[Lightscreen]
[After Li Heng took the throne, two civil officials rose to the very center of his trust circle.
One was the fake Zhuge Liang: Fang Guan.
The other was the actual talent, the Kongming-level, SSR-tier strategist: Li Bi.
Under Li Longji's reign, loyal ministers all tended to share the same career path.
Step one: demonstrate talent.
Step two: get hated by Yang Guozhong.
Step three: get kicked out of Chang'an.
Li Bi was no exception.
Back when Zhang Jiuling still served as Chancellor, he immediately recognized Li Bi's brilliance and personally cultivated him. Unfortunately, after Yang Guozhong seized control of the court, he took one look at Li Bi and mentally filed him under "first glance, I already want to kick his face in. This guy, I absolutely cannot stand."
So naturally, Li Bi got kicked out of the political center.
Honestly, his treatment was almost identical to Yan Zhenqing's. The difference? Li Bi had even less patience for court politics. Yan Zhenqing at least tried to work within the system. Li Bi looked at the system, looked at Yang Guozhong's face, and decided neither was worth the headache. After getting pushed around long enough, he simply snapped. "Alright, Yang Guozhong, you're great. Real great. Your grandpa here doesn't want to see your face anymore."
As in, literally quit. Walked out. Done. Goodbye, Tang Dynasty HR.
Only after Li Heng established his emergency government in Lingwu did Li Bi finally return to public service.
And once he came back, this man immediately entered full hard-carry mode.
Drafting imperial decrees? Li Bi handled it.
Military appointments and command structure? Li Bi handled it.
Strategic planning? Li Bi handled it.
Diplomatic coordination across the empire? Still Li Bi.
Historical records state that his authority eventually surpassed even the official Chancellors.
Which honestly makes perfect sense, because Li Heng's early government barely qualified as a functioning administration.
At one point, the Lingwu court consisted of approximately three frightened officials, half a treasury, and raw optimism.
Li Bi basically strapped the collapsing Tang Dynasty onto his back and dragged it uphill by force.
And here's the tragic part.
Li Bi truly wanted to become Zhuge Kongming.
Unfortunately for him, Li Heng was absolutely not Liu Bei.
Now let's return to the disaster at Chentaoxie.
That catastrophe was not solely Fang Guan's fault, Li Heng himself shared responsibility. He insisted on launching an immediate offensive and personally approved Fang Guan's command over fifty thousand elite frontier troops.
After the battle ended, fewer than four thousand survivors dragged themselves back.
And Fang Guan did not return alone, he brought two additional pieces of horrifying news.
First: the Prince of Yong, Li Lin, had officially rebelled.
And honestly, his logic was incredibly straightforward.
My big brother rebelled and became Emperor. So why exactly couldn't I do the same?
The proud family traditions of the Li clan continued uninterrupted.
Second: Hebei collapsed again.
And this part was especially infuriating.
Before Li Heng ascended the throne, Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi had already stabilized much of the Hebei front through sheer military brilliance. The rebels were under enormous pressure.
Then Li Heng suddenly declared himself Emperor.
At which point Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi were forced to abandon the battlefield and travel to formally pledge loyalty to the new regime.
Because if they ignored the summons? Congratulations. They would immediately become political suspects.
The moment those two left Hebei, rebel commander Shi Siming practically regained the ability to breathe, he realized the terrifying demigods trying to kill him were finally gone.
Meanwhile, Yan Zhenqing was left stranded behind enemy lines with little more than local militias and county troops.
Under those conditions, continuing the resistance was impossible.
Hebei collapsed once again.
Faced with this worsening situation, Li Bi finally stepped forward and presented Li Heng with a sophisticated strategic plan.
His proposal was brilliant.
Li Guangbi would anchor the northern front by defending Taiyuan.
Guo Ziyi would advance into Pingxu, slicing directly through rebel territory and severing communication between their northern and southern forces.
Meanwhile, the Tang army would intentionally leave the Huayin corridor open.
At first glance, this sounds counterintuitive.
But strategically? It was vicious.
The rebels would be trapped inside a massive logistical nightmare.
Every time Tang forces threatened Fanyang in the north, the rebels would have to rush northward.
Every time Chang'an came under pressure, they would have to race back west.
The Tang army would never seek one decisive battle. Instead, they would slowly stretch, exhaust, divide, and bleed the rebels dry.
In modern terms, this was essentially a hybrid attrition strategy.
You compress the enemy's maneuvering space.
When they advance, you retreat.
When they stop, you harass.
When they weaken, you strike.
When they retreat, you pursue.
Little by little, you grind down their ability to wage war. Honestly, Li Bi's strategic vision was advanced for the era.
Unfortunately, Li Heng had the patience of a man who quits medicine halfway through treatment because the pills taste bitter.
The New Book of Tang summarizes his reaction in only three characters: "The Emperor refused."
Li Heng was panicking.
The Prince of Yong was rebelling.
Hebei was unstable.
His legitimacy still looked shaky.
And more than anything else, he desperately wanted a flashy military victory to prove himself as the rightful Emperor.
So he ignored Li Bi's long-term strategy entirely.
Instead, he ordered the Shuofang and Hedong armies to immediately launch a direct offensive to recover the twin capitals.
And to make certain this gamble succeeded, Li Heng made two decisions that would alter Tang history.
First, he ordered his son Li Yu to formally swear brotherhood with the Uyghur Crown Prince.
Second, he signed an agreement with the Uyghur Khaganate.
The treaty terms were painfully simple.
Once the cities were recaptured, the territory and government would return to the Tang Dynasty.
But the loot? That belonged to the Uyghurs.
Gold. Silk. Property. And people.
With the contract finalized, the Uyghur cavalry finally marched south.]
"Is the Son of Heaven a bandit?!"
Li Shimin's roar exploded through Ganlu Hall like thunder. The wooden beams overhead trembled faintly from the force of it.
"The Son of Heaven is a bandit!"
Outside the hall, palace eunuchs fled in panic, scattering down the corridors like startled rats. None of them dared linger anywhere near the Emperor's line of sight.
Inside, the ministers stood frozen.
Wei Zheng felt droplets of furious spit land across the back of his neck, but he did not even think to wipe them away. At this moment, nobody cared about appearances anymore.
Every official in Ganlu Hall felt the same humiliation pressing against their chest.
The land belongs to the Tang.
The gold, silk, sons, and daughters belong to the Uyghurs.
How could Li Heng agree to such terms?
Even if he managed to reclaim Chang'an, what right did he still have to sit upon the dragon throne? What face remained for him to call himself the Son of Heaven?
These men had followed Li Shimin through years of war and chaos. They had crossed frozen rivers, buried brothers-in-arms, and fought their way through a collapsing age to forge the glory of Zhenguan.
They did not build the Great Tang so some cowardly descendant could package his own people as payment for foreign mercenaries.
A shadow passed through Li Shimin's eyes.
He remembered Zhao Yishen, the border soldiers who died in the sands beyond Gaochang, and countless nameless men who never returned from the frontier.
Then he remembered the judgment of the future generations.
Feudal society.
A system that devoured its own people.
Li Shimin had rejected those words before with certainty.
Now, for the first time, he found himself unable to refute them.
"Incompetent rulers destroy the state while brave men die meaningless deaths," Li Shimin said quietly, though the fury beneath his voice only became more terrifying. "And now an Emperor sells the daughters of his own people to wolves."
His fingers tightened against the armrest.
"This is the greatest shame imaginable."
Wei Zheng's teeth clenched so hard an audible grinding sound echoed through the hall.
"What is the point of reclaiming Chang'an at such a cost?" he demanded harshly. "Inviting nomads to plunder your own citizens? The people will never forget this. History will never forgive it."
He pointed toward the glowing screen.
"Over a thousand years have passed, yet the people of the future still curse his name!"
Li Jing remained silent for a long moment.
Only now did he fully understand the tragedy of Gao Xianzhi and Feng Changqing.
One survived Talas and still tried to rally a doomed army for a final stand. The other rose from common origins purely through military merit and took responsibility when the aristocrats in Chang'an hid behind silence.
Men like that were fundamentally incompatible with rulers like Li Heng.
They possessed too much backbone.
Li Jing looked again at Li Bi's strategic proposal displayed on the screen.
Slow attrition. Preserving manpower. Forcing the rebels into logistical collapse. A patient strategy designed to save Tang lives while guaranteeing eventual victory.
Compared to that, Li Heng's solution looked grotesque.
Hiring foreign cavalry with the bodies of his own people as payment.
Li Jing closed his eyes briefly.
"This is ugliness at its zenith," he murmured.
He could already imagine the terror inside Chang'an.
If the citizens learned of the treaty before the city fell, who would they fear more?
The rebels holding the walls?
Or the imperial army marching beside foreign looters?
Nearby, Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui no longer bothered pretending to record notes.
Both men simply stared at the screen in silence.
As historians and statesmen, they had read countless accounts of dynastic atrocities from earlier eras. Usually, such records earned nothing more than a weary scholarly sigh.
But this was different.
This was their empire.
Their descendants.
Their Great Tang.
The weight of it pressed down on them like iron.
Du Ruhui glanced sideways at Fang Xuanling's pale expression, and for the first time in many years, a rebellious thought surfaced in his mind.
If an Emperor lacked even basic humanity, then the entire realm would inevitably suffer for it.
Perhaps the selection of the Crown Prince should never rest solely within the hands of the imperial clan.
Perhaps ministers needed stronger authority over succession itself.
The thought bordered on treason.
Yet once it appeared, Du Ruhui found it impossible to suppress.
At last, Li Shimin slowly sank back against his cushion.
Sun Simiao stepped forward with medicinal herbs, but Li Shimin waved him away without even looking.
Then the Emperor laughed.
A hollow laugh filled with self-mockery.
Earlier, he had still hoped Li Heng's ruthlessness might at least produce competence. He expected a cold pragmatist willing to stain his hands for victory.
Instead, the future had handed him a coward hiding fear behind cruelty.
At this point, Li Shimin almost found himself wishing the Prince of Yong had won instead.
The light screen paid no attention to the despair suffocating Ganlu Hall.
The images shifted once more, dragging the Tang court forward into the next battlefield.
[Lightscreen]
[And now we arrive at one of the bloodiest battles of the entire An Lushan Rebellion.
The Battle of Xiangji Temple.
By September, Guo Ziyi had finally assembled the Tang coalition army. What remained of the Hedong, Shuofang, and Hexi frontier forces were pulled together into a single war machine. Add in allied troops from Khotan and various tribal auxiliaries, plus four thousand elite Uyghur cavalry, and the Tang field army swelled to roughly one hundred and fifty thousand troops.
Officially, of course, the records rounded that number up to two hundred thousand. Because every dynasty loves inflation when reporting army sizes.
The Tang forces advanced from Fengxiang straight toward Chang'an.
Their formation was textbook. Li Siye commanded the vanguard. Guo Ziyi held the center. Wang Sili guarded the rear. No chaos. No rushing ahead. Just steady pressure as the army marched toward Xiangji Temple north of Chang'an.
Waiting for them was a rebel army of roughly one hundred thousand entrenched veterans.
And this is where things become horrifying.
By this stage of the war, the rebel army had basically evolved into a stitched-together monster made from the finest military talent of the Tang Empire itself.
You had the original Fanyang and Pinglu border troops who had been grinding through nonstop warfare for over a year. You had elite Tang soldiers captured after Geshu Han's collapse and Fang Guan's disaster. You even had Zhejie mercenaries from the Six Hu Prefectures mixed into the formation.
Strip away the politics and slogans, and the Battle of Xiangji Temple becomes painfully simple.
This was Tang elite versus Tang elite.
The best soldiers in East Asia slaughtering each other at full power.
And because both sides understood Tang military doctrine inside and out, there were no flashy traps or genius ambushes here. Nobody got outmaneuvered. Nobody got baited.
This was industrial-scale meat grinding.
The rebel general Li Guiren launched the opening attack and challenged the Tang front directly. The Tang vanguard pushed him back and started gaining momentum.
Then the rebels counterattacked.
Hard.
The pressure slammed into the Tang vanguard like a tidal wave. The front lines began buckling backward. Once the rebels smelled weakness, they unleashed their heavy cavalry, aiming to trample the retreating infantry and collapse the entire Tang formation in one decisive strike.
At that moment, panic started spreading through the Tang ranks.
And then Li Siye stepped forward.
Now, Li Siye's nickname in the records is basically "Divine General," and honestly, after this battle, you can see why.
Watching the vanguard begin to collapse, Li Siye understood exactly what was happening. If the line broke here, the army was finished.
So he made a decision.
He roared across the battlefield:
"If I do not throw my own life forward today, none of us are leaving this field alive!"
Then this absolute monster ripped off his outer armor, grabbed his Mo Dao, and walked straight toward the charging cavalry.
Bare-chested.
Against heavy horsemen.
The first swing of the Mo Dao reportedly split both rider and horse in half. Not knocked down. Not wounded.
Split apart.
The historical texts are unusually direct here. Man and horse shattered.
Li Siye then proceeded to carve through elite cavalrymen one after another like a human siege engine.
And weirdly enough... it worked.
The Tang soldiers who had been retreating suddenly snapped out of their panic. Morale stabilized almost instantly. The Mo Dao infantry regrouped behind Li Siye and rebuilt their shield-and-blade formation.
Then the Tang line started advancing again.
Slowly. Brutally. Like a wall of moving steel.
Wherever Li Siye swung his blade, bodies hit the ground.
Seeing the vanguard stabilize, Guo Ziyi immediately committed the central Shuofang army into the fight. The pressure became overwhelming, and the rebel front finally started showing cracks.
At that point, the rebel commander An Shouzhong activated his hidden card.
The elite Yeluohe cavalry, which had been maneuvering behind the Tang formation, suddenly launched an attack straight into Wang Sili's rear lines.
If this maneuver succeeded, the Tang army would've been surrounded and annihilated.
But then Pugu Huai'en noticed the movement.
Leading the Uyghur cavalry on the outer flank, he immediately launched a counter-charge straight into the side of the Yeluohe cavalry. The ambush force got trapped between Wang Sili's troops and the incoming Uyghur horsemen.
And once the rebel cavalry got pinned, Li Siye moved again.
He wheeled the Anxi troops around and smashed into the rebel flank together with Pugu Huai'en, while Guo Ziyi kept crushing forward from the center.
Suddenly the rebels were trapped in a three-sided collapse.
At that point, the battle stopped being tactical.
It became survival.
The rebel commanders realized retreat was impossible and ordered their men to fight to the death. The killing lasted from sunrise until sunset. Neither side gave ground willingly.
Eventually, the rebel lines finally collapsed.
The surviving rebels fled back into Chang'an and immediately started looting the city before retreating.
The Tang army won.
Technically.
But the cost was catastrophic.
Seventy thousand Tang soldiers died in the battle.
The rebels lost around sixty thousand killed and another twenty thousand captured.
The next day, the surviving Tang troops dragged themselves back into Chang'an through fields of corpses.
According to the records, the area around Xiangji Temple looked like a Buddhist vision of Hell itself.
Now here's the truly insane part.
In pre-modern warfare, an elite army usually collapsed after suffering around fifteen percent casualties. That's already considered exceptional discipline. Once fifteen out of every hundred soldiers are dead, most armies rout. And by then, half the survivors are already wounded.
At Xiangji Temple?
The rebels lost roughly sixty percent of their force.
The Tang army lost nearly half.
They literally fought until there were barely enough men left standing to continue killing each other.
Without exaggeration, this battlefield contained some of the deadliest military forces on Earth during the eighth century.
This combined Tang military machine could have steamrolled Central Asia. It could have smashed the Abbasid Caliphate head-on. It could have gone toe-to-toe with Byzantium itself.
Instead...
They met outside their own capital and annihilated each other.]
A heavy silence settled over Ganlu Hall.
No one spoke. No one even dared breathe too loudly. The ministers all felt the same dull ache in their chests, as though the battlefield at Xiangji Temple had reached across centuries and driven a blade into their bones.
When the screen earlier described the disaster at Talas, they had felt regret, a painful sense of lost opportunity. The Great Tang had stood at the edge of something unprecedented, poised to become the center of the known world.
But Xiangji Temple was different.
This was not missed opportunity. This was self-destruction.
The empire had taken the sword meant for foreign enemies and rammed it into its own heart.
Li Shimin slowly closed his eyes. He no longer wished to look at the screen. The modern reconstruction of the battlefield flickered across the glowing display, endless corpses and broken banners scattered across mud soaked black with blood.
The waste of it all made his stomach twist.
Those men should have marched westward across Central Asia. They should have guarded the Silk Road for generations, carrying the prestige of the Tang Dynasty to the ends of the earth. Instead, they butchered each other outside their own capital like animals trapped in a pit.
And for what?
Li Shimin already knew the answer. The Tang army had won the battle, and now Li Heng needed to pay the bill. The Uyghurs were coming to collect.
The Emperor's fingers slowly tightened.
Among those seventy thousand dead at Xiangji Temple, how many had mothers waiting in Chang'an? How many had younger sisters? How many had wives holding frightened children behind locked doors, praying for the imperial army to arrive?
Those soldiers had fought believing they were saving their families. Did any of them realize that their Emperor had already signed away the bodies of the people they loved?
The thought alone made Li Shimin feel physically ill.
The Great Tang he devoted his life to building had become unrecognizable. Not defeated, not conquered, but something worse. Corrupted. Grotesque.
Li Shimin opened his eyes again, and the fury inside them had completely frozen over.
"This future," he said softly, every word cold as forged steel, "will never be allowed to exist."
The ministers immediately lowered their heads. No one doubted him. At that moment, the Emperor sitting within Ganlu Hall no longer resembled the calm sovereign of the Zhenguan era. He resembled the Prince of Qin standing before Xuanwu Gate, murderous and resolute, unwilling to leave threats alive.
Wei Zheng's throat tightened. For a brief instant, he almost pitied the future Tang princes who had not even been born yet.
Li Jing finally broke the silence.
"Your Majesty," he said carefully, "the root of this catastrophe was never merely An Lushan."
Li Shimin looked toward him, and Li Jing's expression was grim.
"The frontier military system became too powerful, while the court became too weak. Then incompetent rulers poisoned the center." His gaze shifted toward the glowing screen. "And once the throne lost control of military authority, every crisis afterward became inevitable."
Fang Xuanling nodded slowly. "The empire grew too quickly," he murmured. "The territory expanded faster than the institutions governing it."
Du Ruhui added quietly, "And once the sovereign himself became incapable of restraining personal desire, the entire machine collapsed from the top down."
Yang Guozhong. An Lushan. Fang Guan. Li Heng. Different names, same disease.
Li Shimin listened in silence before he suddenly laughed, a low and cold and self-mocking sound.
"So after all this," he murmured, "the future still arrives at the same conclusion."
His eyes swept across the hall.
"A dynasty may conquer the world through military strength. But it survives only through the quality of the men sitting in this room."
The ministers felt their hearts tremble, because every person present understood the hidden meaning beneath those words.
The Emperor was no longer merely watching history. He had already begun preparing to rewrite it.