Inside the government office of Chengdu, Zhuge Liang could not hold back his smile anymore. His hands flew across the heavy parchment like a man possessed, sketching and jotting down notes without pause. The corners of his mouth were permanently curved upward in pure delight.
What is the definition of a pleasant surprise? This right here is the ultimate pleasant surprise!
Compared to the flashy gadgets and weapons shown in previous future broadcasts, Zhuge Liang and his intellectual peers valued this underlying scientific philosophy far more. After all, as the ancient text Huainanzi so beautifully put it, begging a neighbor for fire is never as secure as having your own flint, and relying on others to draw water is never as stable as digging your own well.
Or, to put it more simply, staring at fish swimming in the river will not fill your stomach. Better go home and weave a net.
During a late-night brainstorming session not long ago, Liu Ba had sighed in sheer awe. He had called the future's Dongfeng Express missiles something close to ghosts and divine beings, and described the Tiangong space station as ancient legends brought terrifyingly to life in the heavens.
Liu Ba had joked bitterly that even if the heavens gifted them the exact blueprints for those marvels, they would be completely helpless. They would be like frogs in a well trying to picture the ocean, or summer insects trying to understand winter. They could see the scale of the invention, but they could not trace the fundamental logic behind its creation.
Take the navigational tool currently displayed on the magical light screen, for example. The narrator called it a sextant.
It was a complex, angled device, seemingly made of polished brass or gold, intricately fitted with transparent materials the future people casually referred to as glass lenses. Zhuge Liang had already memorized and sketched its exact dimensions perfectly. But why was it shaped that specific triangular way? How did you use it to steer a ship across an ocean with no landmarks in sight? He had absolutely no idea.
But this deeply frustrating intellectual roadblock finally seemed to have a way forward.
"Define theorems, establish postulates, discuss axioms?" Liu Ba muttered to himself, furiously copying down these half-understood phrases and chewing on the concepts like a dog with a favorite bone.
He tapped his brush against the table. "The core meaning of this 'axiom' idea is actually pretty clear once you break it down."
Pang Tong leaned forward, jumping into the conversation with typical intensity. He was not about to let Zhuge Liang pull ahead in this new intellectual race.
"The world belongs to all under heaven, and nature's unchanging laws are the ultimate foundation," Pang Tong argued smoothly. "So a public axiom must be a universal, eternal truth that applies everywhere, no matter the situation."
Liu Ba nodded vigorously in agreement. That matched his own thinking exactly. He pushed the idea further.
"And this concept of 'logic'... The character 'luo' means to patrol, examine, or gather things together. 'Ji' has many meanings, but here it must refer to organizing or arranging. Put together, it clearly describes the systematic collection and strict, unshakeable organization of ideas and principles."
As he spoke his thoughts aloud, the fog in Liu Ba's mind began to lift. He felt an incredible sense of clarity, silently praising future scholars for coming up with such clever, precise terms. Of course, Liu Ba had no idea that "luoji" was actually a phonetic translation of the English word "logic," coined centuries later by a translator named Yan Fu.
While Liu Ba and Pang Tong decoded the terminology character by character, Zhuge Liang carefully transcribed their conclusions. He turned their chaotic brainstorming into a neat, well-structured document, casually filling in any philosophical gaps the other two missed. The man was a one-man editing powerhouse.
Zhang Song sat nearby, gently stroking his beard as he listened, eyes narrowed in deep thought. He looked exactly like a professor grading a particularly fascinating paper.
At the head of the main table, Lord Liu Bei looked visibly strained. Trying to follow this high-level academic discussion was giving the warlord a serious migraine. Looking for a distraction, he turned and noticed Zhang Fei.
The hulking, bearded warrior was leaning forward, his eyes wide with absolute, unblinking fascination.
"Yide, do you actually understand any of this?" Liu Bei asked, genuinely surprised.
Zhang Fei nodded firmly. "It is a bit tough to follow at first. But if you compare it to basic military formations and city building, it makes perfect sense."
To prove his point, Zhang Fei dipped a thick finger into his teacup. He began drawing wet lines directly onto the polished wooden table.
"Think of the classic works of our ancient sages like scattered, isolated villages on a vast plain," Zhang Fei rumbled, drawing several small dots with his wet finger.
"They are completely isolated. They do not talk to each other. They do not trade goods. They just exist alone."
He then drew a massive, sweeping circle around all the scattered dots.
"This 'axiomatic method' they are talking about is basically drafting the smartest people from all those isolated villages and forcing them to build a massive, centralized fortress city."
Zhang Fei aggressively tapped the center of his wet circle.
"Inside this newly built 'Axiom City', you take all the residents who share the same origins or skills and put them in the exact same district. You register them properly. You figure out who is the elder and who is the junior. You establish a clear, unbreakable chain of command. Everything is sorted."
Zhang Fei leaned back heavily in his chair, crossing his massive arms over his chest. He wore an expression of pure, unadulterated smugness. He looked around the room, practically begging the scholars to praise his genius analogy.
Zhuge Liang actually stopped writing for a moment. He leaned over, inspected the wet tea stains on the table, and nodded in genuine admiration.
"Yide, while you might not grasp the deepest mathematical nuances of the theory, your metaphor perfectly captures the surface essence of logic and systematic deduction. That was a brilliantly articulated point."
Hearing the smartest man in the room validate him, Zhang Fei's chest puffed out so far he nearly popped the seams of his tunic. He looked incredibly pleased with himself.
Liu Bei reached over and clapped his sworn brother on the shoulder. He felt a sudden surge of deep emotional pride.
"Yide, you must never put down your books. Keep studying with this exact diligence. You are making incredible progress."
Then, Liu Bei's expression hardened into the cold, calculating mask of a sovereign warlord. He made a firm strategic decision.
"Since this knowledge is paramount, we must pressure General Wu Yi to completely pacify the Nanzhong region as quickly as physically possible. We need to clear the jungles and open the southern trade routes directly to India."
He tapped his knuckles on the table for emphasis. "I want a massive bounty placed on this specific book, Elements. And throw in a heavy bounty for that 'cotton' crop while we are at it."
Liu Bei perfectly remembered the future items mentioned in the previous broadcasts. Since his forces entirely lacked a deep-water navy to sail West, overland trade through the treacherous southern routes was their only viable option. He would throw piles of gold at the foreign merchants, hoping sheer greed would make them brave the dangerous journey.
Liu Bei might not understand the complex geometry, but he possessed an apex predator's instinct for power. He knew this scientific knowledge was the absolute key to future supremacy. He also knew his brilliant advisors were currently just guessing based on fragments of information from a light screen. To truly master this power, they needed the actual translated text to verify their theories. Everything else was just shadowboxing.
Zhuge Liang, Pang Tong, Liu Ba, and Zhang Song all bowed deeply in unison, fully endorsing their lord's aggressive, forward-thinking strategy.
Zhuge Liang's mind immediately began racing toward the future, plotting decades ahead.
"When we finally retake the ancient capital of Chang'an, we must prioritize rebuilding the Imperial Academy," Zhuge Liang declared softly, his eyes alight with vision. "We will make it a supreme center for investigating physical principles. We will study mathematical axioms properly. We will build dedicated lens crafting workshops right next to the lecture halls."
From the limited vocabulary they had just decoded, Zhuge Liang foresaw a massive, empire-spanning academic enterprise. It would require the total financial and logistical backing of the state.
To study actual science, they needed a supreme university. To support that university, they needed specialized, high-end manufacturing. Take the glass lenses, for example. Zhuge Liang had no earthly idea how the Westerners polished glass to such a flawless, transparent finish, but his agents had recently located a few skilled glaze artisans hiding in Yizhou.
Expanding glass production meant building hotter furnaces. That meant mining more coal. Then they would need specialized polishing facilities. Then they would need to commercialize the glass products to fund the academic research. Planning all of this led to one glaring, entirely unavoidable bottleneck.
They simply did not have enough people.
Therefore, they needed to aggressively incentivize population growth. They needed to drastically boost agricultural output to feed the new industrial workers. And to get more people and more arable land, they had to go to war. They had to snatch the heavily populated Central Plains right out of Cao Cao's greedy hands.
With just a few logical leaps, Zhuge Liang saw a terrifying mountain of administrative work stretching into the next twenty years.
But he welcomed it. He embraced the grind. If they succeeded, this grand endeavor would be equal to forging the Han Dynasty anew. It would elevate human civilization.
Thinking of the ruined academy in Chang'an, Zhuge Liang suddenly remembered a specific cultural artifact he had always wanted to study in person. He sighed softly, a trace of melancholy in his voice.
"I truly wonder if the Xiping Stone Classics at the old academy grounds are still intact after all the wars?"
---
Inside the opulent Ganlu Hall of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin instantly grasped the gravity of the historical broadcast.
"This book, Elements... This is the real scripture we need to get our hands on," Li Shimin declared, his voice cutting through the room's stillness.
For a brief moment, Li Shimin seriously considered dispatching his fastest riders to the Western Regions. If they rode without stopping, they could intercept Wang Xuance's current diplomatic mission. He could order Wang Xuance to detour straight into Central Asia and hunt down this mathematical bible. Was there still time to catch him?
But Li Shimin quickly killed that thought. He reviewed the current geopolitical nightmare brewing in the Western theater.
Based on the timeline he knew, the Sassanid Persian Empire was on the verge of total collapse. They were locked in a brutal death spiral with the Byzantine Empire. And right next to those two dying giants, the terrifying Arab forces were rising fast, sweeping across the desert like a tidal wave.
The whole region was a chaotic mess. Sending Wang Xuance into that bloodbath just to find a math book would be a foolish, suicidal gamble. The man would probably get eaten by a sandstorm before he found a single scroll.
So Li Shimin changed his strategy instantly.
"We will assemble a naval fleet," Li Shimin announced. His voice carried absolute authority. "We will sail West. We will project the invincible majesty of the Great Tang across the oceans, and we will completely absorb the West's..."
He paused, borrowing a phrase from the future broadcast.
"...We will gather all of their cultural and scientific achievements."
Li Shimin had a pragmatic, open-minded worldview. If nomadic steppe generals could lead Tang armies to victory, then foreign scholars with red hair and green eyes could certainly teach mathematics at Tang academies. Knowledge had no borders in his eyes.
Looking at his maps, Li Shimin felt the timing was perfect. They had sturdy, reinforced warships to survive rough seas. They had the concept of canned food to prevent scurvy during long voyages. Most importantly, the global map from the future screen was far more precise than any Tang navigational chart. They could simply hug the coastlines all the way to the Mediterranean.
The goal was simple. Extract the best of global knowledge, bring it back to Chang'an, and forge an eternal Chinese civilization.
It was a shame that this brilliant Sir Newton character would not be born for another four or five hundred years. Otherwise, Li Shimin would have ordered a team to kidnap the man, drag him back to Chang'an, and grant him the title of Duke of Science.
Having finalized his grand expansion strategy, Li Shimin scanned his ministers. He expertly ignored the desperate, pleading eyes of Zhangsun Wuji and Hou Junji, both of whom clearly wanted to lead this expedition. His gaze landed squarely on Liu Rengui.
"Zhengze," Li Shimin commanded, using Liu Rengui's courtesy name. "Since you are officially joining the naval forces, you will not just study basic fleet tactics. You will personally oversee all new shipbuilding techniques. Once the Eastern Sea is pacified, you will act as my imperial proxy. You will take the fleet and inspect this Western world."
Liu Rengui had not even packed his bags for his new post yet, but his whole career was already locked in.
He was thrilled. Sailing the globe, commanding a fleet, and plundering foreign knowledge sounded far more exciting than being a low-level desk jockey in Chencang County.
Nearby, the chancellors Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui pulled out fresh parchment. They carefully copied down every word about the book Elements.
The two chancellors, along with the famously stubborn Wei Zheng, had plenty of ideas on how to use this geometric knowledge. But they kept their mouths shut. They were too busy running an empire to play with triangles. Specialized research was for specialists. As the old saying goes, everyone has their own lane. Let the scholars figure out the angles while they figured out the taxes.
Li Shimin was pushing hard for civil service exam reforms. The Imperial Directorate of Education, the Guozijian, was set to become a powerhouse. So handing this Western science to the Guozijian was the smartest move. They would use it to upgrade the Tang education system.
While the civilian ministers plotted curriculum changes, the hardened military generals stared at the screen with blank faces.
Glass lenses? Logical axioms? Deductive geometry? It was all over their heads. They operated on instinct and experience.
They crowded around the world map, tracing the distance between Chang'an and the Western nations. They sighed. The logistics of moving a land army that far were terrifying. Realistically, Tang could contest Central Asia, but marching further west was impossible. The supply lines alone would stretch longer than their patience.
Li Jing, however, was stroking his beard, lost in thought.
"A collection of small events leading to one big outcome," Li Jing muttered to himself, analyzing the narrator's words.
He applied the idea to his own expertise. Was top-tier strategy not the same thing? The true mark of a great commander was taking a dozen chaotic variables and forging them into victory. He nodded in satisfaction. Yes, that sounded like something he would do.
"But why do they call this Sir Newton the 'Apple Celestial Venerable'?" Hou Junji asked. He looked around, baffled. "And what is an apple?"
He could not understand how a genius of this magnitude ended up with a random fruit as his title.
"The title 'Celestial Venerable' is clearly just a humorous nickname from the future," Fang Xuanling deduced. "As for the apple... Perhaps this Sir Newton achieved his enlightenment by studying this fruit?"
But Fang Xuanling immediately doubted himself. What was there to study about a fruit? It grows, it falls, you eat it. Furthermore...
"But what exactly is an apple? Is it a plant from the Western lands?"
The highest officials of the Tang Dynasty looked at each other in total confusion. They drew a blank.
Qin Qiong, however, offered a theory based on language.
"In the previous dynasty, grapes were called putao, and we still use that term. The word 'apple' sounds like a fruit grown in Hebei. The locals call the Nai fruit the Pinpo fruit. Phonetically, it sounds similar. Could it be the same thing?"
The logic was sound. The ministers filed that information away. They secretly resolved to get a basket of Nai fruit as soon as possible. They would study those fruits in their spare time.
Who knew the secrets of the universe were hiding in an afternoon snack?
[Lightscreen]
[Before officially clashing with the Tang forces, the Japanese army was arrogant beyond belief. They swore they were going to teach the Tang Dynasty a brutal lesson about who was the true father and who was the obedient son in East Asia. They were basically the loudmouth at the bar who talks big until someone actually throws a punch.
The timeline of events was darkly hilarious. Before the battle began, they spouted endless heroic nonsense. During the actual battle, they screamed in utter, chaotic panic. After the battle ended, they went completely radio silent. It was the classic three-act tragedy of overconfidence.
Having suffered a catastrophic, utterly humiliating defeat at the Baekgang River, the Japanese nation essentially unplugged their routers and locked their doors. They were terrified. They initiated emergency drafts, pulling farmers from their fields to build coastal defense networks across Kyushu Island. Every fisherman who saw a distant ship probably had a heart attack.
They were genuinely paranoid that the Tang navy was going to launch a full-scale amphibious invasion and wipe their island nation off the map. You can actually still visit the ruins of these panic-induced fortifications in Japan today. They spent two years building walls and watching the horizon.
This suffocating atmosphere of extreme national terror gripped Japan for two solid years. Then, slowly, they realized the Tang were not coming. The fear faded. But the lesson stuck.
With Japan hiding behind their walls, Baekje firmly crushed, and Silla acting like the perfect, obedient vassal, the Tang Dynasty turned its gaze back to the main prize. The complete destruction of Goguryeo was back on the schedule.
This time, there were no mistakes. No logistical blunders. Only overwhelming imperial violence.
The Tang military machine rolled out in September of 667. By March of the following year, the King of Goguryeo surrendered. In just six months, the mighty Goguryeo kingdom, which had plagued Chinese dynasties for generations, was gone. It was like finally getting rid of a stubborn weed that kept growing back.
The prisoner presentation ceremony was quite a spectacle, similar to when the Western Turkic Khaganate fell. Li Zhi, always eager to prove his filial piety, made sure to involve his late father.
First, the captive king and his defeated generals were dragged before Li Shimin's tomb to show the dead old man that his son finally finished the job. "See, Dad? I told you I would get it done." Then, they were paraded through the Imperial Ancestral Temple. Finally, Li Zhi officially accepted their surrender at the grand Hanyuan Hall. In a twisted way, the Tang Dynasty gave the fallen kingdom a lot of ceremonial face before locking them up forever.
At this exact moment, the Tang Dynasty had unified the Liaodong region and the entire Korean Peninsula under its banner.
However, the glory was incredibly short-lived. Just five years later, at the disastrous Battle of Dafeichuan, Tang commander Guo Daifeng dropped the ball so incredibly hard that the fallout basically gift-wrapped massive swathes of that newly conquered territory straight to Silla.]