.
Standing beside Li Jing almost like a student seeking guidance, Hou Junji asked seriously, "So how exactly are they supposed to retake Chang'an?"
That, after all, was the core issue.
Li Jing calmly stroked his beard before answering.
"In truth, the solution is not particularly complicated," he said. "Cui Qianyou already demonstrated the correct tactical model at Tongguan."
"Chang'an is the heart of the empire. Once the rebels occupy it for long enough, they will inevitably become arrogant and overconfident."
Li Jing's eyes sharpened slightly.
"At that point, the Tang forces only need to fake a retreat, lure the enemy's main force away from the city defenses, then use the frontier veterans to strike from both flanks."
"In other words," he concluded casually, "drag them out of their turtle shell and beat them to death in open terrain."
Hou Junji nodded along with the strategy, but almost immediately another problem surfaced.
"The plan works," he admitted. "But who exactly is supposed to command it?"
The room went quiet.
After all, Li Longji had already sent three of the Tang Dynasty's top generals to their deaths in rapid succession. At this point, the real issue wasn't tactics. It was staffing.
Who was still qualified to lead an army?
More importantly, after watching Gao Xianzhi, Feng Changqing, and Geshu Han get turned into political sacrifices one after another... who would still have the courage to accept the job?
Probably everyone in the room was thinking the same thing.
Hey. This position. It's a little too risky, don't you think?
[Lightscreen]
[Fang Guan's existence was basically the single biggest black mark on Emperor Suzong's entire reign. The sort of historical disaster where later generations look at the records and instinctively ask, "Can we just pretend this part never happened?"
After proclaiming himself Emperor out in Lingwu, Li Heng actually managed to scrape together a surprisingly decent hand of cards. The frontier armies from Hexi, Longyou, and Anxi gradually linked up with him, giving the new regime around sixty thousand hardened veteran troops.
Not amazing, but for a prince who had just split off from his father in the middle of a collapsing empire, this was already an extremely respectable military foundation
Now naturally, Li Heng had one urgent problem to solve: how to use this precious, hard-earned army to make himself look like a legitimate ruler and not just some guy who stole his dad's throne while the empire was on fire.
The answer was simple. He needed a victory. Something flashy. Something that screamed, See? I deserve this throne.
And at this critical historical moment, Fang Guan made his entrance.
Relying purely on eloquence, political instinct, and an absolutely outrageous level of self-confidence, Fang Guan successfully talked his way straight into Emperor Suzong's inner circle. Suzong trusted him to an absurd degree, bringing him into nearly every strategic discussion.
His promotion speedrun looked like this.
June: A literal nobody shuffling papers in Chang'an. Nobody knows his name. Nobody cares.
July: Chased the fleeing Li Longji across the countryside and got promoted to Chancellor. For the cardio.
August: Talked his way into Li Longji's inner circle, cementing his political power. The man hasn't even changed his boots yet.
September: Appointed by Li Longji as the Military Governor in charge of retaking the western capital and defending the eastern passes. Sure. Why not.
October: Nominated himself for Supreme Commander of All Worldly Armed Forces. Promised to recapture both capitals. Li Heng immediately stamped the approval and handed him the supreme military seal.
From desk jockey to Supreme Commander in four months. No military training. No battlefield experience. No tactical knowledge whatsoever.
And then he really got going.
Li Heng granted him the authority to establish his own independent military headquarters. Fang Guan immediately stuffed his war council with men like Deng Jingshan, Song Ruosi, Jia Zhi, and Liu Zhi. Poets. Scholars. Bureaucrats.
Men who had never held a sword, let alone seen a battlefield. This was now the Tang Dynasty's top military brain trust.
A veteran tried to warn him. He pointed out that the rebel forces commanded the Yeluohe, the elite Turkic cavalry, and the Tang army needed to proceed with extreme caution.
Fang Guan's legendary rebuttal? He sneered and said: "The Yeluohe might be numerous, but can they possibly withstand the sheer brilliance of my desk clerk Liu Zhi?"
Yes. His desk clerk. Against elite cavalry.
What could possibly go wrong?]
Meanwhile, in the Chengdu government office of the late Han era, the atmosphere turned increasingly strange.
"This Li Heng really is his father's son," Zhang Fei muttered, unable to hide the disgust in his voice.
He had assumed that once a new Emperor took over, the Tang court might regain a shred of sanity. Looking at the situation now, that hope had died a swift and painful death.
Liu Bei stared blankly at the glowing screen, his expression full of genuine confusion.
"Does the Tang Dynasty distribute Chancellor appointments like festival candy?" he asked slowly. "Is their selection process truly this... casual?"
The more he watched, the less he understood.
Military merit? Ignored. Administrative achievements? Irrelevant. Li Longji promoted a man to Chancellor because he successfully jogged after the imperial carriage. Li Heng then handed the same man supreme military authority because he sounded convincing during a few meetings.
At this point, Liu Bei was starting to suspect the Tang court selected officials by drawing lots from a bamboo tube.
The absurdity of it all reminded Liu Bei of a famous disaster from the Warring States era.
"Even Zhao Kuo would climb out of his grave weeping with envy after seeing this kind of imperial favoritism."
Zhao Kuo had buried four hundred thousand Zhao soldiers at Changping and permanently crippled his state. But at least the man had credentials. He understood military theory, came from a respected family, and inherited the reputation of his father, Zhao She.
But this Fang Guan? What exactly did he have besides a smooth tongue and outrageous confidence?
Liu Bei turned toward Kongming and chuckled warmly. "Compared to this fellow, I truly treated you unfairly. I made you work far too hard before giving you authority."
The room relaxed into soft laughter.
Kongming waved his feather fan, amusement flickering across his face. "My Lord flatters me. Had you handed me sixty thousand elite frontier troops the moment I stepped out of my thatched cottage, the Han would likely have been restored within the year."
At the back of the hall, Fa Zheng folded his arms and snorted at the screen.
Unlike the others, his admiration for Kongming carried no trace of polite exaggeration.
In Fa Zheng's eyes, Kongming's reputation was earned blade by blade.
"When Kongming emerged from Longzhong, he presented a strategy capable of dividing the realm," Fa Zheng said coldly. "That was a true grand design worthy of history."
He scoffed. "And this Fang Guan? He babbles a few empty slogans, demands supreme military authority, and suddenly people dare compare him to Kongming?"
The more Fa Zheng listened, the more irritated he became.
Who cares about elite cavalry?
That statement alone exposed the man's complete lack of military instinct. No understanding of cavalry warfare. No tactical preparation. No contingency planning. Yet he strutted around carrying the title of Supreme Commander while speaking like some drunk fool arguing in a tavern.
Did this idiot actually believe he was the next Kongming?
Even during Fa Zheng's most arrogant, unruly days in Yizhou, he had never been this absurdly overconfident.
[Lightscreen]
[And thus, after all the buildup, boasting, and inspirational speeches, the Battle of Chentaoxie officially began.
What followed can only be described as a historically certified catastrophe.
Fang Guan personally led fifty thousand elite Tang troops and divided them into three separate columns. Li Guangjin commanded the northern route out of Fengtian. Fang Guan himself, alongside Liu Guizhe, led the central army from Wugong. Together, these two formations made up the main force, totaling roughly forty thousand men. Meanwhile, Yang Xiwen advanced from Yishou with another ten thousand troops, intending to serve as the southern support column.
On paper, this looked impressive. Three-pronged offensive. Elite frontier veterans. Huge numerical advantage. Everything appeared perfectly reasonable.
And then the Tang army met An Shouzhong.
Now, An Shouzhong was no random rebel officer. He ranked among An Lushan's top military commanders and possessed extensive cavalry experience. The truly unbelievable part? He only brought ten thousand cavalrymen to the battle.
Ten thousand cavalry against fifty thousand Tang troops. Under normal circumstances, this should have been the moment where Fang Guan secured his glorious reputation and rode triumphantly back toward Chang'an.
Instead, An Shouzhong nearly had his worldview shattered the moment he saw the Tang battle formation.
Because nobody, absolutely nobody, expected Fang Guan to be this committed to historical nostalgia.
Backed by Emperor Suzong's treasury, Fang Guan had apparently spent his preparation time enthusiastically reading military texts from the Spring and Autumn period. And after reading them, he reached a stunning conclusion: ancient war chariots were the future.
Yes. War chariots. The kind pulled by oxen.
Fang Guan personally assembled around two thousand heavy chariots and treated them as his secret battlefield trump card. His tactical concept was beautifully straightforward. First, unleash the armored ox carts to smash apart the enemy formation. Then the infantry follows behind and cleans up the survivors. Simple. Elegant. Completely invincible. At least inside Fang Guan's imagination.
Unfortunately, An Shouzhong stubbornly refused to cooperate with this script.
The rebel commander immediately ordered his cavalrymen to beat their swords rhythmically against their shields. The sound thundered across the battlefield like rolling mountains. The oxen instantly panicked. And before the Tang army could stabilize the situation, An Shouzhong launched the second step of his attack. Light cavalry rushed forward carrying flaming torches and hurled them directly into the tightly packed chariot formations.
At this point, the entire battlefield entered a state best described as complete livestock-related disaster.
The terrified oxen lost control. Instead of charging toward the rebels, the burning animals spun around and stampeded straight back into their own infantry lines. The Tang formation collapsed almost immediately. Men were trampled alive by their own war chariots before the rebels had even fully engaged.
Seeing the enemy army implode itself in real time, An Shouzhong naturally had only one response. Full cavalry charge.
The battle lasted roughly half a day. By sunset, forty thousand elite Tang soldiers had been annihilated.
And somehow, the story still gets worse.
The southern support army under Yang Xiwen arrived an entire day late. By that point, An Shouzhong had already finished harvesting the battlefield and was operating at maximum momentum. The rebel cavalry slammed directly into the southern column before it could properly deploy.
Yang Xiwen took one look at the situation, evaluated the odds, and made a highly efficient tactical decision. He surrendered immediately.
Just like that, Fang Guan personally erased the military foundation Emperor Suzong had spent months desperately assembling. The consequences were enormous. Suzong no longer possessed enough military strength to independently recover the empire. From this point onward, the Tang court was forced to seek military assistance from the Uyghur Khaganate.
And if all this was not tragic enough already, history added one final layer of irony.
Chentaoxie also happened to be a major transit route. At the time, the poet Du Fu was secretly traveling across the region, attempting to reach Emperor Suzong's court. Unfortunately for him, he walked directly into the aftermath of the disaster and got arrested by rebel patrols.
Later, Du Fu would immortalize the battle in his famous poem, Lament for Chentao:
"The sons of ten counties bled beneath the winter frost.
Their blood filled the marshes of Chentao red.
The heavens cleared. The wilderness fell silent.
Yet forty thousand loyal men perished here in a single day."]
"The sons of ten counties..."
Du Ruhui stared silently at the documents spread across his desk. The brush in his hand felt heavy.
In his mind, if the Great Tang ever collapsed, it should have happened under the weight of something grand. Foreign kingdoms united. Nomad cavalry sweeping across the frontier. A clash worthy of ending a golden age.
But this? This was rot from the inside.
A cowardly Emperor. Corrupt ministers. Treacherous officials. And finally, the last core of the Tang elite army handed to a scholar whose only talent was talking.
The veterans of Hexi, Longyou, and Anxi were not ordinary soldiers. They were the sharpest blades of the Tang Dynasty. Men who fought across deserts and snowfields, who terrified neighboring kingdoms and held the Silk Road beneath their boots.
And in the end, they were not destroyed by superior strategy. They died because of a few signatures at Tongguan Pass and a fool dragging ox carts onto a battlefield.
They did not even die as warriors should.
"They're a pack of useless dogs!" Hou Junji exploded, his voice shaking the hall. His eyes were bloodshot.
Others might only see the defeat, but Hou Junji remembered something else. The Anxi Protectorate had been established in Gaochang. And who conquered Gaochang? He did.
In a strange way, he viewed those Anxi frontier troops as part of his own legacy. Those veterans were supposed to become the empire's spearpoint into the Western Regions. Instead, they burned to death in a muddy field because some idiot thought ox carts could defeat cavalry.
While the ministers lamented and the generals cursed, Li Shimin remained calm. The temperature in the hall dropped.
"This man was incapable from the start." His voice was steady.
Wei Zheng nodded. "Incapable hardly describes it. If he possessed a shred of shame, he would hang himself to preserve his family's honor."
Li Shimin slowly turned his head. His gaze locked onto Wei Zheng.
"I was referring to Li Heng."
Wei Zheng froze. The hall fell silent.
Li Shimin looked back toward the glowing screen, his expression unreadable. "This Li Heng possesses ambition without ability. He and Fang Guan are the same type. Empty men propping each other up."
Wei Zheng stared at the floor. He agreed completely. He simply did not dare say it out loud.
Li Shimin's thoughts had already moved past the battlefield. His mind was calculating the larger consequences.
"With the vanguard army destroyed, Li Heng has no leverage left." He paused. "The only remaining effective military forces in the Tang now belong to Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi in Hedong."
A shadow passed across his face. "No wonder he had to invite the Uyghurs into the war."
He began pacing, one hand tapping his temple.
"But this creates another problem. Why would the Uyghur Khaganate support a weakened Tang court instead of siding with An Lushan and dividing the empire?"
He stopped walking. "Unless they intend to use Li Heng as a puppet."
The implications made the room feel heavier.
Du Ruhui stepped forward. "Perhaps the Uyghurs still fear the prestige of the Tang armies. Or perhaps they remember the generosity Your Majesty once showed them."
Li Shimin laughed softly. There was no warmth in it.
"Keming, the steppe respects only strength." His gaze drifted somewhere far away, toward old campaigns and endless grasslands. "They do not bow because of kindness. They bow because they fear our blades."
He had learned this lesson dealing with Illig Qaghan. You could not negotiate with wolves through goodwill.
Meanwhile, back in the Chengdu government office of Shu Han, the mood had grown heavier.
"This poet Du Fu truly has miserable timing," Kongming said quietly.
A faint sense of helplessness stirred in his heart. The whole situation felt surreal. Through this heavenly screen, he was watching the fate of a man who lived centuries in the future. Yet according to history, that same Du Fu would one day stand before Kongming's ruined shrine in Chengdu and mourn him through poetry.
Their lives would never overlap. They would never meet, never speak, never share a cup of wine. And somehow, that felt deeply regrettable.
Liu Bei also found himself unexpectedly moved by the wandering poet.
"This man possesses genuine compassion for the nation and its people," he said slowly. "Compared to someone like Fang Guan, this poet is worth ten thousand officials."
For Liu Bei, what mattered most was not literary talent or official rank. It was whether a man still remembered the suffering of ordinary people after entering government service. And Du Fu clearly did.
Nearby, Xu Shu had one hand pressed against his forehead, looking thoroughly disgusted by the entire military disaster.
"The empire is collapsing because they handed command to a rigid fool who still thinks military manuals from antiquity can solve modern warfare." His tone turned colder. "He practically gift-wrapped a victory for the rebels."
Xu Shu felt no envy toward Fang Guan's meteoric rise. Watching the broadcast, he saw only one thing: more suffering dumped onto the backs of the common people.
At the edge of the room, Zhao Yun stood before the map in silence, tracing troop movements in his mind.
"After this defeat, the military balance has shifted," Zhao Yun finally said.
He tapped Chang'an and Luoyang one after another.
"The rebels now occupy both capitals. That alone places the Tang court in a dangerous position. The imperial army has no choice but to launch offensives to recover them." His brows tightened. "But now the strategic roles have reversed. The rebels hold fortified cities and defensive positions, while the Tang army must exhaust itself attacking."
As he spoke, a familiar sense of dread crept into his mind. Foreign cavalry intervention. Northern nomads entering the Central Plains. Zhao Yun had seen this pattern before.
If the nomads won, they would become parasites feeding on the dynasty. If they lost, they might turn around and butcher the weakened Emperor who hired them.
The An Lushan Rebellion no longer resembled an ordinary revolt. It was mutating into something far worse. An endless knot of blood, politics, and foreign intervention with no clean solution remaining.
No matter how Zhao Yun calculated the board, the Great Tang already looked mortally wounded.
And yet somehow... this broken empire would still stagger onward for another century.
The road toward the slaughter at Xiangji Temple had officially begun.