"This Tang Dynasty... barely three to five years have passed, yet it already feels like an entirely different country."
Xu Shu let out a long sigh. The contrast was too violent, just a few broadcasts ago, the Great Tang on the screen had looked invincible.
Endless elite armies, generals who could shake entire frontiers, weapons and armor refined to terrifying perfection.
And now? watching those same elite troops slaughter each other with such fanatical resolve sent a chill through him.
"You're telling me," Zhang Fei grumbled, folding his arms tightly across his chest. "Turns out it doesn't matter how many kingdoms you crush or how far you ride across the world. In the end, your head still gets hung from the walls of Tongguan Pass."
"Kongming," Zhang Fei asked, turning toward Kongming, "that 'fake Zhuge Liang' serving the little tyrant... did his strategy actually make sense?"
Kongming was already bent over a giant map spread across the table. He completely ignored Zhang Fei's increasingly disrespectful nicknames for historical figures.
His fingers calmly traced rivers, mountain passes, and supply routes across the parchment. After a long moment, he finally nodded.
"It is a workable strategy. A very good one, in fact. However..."
"However, only elite troops could pull it off," Xu Shu finished immediately.
The two men exchanged a glance. Years of military experience made the conclusion obvious.
Xu Shu stepped closer to the map. "This style of warfare places immense pressure on logistics and command structure. Your generals must be capable of independent action. Your troops must endure constant movement, harassment tactics, and prolonged campaigns without collapsing." In other words, ordinary armies would fail instantly.
The bitter irony was that the Tang still possessed exactly the kind of forces needed to execute it. Guo Ziyi. Li Guangbi. The Hedong and Shuofang armies. Even staring into the abyss, the Tang Dynasty still had monsters left in reserve.
Kongming slowly dragged a finger eastward across the map. "But if they follow Li Heng's preferred strategy instead..." He paused briefly after almost repeating Zhang Fei's "little tyrant" comment. Zhang Fei burst out laughing anyway. Kongming shot him a flat look before continuing. "Retake Chang'an first. Then immediately march east to recover Luoyang."
His finger tapped Hebei. "That approach forces the imperial army to become the attacking expeditionary force. The rebels retreat into Hebei, shorten their supply lines, consolidate their defenses, and wait."
Xu Shu's expression darkened. "And if the rebel army still possesses the same suicidal morale they showed at Xiangji Temple... the Tang army eventually loses." The room fell quiet. No one doubted that assessment.
Xu Shu slowly lifted his head toward the light screen. The image showed a warrior stood bare-chested amidst the chaos of battle. His body looked carved from iron. Thick muscles wrapped around his frame without a trace of softness, while his wild beard made him resemble a demon clawing its way out of hell itself.
In his hands was the enormous Mo Dao, caught mid-swing as it split a heavily armored cavalryman apart. Before him stretched an ocean of enemies. Behind him stood ranks of Tang soldiers roaring themselves hoarse.
Beside the image floated a single line of text. The Divine General. The Mo Dao Master. Li Siye.
Xu Shu stared at the image for a long time before finally exhaling. "An arrow at the end of its flight."
Liu Bei slowly lowered his eyes. "What a terrifying army." His voice carried equal parts admiration and sorrow. An army willing to keep fighting after losing half its men was not normal. Even the elite troops of the Three Kingdoms era would shatter long before reaching that level of bloodshed. And that was precisely what made the tragedy unbearable.
"They could have conquered the world," Liu Bei murmured. Instead, they buried themselves outside their own capital.
Zhao Yun stood quietly beside the map table, staring at the image of Li Siye.
"That man," Zhao Yun finally said, "possessed the courage to hold a collapsing frontline together with his own body."
As a career battlefield commander, Zhao Yun understood exactly what that moment meant. When cavalry breaks infantry formation, panic spreads faster than fire. Once the line routs, even the bravest soldiers turn into fleeing prey.
Yet Li Siye had forced thousands of terrified men to stop retreating and turn back toward death. That was not something mere strength could accomplish.
"That is the bearing of a true vanguard general," Zhao Yun concluded softly.
Zhang Fei snorted.
"And what did he get for it? Half his army dead, the other half dragged into another meat grinder later."
The more Zhang Fei watched this Tang Dynasty, the angrier he became.
"The Emperor sits safely in the rear while men like that swing giant blades until their arms fall off."
He jabbed a thick finger toward the screen. "And after all that, the court still has the nerve to suspect loyal generals of rebellion? Damn. What a broken world."
Fa Zheng let out a dry laugh from the side.
"The reason behind this is actually very simple, Yide."
Everyone turned toward him.
"The Tang court fears its own generals more than its enemies."
Fa Zheng leaned lazily against the desk.
"Look at the pattern. Wang Zhongsi dies. Gao Xianzhi dies. Feng Changqing dies. Geshu Han gets thrown into a death trap. Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi get constantly dragged around by political paranoia."
He spread his hands. "When an empire starts treating its best commanders like disposable threats, military collapse is only a matter of time."
Kongming silently nodded, the logic was cruel, but difficult to refute.
The early Tang Dynasty possessed terrifying military talent. That much was undeniable. The problem was that every emperor after Li Shimin seemed terrified of the very people keeping the empire alive.
Xu Shu looked toward the image of Li Siye again."The Tang still possesses overwhelming force, but the momentum is gone."
He tapped Hebei on the map. "The rebellion survives because both sides are exhausting themselves faster than they can recover."
Kongming folded his fan. "And Li Heng accelerated that exhaustion."
Everyone in the room understood what he meant. The Battle of Xiangji Temple looked like a victory on paper. Chang'an was reclaimed. The rebels retreated.
But strategically? The Tang had just traded seventy thousand elite soldiers for a ruined capital and temporary momentum. That was not recovery. That was bleeding out in slow motion.
Liu Bei let out a tired sigh. "In the end, the rebels and the imperial court are both devouring the same Great Tang." No one argued with him.
On the light screen, the image of Li Siye remained standing amidst the sea of corpses, his Mo Dao still raised high, like the final roar of a dying empire.
If Kongming and Xu Shu could instantly see how Li Heng's battle plan would turn Hebei into a meat grinder, Li Jing and Li Shimin obviously saw it too.
But right now, neither the God of War nor the Emperor had the energy to discuss tactics.
What did it matter if the rebellion dragged on? What did it matter if the imperial army was pushed back?
When the Son of Heaven personally authorized foreign mercenaries to butcher and pillage his own citizens, who was the real enemy? Who were the actual rebels?
"When the Emperor views his subjects as dirt and weeds, the subjects will view their ruler as a bandit and an enemy."
The voice was dry, devoid of emotion. Li Shimin did not even need to turn his head to know it was Wei Zheng quoting ancient wisdom.
Fang Xuanling, usually a master of diplomacy and gentle phrasing, did not bother to cushion the blow. He simply quoted Mencius to the silent hall.
"The people are the most important. The state comes next. The sovereign is the least of all."
Du Ruhui stood near the archives. He calmly flipped through his notes and decided to inject a fresh spike of adrenaline right into Li Shimin's already high blood pressure.
"During the Mawei Shrine mutiny, the future generations noted that a man named Li Fuguo was Li Heng's trusted confidant," Du Ruhui observed coolly.
"Earlier, when the screen discussed posthumous titles, it mentioned that this Li Fuguo was a eunuch who eventually attained the rank of Chancellor. It seems that disaster promotion happens during Li Heng's reign."
Li Shimin's only physical reaction was a twitch of his eyelids. Then, incredibly, he started to laugh.
"He discarded the true Kongming and hands the keys of the empire to a castrated servant."
The Emperor clapped his hands in a slow, mocking rhythm.
"Truly, what a magnificent 'grandson' I have produced. The future generations love to mock Liu Bei's heir, Liu Shan, as a pathetic, useless fool who could not be helped. Compared to my bloodline, Liu Shan looks like a paragon of virtue."
Li Shimin felt hollow. He felt as though every drop of blood in his heart had evaporated.
In a span of just three years, the apex of military might was wiped off the map.
Brave warriors were ground into dust. Loyal ministers were buried in unmarked graves. Righteous men fought to the bitter end to defend the state, while the Son of Heaven worked overtime to sell his citizens to the highest bidder.
Li Shimin had just founded the Zhenguan era. His reign was barely beginning.
Yet, sitting on his throne, he felt an overwhelming urge to administer lethal medicine to his own royal house.
[Lightscreen]
[Before the clash at Xiangji Temple, a seemingly minor incident occurred within the rebel camp.
An Lushan died.
An Lushan suffered from a case of what ancient texts call 'wasting thirst' or as modern medicine calls it, diabetes. According to historical records, by the time he conquered Chang'an, his diabetes had reached a terminal stage.
He went blind, and his body was covered in necrotic boils.
Consistently high blood sugar causes damage to the capillary walls in the retina. In the early stages, this leads to blurred vision. In severe, unmanaged cases, it results in blindness.
Another hallmark of diabetes is the lack of insulin secretion, which leads to skin lesions and boils. Furthermore, this metabolic decay means wounds heal slower than in a healthy person, making infections lethal.
Every single symptom documented in the historical texts aligns with end-stage diabetes.
After capturing Luoyang, An Lushan could not wait to put on the crown.
He declared himself Emperor of the Great Yan Dynasty and took the title Emperor Xiongwu. But less than a year into his reign, the blind, rotting emperor became paranoid and psychotic.
He treated his inner circle like stray dogs, beating and whipping them for the slightest perceived offense.
The primary victim of this abuse was a eunuch named Li Zhu'er.
The primary victim of this abuse was a eunuch named Li Zhu'er. Li Zhu'er was a Khitan native. Years ago, An Lushan had personally performed a crude castration on the boy.
Now, a quick fun fact about castration in this era. The procedure was horrifyingly dangerous. No anesthesia. No sterilization. No post-operative care worth mentioning. The mortality rate was staggeringly high. Most victims died from blood loss, septic shock, or infections that turned the wound into a festering nightmare within days. Surviving a castration performed by an amateur like An Lushan, who was basically just a warlord with a knife and zero medical training, was like winning a lottery where the prize was more suffering.
Miraculously, Li Zhu'er survived the infection and was forced to serve An Lushan ever since. Historical records even note that when An Lushan bathed in the Huaqing Hot Springs, it was Li Zhu'er who scrubbed his back.
Faced with a blind, festering, and violently abusive boss, the rebel high command came to a very simple, pragmatic conclusion. This guy is annoying, right? Why not just kill him?
An Lushan's second son, An Qingxu, teamed up with a senior advisor named Yan Zhuang. Together, they approached Li Zhu'er. "Boy, how about this? Let's get revenge. I get what I want, and your hatred gets satisfied, right?"
Given that Li Zhu'er harbored a lifetime of hatred for the man who mutilated him, the alliance was formed instantly.
In January of the year 757, An Qingxu stood guard outside the imperial tent. Yan Zhuang and Li Zhu'er drew their blades and slipped inside. Facing a blind, sleeping, and dying old man, the two assassins hacked An Lushan to pieces with ease.
They did not bother with a state funeral. They dug a shallow hole directly under the bed, rolled An Lushan's corpse into a carpet, kicked him into the dirt, and covered it up. Done.
Shortly after, Yan Zhuang walked out and publicly announced that An Lushan had decided to gracefully abdicate the throne to his son An Qingxu, choosing to retire as the Retired Emperor.
As for the ultimate fates of the other main characters in this disaster?
In 759, An Qingxu was murdered by his ally, Shi Siming.
In 761, Shi Siming was murdered by his own son, Shi Chaoyi.
In April of 762, Li Longji died of illness. One month later, in May of 762, Li Heng died of illness.
The primary architects of the An Lushan Rebellion all met similar, miserable ends. It brings to mind the haunting final lament from the classic novel Dream of the Red Chamber.
When the food is gone, the birds flee to the forest. Leaving behind an empty landscape, wiped clean.]
Li Shimin met this revelation with silence.
Before the rebellion officially started on the screen, he had prayed for An Lushan to die quickly. But watching this traitor meet such a pathetic end, Li Shimin felt nothing.
It did not matter anymore.
As for the endless cycle of sons butchering fathers, and the suspicious timing of Li Longji and Li Heng dying within thirty days of each other?
Li Shimin merely allowed a cold smirk to touch the corner of his mouth.
"When the food is gone, the birds flee to the forest," Li Shimin murmured. "Hilarious."
Of course, the Tang Dynasty would not be wiped completely clean just yet. The empire still had roughly a century of life left in its veins.
Li Shimin's thoughts drifted away from the rotting core of the capital. His mind wandered to the distant western frontiers. He thought of the white-haired veterans trapped in Anxi, holding the line for fifty years without reinforcements. He thought of Zhang Yichao, the man who would carve a path through hell purely to bring his home back to the Great Tang.
Those men. Those ghosts of the desert. They were the only ones who inherited the true iron spine of the Tang Dynasty.
Standing near the wall, Sun Simiao ignored the political drama entirely. The King of Medicine was intensely focused on copying down the exact medical pathology of 'wasting thirst' into his notebook, dissecting the relationship between blood sugar, blindness, and infections.
Sun Simiao did not care about the fate of empires. He cured the human body. He had already dedicated his life to that. Curing the rot of a nation was far beyond his pay grade.
The heavy atmosphere in Ganlu Hall suffocated any desire for casual conversation. Everyone was trapped in their own distinct train of thought.
For the civil ministers like Fang Xuanling, Du Ruhui, and Wei Zheng, they were actively drafting proposals in their heads. They needed to corner the Emperor and establish a rigorous, unbreakable system for educating the Crown Prince to prevent this genetic decay.
For the God of War Li Jing, his mind was already analyzing the inevitable future. He saw the impending collapse of centralized imperial authority and the dominance of regional military power. The heavenly screen had mentioned 'regional warlords' far too many times for it to be a passing phase.
Meanwhile, Zhangsun Wuji glanced sideways at Hou Junji. The veteran general, who had started as a humble strategist in Li Shimin's old Prince of Qin mansion, was staring at the Emperor with a look of unhidden panic.
"Are you worried that His Majesty will abandon the conquest of the Western Regions because of this?" Zhangsun Wuji whispered.
Hou Junji whipped his head around, his eyes wide. "How did you know?"
Zhangsun Wuji held back a scoff. He marveled at how a man could survive court politics with every single thought broadcasted so loudly on his face. He possessed no subtlety.
"His Majesty is a man of ambition," Zhangsun Wuji stated flatly. "He does not paralyze himself with regret over things that have not happened yet, nor does he wallow in despair after the fact. The Western Regions will be crushed into the palm of the Great Tang."
The first half of the sentence was a bit too philosophical for Hou Junji's straightforward brain, but he perfectly understood the second half. A vicious grin split the general's face.
Lightscreen]
[After the horrific bloodbath at Xiangji Temple, the Tang finally retook Chang'an. And right on cue, the Uyghurs showed up to collect payment.
Crown Prince Li Yu quickly sat down with the Uyghur prince for an emergency negotiation. His argument was brutally practical.
If the Uyghurs started looting Chang'an immediately, news of the massacre would spread straight to Luoyang.
The rebels there would realize surrender meant death anyway, so they would fight like cornered beasts.
Retaking the eastern capital would become a nightmare.
Li Yu basically said: "Please hold your horses for now. You can loot later."
The Uyghurs thought it over. Fair enough. Better profits later than stubborn resistance now. So they agreed.
According to historical records, the surviving people of Chang'an were so overwhelmed with relief that they dropped to their knees crying, praising Li Yu as "the true lord shared by Han and nomad alike."
And just like that, the eastern campaign accelerated.
Leading the charge, the Uyghur heavy cavalry smashed straight through the rebel defenses at Shan Prefecture.
Honestly, if Gao Xianzhi's ghost was floating around somewhere, he was probably yelling: "I told you Shan Prefecture couldn't be defended!"
But the real problem came after Luoyang fell.
The Old Book of Tang records it with horrifying simplicity: after entering the Eastern Capital, the Uyghurs marched directly into the treasury and emptied it. Then they spread through the markets and residential districts, looting and killing for three straight days.
And the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance, the Zizhi Tongjian, somehow makes it even worse.
Three days later, Li Yu finally entered Luoyang himself. By that point, the Uyghurs still hadn't had enough.
To stop the slaughter, the surviving wealthy families of Luoyang had to desperately scrape together ten thousand bolts of silk as a ransom payment, basically bribing the Uyghurs to stop murdering people.
Think about that for a second.
The imperial army fought its way across the empire to "liberate" Luoyang... and the citizens still had to pay foreign cavalry to spare their lives.]
CRACK!
A stone inkstand blurred through the air. It smashed through the holographic projection of the heavenly screen and slammed against the far wooden pillar, dropping to the floor with a thud.
The ministers jumped, tracing the path of the inkstand as it rolled harmlessly to a stop.
They slowly turned their heads back to Li Shimin.
The Emperor's face was devoid of its usual rage. It was replaced by a glacial calm. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.
"They knew."
Li Shimin's eyes were black.
"I thought it was ignorance. But they knew exactly what would happen. They saved Chang'an purely by feeding Luoyang to the wolves. Compared to the rebels, the imperial army is the true plague!"
Li Shimin closed his eyes, inhaling deeply.
"Damn. I want nothing more than to drag Li Longji, Li Heng, and Li Yu out of the timeline, line them up on the floor of Ganlu Hall, beat their asses, and kick their teeth down their throats one by one."
But I can't beat the descendants who haven't been born yet, can I?
"But these Uyghurs? The ancestors of those exact same mercenaries were living, breathing, and riding across the steppes right now, weren't they?"
"These nomads clearly lacked any concept of imperial grace. If they dared to extort their sovereign lord during a rebellion, it simply meant the Great Tang had not broken enough of their bones in this timeline."
None of the ministers bothered to offer comforting words. Whether it was Chang'an or Luoyang, both were the beating hearts of the Great Tang. Diverting a massacre from one capital to the other did not buy the royal family any honor. They were the brilliant minds of the Zhenguan era. They refused to indulge in such pathetic, self-deceiving rationalizations.
[Lightscreen]
[And so, with both capitals reduced to ash, Yan Zhenqing finally completed his arduous journey and arrived at Chang'an.]