[Lightscreen]
[By this point, thanks to years of well-placed bribes and his adoptive father Zhang Shougui's spotless military record, An Lushan had racked up a hefty pile of goodwill in Emperor Xuanzong's personal ledger.
When the report of the sixty-thousand-man disaster landed on the imperial desk, Xuanzong, Li Longji, processed it with some impressive mental gymnastics. His logic went something like this: If An Lushan's blunder really deserved the death penalty, Zhang Shougui would've just executed him on the spot in Youzhou. Why chain him up and haul him all the way to Chang'an unless you wanted me to show mercy?
But the empire still had one functional brain cell left: Prime Minister Zhang Jiuling. He flatly refused to sign off on the pardon, arguing that military law was absolute. His warning to the throne was chilling: If we don't execute this man today, he'll grow into a cancer that tears the state apart.
To shoot down his Prime Minister's objection, Xuanzong decided to flex his classical education. He smugly dropped an anecdote from the Book of Jin:
"My dear Chancellor, do not pretend to be Wang Yifu with the divine foresight to read Shi Le's destiny, lest you mistakenly execute a loyal servant of the crown."
Translation: "Stop acting like you can see the future, Zhang Jiuling. You're not that guy."
Let's unpack the irony here, because it's delicious. The story goes that a young Wang Yan, courtesy name Wang Yifu, took one look at a teenage Shi Le, the future steppe warlord who would topple the Jin Dynasty, and immediately went, "That kid is a walking time bomb. Someone kill him." Wang Yan actually sent men to capture and execute the boy, but Shi Le slipped away, and the rest is history.
So Xuanzong was pulling two moves with this little history lesson. First, he was telling Zhang Jiuling to humble himself: Stop pretending you have some magical future vision. You're not a prophet, you're just annoying.
Second, and this is the good part, it exposed just how comfortable the man had gotten: Our Great Tang is thriving. Golden age. Unprecedented prosperity. Who in their right mind would rebel right now?
Of course, anyone with an internet connection and a history book knows that Wang Yan was an absolute, gold-tier fraud who ended up pathetically groveling at Shi Le's feet later in life anyway.
The anecdote itself was almost certainly a piece of historical fan-fiction fabricated by the elite Wang clan to make their useless ancestor look like a tragic visionary.
But the dark comedy of Xuanzong using it here is exquisite: Zhang Jiuling's clinical diagnosis was one hundred percent accurate. An Lushan was absolutely going to rebel.
But the Emperor's decree was final. An Lushan walked out of the imperial court without a scratch, packed his bags, and strolled back to the Youzhou frontier.
Having stared into the jaws of execution and walked away without a scratch, An Lushan's broker brain cooked up the ultimate cheat code for surviving Chang'an politics: The Emperor is the center of the universe. Keep the big boss happy, and the rules simply stop applying.
Armed with this revelation, he poured a staggering chunk of his wealth into an empire-wide bribery and PR blitz, making sure every report that landed on Xuanzong's desk painted him as a harmless, fiercely loyal teddy bear who just happened to command tens of thousands of troops. The return on investment was blinding. Within a few years, even the palace eunuchs were singing his praises. The man had turned bribery into an art form, and the imperial court was his gallery.
In 742 AD, An Lushan was appointed Jiedushi, Military Governor, of the Pinglu garrison. Ten years. That's how long it took him to go from a bankrupt, death-row sheep thief to a supreme regional military commander. His promotion speed left the imperial bureaucracy speechless.
And for contrast? After those same ten years, his straight-and-narrow step-brother An Sishun, the guy who'd put in three decades of disciplined frontline service, bleeding in the trenches while An Lushan was washing feet and bribing eunuchs, was still stuck working his shift as a local prefect in Taozhou.
Somewhere, An Sishun was probably staring at a wall, reevaluating every life choice he'd ever made.]
Inside the Chengdu military headquarters, Zhang Fei let out a long, appreciative whistle. "Man... if Lu Bu had possessed even half of this fat guy's networking skills, he wouldn't have ended up with his neck snapped at White Gate Tower."
Then he turned toward Liu Bei, eyes lighting up with mischief.
"Brother, I just thought of the perfect line to persuade this Emperor Xuanzong."
Liu Bei shot him a puzzled look. "...?"
Zhang Fei cleared his throat, puffed out his chest, and launched into an absolutely flawless imitation of Liu Bei's soft, emotionally resonant cadence:
"My Lord, have you forgotten the tragic, bloody precedents of Ding Jianyang and Dong Zhuo?"
The impression caught everyone off guard. The serious atmosphere in the hall ruptured into booming laughter.
Liu Bei reached up, twisting the ends of his woven beard as he tried and failed to keep a straight face, eventually breaking into helpless chuckles alongside his men. "You absolute scoundrel," he muttered, shaking his head.
Once the laughter died down, Liu Bei's expression softened into something approaching historical pity. He stared at the image of the ancient Prime Minister on the screen. "A generational talent like Zhang Jiuling, right there in his court, and he actively chose to ignore him. This Xuanzong didn't just fail his empire. He engineered his own destruction. What a waste."
As he spoke, his eyes drifted toward Zhuge Liang. If I had a minister like that, I would have guarded him like a treasure. How can anyone be this blind?
Zhuge Liang, completely oblivious to his lord's inner monologue, was busy nursing a tactical migraine courtesy of the Jin Dynasty reference.
He tapped his fan against his palm, his voice dripping with academic disgust. "The Taiyuan Wang clan. Truly, their shamelessness borders on the divine. To fabricate a tale of prophetic foresight just to cover up the fact that their ancestor was a useless bureaucrat who literally got himself buried alive under a collapsing mud wall... it defies rational thought. No wonder future generations call that era a circus."
He shook his head and refocused on the structural patterns on display. "But look at the mechanics. Zhang Shougui and An Sishun both secured their deployments from common, non-noble backgrounds. Even An Lushan caught the commander's eye purely through his usefulness in border skirmishes. The core military merit system was still functional."
"If the guardrails of that system hadn't been dismantled and corrupted from the top down," Zhuge Liang concluded, his eyes sharpening, "how could a volatile element like An Lushan have ever squatted on such a high position of authority?"
Fa Zheng leaned back with a faint sneer. "Now I understand why those future commentators wished this Emperor had the decency to die sooner. The man is a walking disaster."
Inside Ganlu Hall, the reaction from the military elite was significantly sharper.
Li Jing, the architect of the Tang's early conquests, stood motionless, his posture radiating discipline. His voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of an executioner's decree. "This Zhang Shougui... the moment his report landed, he should have been dragged to the market square and beheaded alongside his adoptive son. No exceptions."
Hou Junji was even less restrained. He slammed his fist onto the table, his teeth grinding. "A commanding general deserts his post after losing sixty thousand of the empire's finest troops and faces no immediate accountability?! Treating the sacred code of the military as a playground for nepotism and family sentiment?! Where is the respect for the soldiers who bled in those trenches?!"
For these founding generals who had forged an empire out of blood and iron, the casual subversion of military law for a bureaucrat's personal pride was a cardinal sin bordering on treason. They knew better than anyone that an army's willingness to charge into death depended on a crystal-clear system of absolute rewards and punishments.
They turned toward the throne, expecting a volcanic explosion.
But Li Shimin did not explode in rage. He remained seated on the couch, his expression cold and unreadable.
"I ought to drag these pampered descendants of mine onto a real battlefield," Li Shimin said darkly, his fingers tightening against the armrest. "Let them stand in the mud and watch their comrades die beneath nomad cavalry. Perhaps then they would understand what that uniform truly means."
Up until this moment, he had assumed that An Lushan, despite his treachery, must at least have possessed genuine military talent to shake the empire to such an extent.
Instead, the truth before him was almost absurd.
The man was no brilliant commander. He was a cowardly opportunist who fled the battlefield the moment the situation turned against him.
That such a person would one day command the finest armies of the Great Tang left Li Shimin with a bitterness difficult to describe.
The prestige of the imperial court, the discipline of the frontier armies, the authority carried by Tang banners, every bit of it had been forged through bloodshed by him and the men who had followed him through the founding wars.
Li Shimin's shoulders gradually sank.
After a long silence, he let out a weary breath. Borrowing a bit of strange future slang he had learned from the light screen's comments, the Emperor spoke with heavy bitterness:
"A wastrel descendant squandering the family fortune his forefathers built with blood and sweat."
Wei Zheng stepped forward, clearly preparing to deliver another lengthy lecture on the decline of imperial virtue.
Before he could begin, Li Shimin raised a hand to stop him.
"Enough, Xuecheng. I already know what you intend to say," the Emperor said flatly. "To govern an army is no different from governing a state. The soldiers are the water, and the commander is the boat. Water may carry the vessel, but it may also overturn it."
He turned his gaze back toward the light screen.
Upon it, a grotesquely obese barbarian dressed in lavish foreign silks was twisting his body in an exaggerated dance, shamelessly currying favor before an aging emperor seated high upon a golden throne, laughing in delight.
Everywhere he looked, the banners and palaces still bore the name of Tang.
Yet to Li Shimin, this empire no longer resembled the dynasty he and his companions had built with their own hands.
[Lightscreen]
[The decade between 742 and 751 AD marked the height of An Lushan's rise to power.
During those years, he devoted himself entirely to winning Emperor Xuanzong's favor, carefully studying the ruler's temperament and catering to his every preference with astonishing shamelessness. The historical records concerning his conduct at court are both absurd and difficult to forget.
Whenever he attended court audiences, An Lushan would walk directly past the Crown Prince without offering so much as a glance, kneeling only before Emperor Xuanzong himself. When shocked officials reprimanded him for disregarding proper protocol, An Lushan would feign confusion and reply with complete seriousness:
"I am merely a steppe nomad from the frontier. I know only the Son of Heaven seated upon the throne. I do not understand what a Crown Prince is."
Xuanzong found the act amusing. Once, while laughing, he explained to An Lushan that the Crown Prince was the future ruler who would inherit the empire after his death.
The moment he heard those words, An Lushan threw himself onto the palace floor and burst into exaggerated sobs.
"How could a sage ruler like Your Majesty ever leave this world?" he cried loudly, wiping tears and mucus across his sleeves. "Even the thought of it breaks my heart!"
The display was utterly theatrical, yet Xuanzong was deeply pleased by it. To the aging Emperor, An Lushan's behavior seemed straightforward, emotional, and loyal in a way the polished officials of the court no longer were.
His boldest move, however, involved the imperial harem itself.
An Lushan formally requested that Yang Guifei, despite being sixteen years younger than him, accept him as her adopted son.
From then on, whenever he entered the inner palace, he would first kneel before Yang Guifei before paying respects to the Emperor. When the amused Xuanzong asked why he behaved in such a manner, An Lushan answered without hesitation:
"Among the customs of our frontier tribes, the mother is honored before the father."
Xuanzong was thoroughly delighted by the explanation. He genuinely believed that this frontier commander, despite being over fifty years old, possessed the straightforward and guileless temperament of a child from the borderlands.
The reality was that An Lushan had spent over a decade as an international trade broker navigating the bribery networks of the capital.
He knew which doors opened which way and exactly how much clout every eunuch and maid carried.
He was a generational human calculator playing Li Longji like a cheap fiddle.
Honestly, the future internet commentators are right: it is a tragedy of history that An Lushan wasn't born a woman. If that man had entered the imperial harem as a concubine, his psychological warfare skills would have made him the undisputed final boss. Yang Guifei wouldn't have stood a chance.
The rewards An Lushan received in return were extraordinary.
Li Longji personally ordered the construction of an enormous residence for his favored frontier son within the capital. The estate was furnished with extravagant luxury, to the point that even ordinary household utensils were decorated with gold and silver.
Yang Guifei's favor toward him was even more excessive.
She once arranged a grand public celebration for An Lushan based on the traditional Xi-San custom, For context, Xi-San is an intimate ritual performed three days after a child's birth, where the newborn is washed to cleanse them of worldly impurities.
Now, visualize this: A fifty-year-old, obese military commander whose belly sagged past his knees, stripped naked, wrapped in a giant custom-made infant swaddling cloth, carried around on a litter while a crowd of gorgeous imperial concubines giggled, sprinkled scented water on him, and called him Little Lu-er.
In a very literal, twisted sense... behold the majesty of the Grand Tang.
Backed by such extraordinary imperial favor, An Lushan gradually rose beyond the reach of ordinary court supervision.
He was permitted to enter and leave the inner palace without formal announcement and frequently remained overnight within the imperial quarters. Alarmed officials repeatedly submitted memorials warning that allowing a powerful frontier commander unrestricted access to the imperial harem posed a severe threat to palace security.
Xuanzong ignored every warning.
Not only did he dismiss the accusations, he even reprimanded and demoted several of the officials who raised them.
With the Emperor's trust shielding him completely, An Lushan reached a position where virtually no one in the bureaucracy could restrain him. His rise thereafter was astonishingly rapid:
· 744 AD — Appointed Jiedushi of Fanyang.
· 747 AD — Granted the title of Imperial Censor-in-Chief.
· 751 AD — Requested command of the Hedong garrison, completing his control over the northeastern frontier. Xuanzong approved the appointment without hesitation.
· 754 AD — Xuanzong even considered appointing An Lushan as Prime Minister, a decision narrowly prevented only through the intervention of Yang Guozhong.
But Yang Guozhong's intervention was too little, way too late. From the moment An Lushan consolidated command over the three critical northeastern garrisons, the empire's fate was sealed.
Because let's be real: it doesn't matter who you are. The moment you look down at your ledger and realize you hold undisputed command over exactly 183,900 battle-hardened frontier troops, your brain goes through three distinct stages:
Stage one: Huh. That Dragon Throne actually looks pretty comfortable.
Stage two: Wait a minute. Why exactly am I not sitting on it?
Stage three: I object! I am not convinced!]
[Server Chat Log]
[SwordOfLuoYang: Bro, this progression is way too fast. Before you start screaming "I object," you still need the full usurper package: sword-walking into the palace, exemption from naming taboos, the Nine Bestowments, appointment as Grand Marshal, and a nice little promotion to Prince of Qi.
WanderingScholar: Let's be fair to history here. Early-stage Li Longji was a legendary monarch who built a superpower. Late-stage Li Longji was a man running from his own reality. The coping mechanisms are insane. The guy stole his own son's wife and put her in his bed while telling himself his conscience was clean.
TeaHouseProphet: Man, if Zhu Di saw this troop distribution, he would cry himself to sleep. If Zhu Di had 180,000 elite frontier troops from day one, he wouldn't have needed to fake madness, eat garbage in the streets, or fight a desperate civil war against Zhu Yunwen. He'd have just declared an independent Empire of Yan from Beiping on Wednesday morning.
Zhao Kuangyin: So this is the exact historical nexus where the nightmare of autonomous regional military governors began. The immortal celestial has handed down the tactical blueprint. I am going to reflect on this deeply and dismantle this entire military structure the moment I return to my desk.
Li Shimin: A collection of rats and vermin! How dare a belly-dancing clown like that think he has the right to call himself an Emperor!!!]
Zhuge Liang's brush froze in midair.
His gaze locked onto a single name drifting through the torrent of comments.
Zhao Kuangyin.
Judging from the structure of the message and the surrounding context, this clearly wasn't some ordinary future spectator. It was another historical observer. A sovereign. And from the way he reacted to the issue of regional military governors, this man was most likely the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty mentioned earlier, the dynasty that would eventually cripple its own military system to prevent another catastrophe like the Tang.
Zhuge Liang's thoughts moved with mechanical precision. He silently committed the name to memory while already considering how he might use the interface to probe for information later.
Then his eyes shifted toward Li Shimin's furious message blazing across the screen, before drifting down to the records he had compiled concerning Liu Shan.
A strange sense of relief suddenly washed over him.
He slowly tucked away his feather fan."Compared to this kind of disastrous descendant of the Tang... little Adou practically counted as a sage."
But while Kongming was busy calculating matters of statecraft, the military men were suffering an entirely different kind of shock.
"How many troops did you say?!" Zhang Fei shot to his feet, eyes nearly popping out at the figure of 183,900.
He slammed a massive fist onto the table, his voice trembling with raw excitement. "Give me half that force and what do you mean capture him alive?! I'd march straight into Xuchang, tear Cao Cao's head off with my own hands, and carry it back to Chengdu before nightfall!"
Even Zhao Yun, whose composure rarely cracked, sat motionless in stunned silence. His fingers tightened around the armrest until the joints turned pale, his eyes filled with instinctive awe at the sheer scale of such military power.
Liu Bei's first reaction was to subconsciously wipe at the corner of his mouth, as though afraid he might actually be drooling.
The envy in his chest hurt almost physically.
If Shu Han possessed even a third of those elite troops, the restoration of the Han would not be some struggle spanning generations.
It would be a campaign lasting only a few months.
He let out a long sigh, followed by a bitter, self-mocking laugh.
"Our Han Dynasty has certainly produced its share of foolish and incompetent rulers," Liu Bei admitted softly, "but I can honestly say we've never seen an emperor so absurdly generous with his own armies."
He looked at the glowing screen, his expression growing increasingly complicated.
"The military strength of an entire empire... handed over to a merchant broker as though it were a casual gift."
Fa Zheng let out a cold sneer, his voice dripping with venom.
"If that Prime Minister hadn't desperately stepped in to stop the final appointment, I genuinely believe this glorious Emperor Xuanzong would have formally adopted An Lushan, handed him the imperial seal, and named that fat sheep thief Crown Prince."
He spat onto the floor in disgust.
"To trust the honeyed words of a man who openly tramples imperial protocol... I'm beginning to wonder whether this emperor possessed even the most basic judgment."
Xu Shu slowly shook his head, his face pale as he stared at the glowing screen.
His voice was so soft it was almost swallowed by the wind outside the hall.
"The authority of the Son of Heaven... handed away so casually to a frontier mercenary."
Having endured the betrayals of Xuchang and survived the endless chaos of the late Han warlords, Xu Shu understood one truth more clearly than most:
An emperor without military authority was little more than a dead man waiting to be buried.
The moment Li Longji surrendered control of the army, he had effectively signed away the throne long before the rebellion ever began.
Off to the side, Zhang Song sat frozen in place, his face filled with stunned disillusionment.
The magnificent image of the future superpower he had spent the last hour constructing in his imagination had collapsed completely into ruin.
"This... is the Great Tang?" he whispered, his voice trembling faintly.
"This is the so-called golden age of future generations?"