Zhang Fei plucked a dried date from the bowl, tossed it into his mouth, and roared with laughter.
"Honestly, these so-called auspicious omens are getting ridiculous. First, it's a white stone with red lines on it. Then it's a turtle with writing on its belly. What's next? Why not just have a qilin show up and save everyone the trouble?"
Zhang Fei had solid historical reasons for that sarcastic remark.
The qilin was no ordinary beast. In the eyes of the ancients, it was one of the most auspicious creatures in existence, a sign that Heaven favored the ruler of the land.
The Han Dynasty deeply revered Confucian scholarship. According to ancient tradition, Confucius himself laid down his brush and stopped writing the moment he witnessed the death of a qilin.
Of course, Zhang Fei was not interested in any of that.
During the 6th year of the Yuanshuo era, Emperor Wu of Han personally went hunting in the western parks specifically to capture a qilin. He composed the Song of the White Qilin to commemorate the event, officially changed his reign title to Yuanshou, and even constructed the Qilin Pavilion.
Ever since, nearly every dynasty recorded sightings of the sacred beast. And as far as Zhang Fei knew, the qilin had only gotten busier the moment a civil war broke out.
The qilin had also supposedly appeared in places associated with Yuan Shao in Hebei, Yuan Shu in Shouchun, Dong Zhuo, Liu Biao, and Liu Yan. Apparently, the creature had a habit of turning up wherever someone needed a little heavenly validation.
And how had things worked out for those men?
Exactly.
The Three Kingdoms' great heroes had long since lost their appetite for such stories. Ever since the Light Screen had appeared, it had repeatedly urged them to study, trust science, and recognize the importance of ordinary people. If anything, they were now more likely to scoff at heavenly omens than take them seriously.
Zhang Fei grinned around his date.
"Come on, then. If these omens are so impressive, let them compete with the Light Screen. Let's see which one has more useful things to say!"
After all, if you wanted to talk about genuine divine miracles, which ridiculous rock or turtle could possibly compare to a floating screen that predicted the future?
Instead of teaching blind obedience, the Light Screen pushed them to study history, respect science, and praise the working masses. That gave Zhang Fei the confidence to gaze down on these ancient imperial parlor tricks with mocking amusement.
A date flew across the room and smacked him square in the forehead.
Zhang Fei's laughter stopped dead.
Liu Bei lowered his hand, his face as dark as the bottom of a cooking pot.
"Yide," he said, very quietly. "The Han emperors revered the qilin. Our ancestors revered the qilin. You are mocking our ancestors."
Zhang Fei opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"...Ah."
Fa Zheng, who had been frantically transcribing the narrator's words onto paper, nearly choked on his ink.
Yide, you really need to watch your mouth. If you go around mocking legendary beasts like this, won't it make every previous emperor of the Han Dynasty look like a fool? Of course your big brother is going to be angry.
He shook his head and lowered his brush, wisely deciding not to say that out loud.
Fa Zheng had been carefully recording the contents of the Light Screen.
Not long ago, Xu Shu had arrived and gone straight to the front lines in Jingzhou to face Cao Cao's army. He had not complained, nor had he wasted time making a show of himself. He had simply gone where he was needed.
Now Lu Su had arrived.
A renowned talent from Jiangdong.
Fa Zheng could not help feeling a little competitive.
He was no longer the obscure figure he had once been. He still remembered the looks people back home had given him when he led an army past Fufeng. Back then, few would have imagined that he would one day stand among Liu Bei's trusted advisers.
Well, times had changed.
Xu Shu had made his mark. Now Lu Su had arrived. And Fa Zheng was not about to let a man from Jiangdong steal all the attention.
Let's see what a talent from Fufeng can do.
He lowered his head and continued writing, determined not to miss a single word.
Watching the historical drama of the Wu Zhou regime unfold, Liu Bei silently cataloged the lessons, storing them away as a grim warning.
Promoting exceptional talent while disregarding social background was a brilliant concept. If you discovered a generational genius, it would spark a legendary tale destined to echo across eternity. A true talent elevated from obscurity was worth more than 1,000 gold pieces spent on a dead horse's bones.
But if you accidentally promoted a vicious, unprincipled monster like Lai Junchen, you would flood the imperial halls with petty villains and unleash packs of rabid wolves across the court.
Liu Bei understood the mechanism required to prevent such a disaster. The imperial examination system.
The thought filled him with surging anticipation. The moment Chang'an was fully stabilized, he was going to launch the very first imperial exams.
A few days prior, a letter from Yuanzhi had arrived. Cao Cao had issued yet another Order Seeking Talents in Yecheng last month.
When it came to other political domains, Liu Bei was fiercely confident he could compete toe-to-toe with Cao Cao. Literary elegance was an exception. His raw poetry writing genuinely could not match Cao Cao's genius.
Issuing his own talent-seeking decree might make him look like he was blindly copying his rival from a position of weakness.
Better to wait for the Chang'an examinations later this year. That would be his ultimate counterattack.
Liu Bei remembered what Zhuge Liang had told him months ago when the strategist first handed over the draft framework for the exam system.
"Mencius once stated that even with the brilliant craftsmanship of master artisans like Li Lou or Gongshu Zi, you still require a proper compass and square to draw a perfect circle. The art of governing an empire boils down to one rule. Keep virtuous ministers close and banish petty villains. The selection of those virtuous ministers must rely on a standardized imperial examination. That is the ultimate compass and square for ruling a civilized world."
As for why later generations still fell into the old political traps despite possessing the powerful tool of the imperial exams, Zhuge Liang had spoken with him at length. Liu Bei had found it deeply enlightening.
According to Zhuge Liang, rules were tools created for human use. Whether those rules forged an exquisite masterpiece of civilization or a twisted piece of junk depended entirely on the moral intent resting within the heart of the ruler.
The same was true of the examinations. If the Way was obscured and the sovereign lacked clarity, then even the most advanced system would be like casting a priceless pearl into the hands of a bumbling idiot.
Completely useless.
Noticing Liu Bei staring off into space with a look of supreme ambition, Zhuge Liang shook his head gently.
My lord has not quite come down from the high of conquering Chang'an yet.
Seated nearby, Lu Su was quietly listening to Pang Tong summarize the broader strokes of the Light Screen. A sudden memory flashed in his mind, bringing back his very first meeting with Sun Quan.
He could not help emitting a melancholy sigh.
With a lord possessing such magnificent heroic bearing... how did things ever degenerate to that point?
[Lightscreen]
[Seeing that the vicious secret police and the greedy members of the Wu clan were acting like rabid dogs, ruthlessly sweeping away nearly all pro-Li Tang political factions within the court, the old lady finally decided it was time to sharpen her knives and play the ancient game of political checks and balances.
Faced with two blades, the secret police and her own Wu family, Wu Zetian did not even need to hesitate. The first weapon she deliberately broke was the Wu clan.
After all, the aging sovereign possessed a crystal-clear understanding of reality. The secret police existed solely to serve as her attack dogs. Using her own family as attack dogs was merely a temporary, expedient measure. Ultimately, the Wu clan wanted to claim the legitimate throne of the Wu Zhou Dynasty for themselves.
To achieve that supreme ambition, the Wu family eagerly took on every single piece of dirty work that even the bloodthirsty secret police considered too toxic to touch.
Take Wu Chengsi, who was running rampant at the time, as a prime example.
In the year 688 AD, Li Zhen, the Prince of Yue, alongside his son Li Chong, the Prince of Langye, raised an armed rebellion against Wu rule. Wu Chengsi personally commanded the suppressing armies, successfully capturing the father and son in Luoyang.
The old lady was already deep in her calculations to alter the national dynastic title. To completely cut off future roots of resistance, she casually fabricated a pretext to execute the father and son, alongside two other royals named Li Yuanjia and Li Lingkui.
Among those four victims, Li Zhen was the biological son of the Second Emperor, Li Chong was his biological grandson, and both Li Yuanjia and Li Lingkui were sons of Li Yuan, making them the Second Emperor's actual biological brothers. In strict dynastic terms, they served as both the old lady's brothers-in-law and her paternal uncles.
It was, to put it mildly, complicated.
In 690 AD, right on the eve of officially establishing the Wu Zhou Dynasty, Wu Chengsi desperately sought to pad his political resume. He fabricated a malicious charge of treason against Li Shangjin, the Prince of Ze. While the prince was being forcibly escorted to Luoyang, Wu Chengsi had him strangled to death on the road, wiping out the entire household of the Prince of Ze.
Without pausing for breath, he followed the exact same template to murder 12 other royal relatives, including Li Ying, the Prince of Nan'an.
Among that slaughtered group, Li Shangjin was a biological son of Emperor Gaozong, while Li Ying and the others were either grandsons or great-great-grandsons of Emperor Gaozong's grandfather, representing important side branches of the imperial clan.
After pouring that much grotesque effort into bloody service, surely he had finally earned enough political capital to beg his aunt for the title of Crown Prince of Wu Zhou, right?
Unfortunately, what broke Wu Chengsi's heart was that the moment the new dynastic title was declared, he was merely appointed as the Prince of Wei and granted a seat as Chancellor. The Crown Prince remained Li Dan.
Or rather, Wu Dan.
Therefore, in the year 691 AD, Wu Chengsi decided to skip subtle political maneuvering entirely. He applied direct pressure on his aunt, instigating hundreds of sycophants in Luoyang to submit a formal public petition demanding that she name him Crown Prince. Naturally, with the pro-Li Tang loyalists still breathing inside the court, the petition died a quiet death.
Refusing to accept defeat, Wu Chengsi pivoted his attacks, ordering Lai Junchen to hunt down and mass-execute every official who had dared oppose his bid.
Wu Chengsi's aggressive behavior finally tripped the old lady's internal alarm bells. Desperate to prevent the cornered dog from desperately leaping over the wall before she was ready to cook it, Wu Zetian struck with terrifying speed just 2 months later. She stripped every single member of the Wu family who controlled the chancellorship of their executive power.
However, an alternative historical theory suggests that the old lady was not necessarily unwilling to name Wu Chengsi as her crown prince.
She was genuinely too terrified to do it.
As historical records note, Wu Chengsi's courtesy name was Fengxian. Furthermore, the Wu family originated from Bingzhou, meaning he grew up listening to local legends about the peerless exploits of the fierce Bingzhou Marquis Wen, Lü Bu.
It was also an established political fact that if Wu Chengsi was elevated to the position of Crown Prince, he would inevitably be forced to formally bow to Wu Zetian as his legal mother.
Hence, the narrator strongly suspects that every single time the old lady looked at Wu Chengsi's official courtesy name, a cold shudder ran down her spine.
With your track record, are you seriously trying to trick me into becoming Dong Zhuo?!
Naturally, the preceding theory belongs entirely to the territory of wildly unreliable speculation. Whether it held any historical truth is a secret known only by the old lady herself.
After the Wu family lost their executive grip on power, Wu Chengsi laid low and behaved himself for a brief period. Eventually, his lust for the imperial throne flared up again, forcing him to launch his political siege from a completely different angle.
In September of 693 AD, Wu Chengsi led a delegation of 5,000 people to submit a formal memorial, honoring Wu Zetian with the divine title of Jin lun sheng shen huang di. The Golden Wheel Sage and Divine Emperor. In May of the following year, Wu Chengsi led an even larger mob of 26,000 people, bestowing upon her an even more ridiculous title.
Yue gu jin lun sheng shen huang di. The Ancient Golden Wheel and Radiant Divine Emperor.
Wu Zetian accepted both grandiose titles with absolute, beaming delight, immediately declaring a universal amnesty across the empire both times.
In fact, to heavily guard against Wu Chengsi secretly plotting a violent, Xuanwu-Gate-style coup behind her back, Wu Zetian issued a simultaneous imperial edict to the entire empire.
I have miraculously grown a brand-new set of teeth. This biological anomaly is an undeniable auspicious sign sent straight down by Heaven. Effective immediately, the reign title shall be changed to Longevity.
A 69-year-old elderly woman spontaneously growing a brand-new set of biological teeth can only be described as a biological miracle.
The underlying political message she broadcasted to the court could not have been more transparent.
I am certainly not like Li Yuan, that pathetic old man who hid deep inside the interior palace and only knew how to produce children.
Listen closely, you ambitious little parasites. Your aunt's physical body is still exceptionally strong and ready for a fight.]