"My Divine General..."
Li Shimin froze in place, looking like a man who had just taken a physical punch to the liver.
Eight hundred against twenty thousand. A god of war who shattered imperial formations and held thousands of miles of the frontier in psychological terror. He possessed every ounce of Huo Qubing's tactical brilliance, yet none of his physical frailties.
The backbone of the empire. The sharpest blade of the Great Tang. Snapped in half by his own descendant's hands.
And he was only forty-five years old.
Li Shimin reached toward the floating text screen, his fingers clutching uselessly at the empty air before dropping limply back to his side. The sorrow vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a wave of fury.
"Damn it, this disgrace is not an emperor. He is a traitor to the state!"
"Blind, stupid, useless! He sat on that throne and drove the empire straight to hell!"
"He tosses brilliant prime ministers into the dirt and leaves his finest generals to be tortured to death by bureaucratic vermin."
"To see this stupid, broken descendant ruling my empire...I swear, if he were standing before me right now, I would kick his ass through the streets myself!"
The ministers in Ganlu Hall collectively chose that moment to examine their own boots. Nobody was brave enough to interrupt the royal meltdown.
Even if this trainwreck of a descendant was separated from them by over a century, he was still technically a Tang Emperor. Which meant this was, at its core, a family matter. The kind you wisely pretend you did not overhear.
They were comfortable complaining about the systemic decay of a future government, but when the sovereign started throwing direct insults at his own bloodline, the smart move was to stay silent and let him vent.
Breathing heavily, a furious Li Shimin raised his fist and slammed it down with everything he had.
Unfortunately for the imperial infrastructure, his knuckles did not connect with the heavy oak table. They slammed squarely into a soft human palm.
"Son of a...!" Sun Simiao let out a sharp hiss of pain, ripping his hand back and massaging his bruised knuckles. "Your Imperial Majesty, if you want to pick a fight with your great-grandson, please leave my fingers out of it!"
Li Shimin's legendary rage hit a massive, hilarious speed bump. The lingering bitterness of the pill still coated his tongue served as a vivid reminder that he was currently surviving on this exact physician's medical charity.
With the dramatic tension shattered, the Emperor found it impossible to restart his shouting match with history.
Seizing the opportunity, Zhangsun Wuji rushed forward with a stream of smooth, calming platitudes, while Wei Zheng began launching a loud, aggressive tirade against Prime Minister Li Linfu to redirect the sovereign's remaining anger.
Between the two of them, they managed to physically guide the Great Tang Emperor back into his seat.
Once his pulse settled, however, Li Shimin's analytical mind locked onto another glaringly bizarre detail from the report.
"Hold on. This Yang Guifei... she was originally the wife of the Prince of Shou. But from what I am reading here, the Prince of Shou did not actually die?"
If a prince passes away and the father takes the widow into his palace, that is a breach of traditional rites. Fine. Li Shimin could have swallowed that bitter pill and ignored it for political stability. But the Prince of Shou was still alive. Still walking around the palace. Still breathing. While his father publicly hijacked his wife.
"Your own son's wife? Who taught you morals? A donkey?" Li Shimin shook his head. "Did your head get slammed by a door? The man is not an emperor. He is a walking scandal with a crown on."
Li Shimin muttered, his voice lacking the energy to even sustain a proper curse. He took a slow, exhausted sip of his tea, his eyes glazing over as he stared blankly at the words: Executed Three of His Own Sons in a Single Day.
Three princes put to death in twenty-four hours. The reigning Crown Prince included in the body count.
For the first time in his life, the Emperor of the Tang experienced a brand-new flavor of migraine. This was not his chronic illness acting up. This was the psychic damage of reading his family's future laundry.
The systemic rot was emanating from Li Longji. Yet, looking at the layout of the court and the distinct title of "The Third Son of the House of Li..."
Li Shimin's fingers twitched slightly inside his long sleeves as he ran the historical math. Emperor Gaozong, Li Zhi. Emperor Xuanzong, Li Longji. The pathetic heir, Li Heng. And finally, Li Shimin himself. Not a single one of them had been the firstborn legitimate heir to the throne. Every single one had leaped over their older brothers to seize the crown.
Recognizing the pattern, Li Shimin caught the faint scent of political smoke.
"Perhaps the core of the rot does not rest inside the palace walls. It might be tied to the shifting nature of our military structure," Du Ruhui suggested, his voice low and precise.
Fang Xuanling glanced at his sovereign, matching his colleague's line of thought. "The collapse of the Equal-Field agricultural system, the aggressive rise of the Volunteer Recruitment model... does this imply the traditional Garrison Army system has rotted out from within?"
Du Ruhui nodded grimly, pulling his writing tablet close to scribble a heavy note. He intended to corner General Li Jing for an exhaustive debrief on military logistics the second they were dismissed.
---
[Lightscreen]
[If history records An Lushan's rebellion as the physical demolition of the Tang Dynasty, then the year 747 AD, the exact year Wang Zhongsi was dragged to the capital in chains on trumped-up charges, stands as the invisible turning point of the era.
The moment Wang Zhongsi was stripped of his authority, his frontier commands were left wide open. Acting on the advice of Li Linfu, the imperial court divided his massive military jurisdiction between two high-ranking barbarian generals.
Geshu Han was promoted to oversee the Longxi region, while An Lushan's direct cousin, An Sishun, was handed control over the Hexi Corridor.
Yet, in that same chaotic year, another military star erupted into the Tang sky.
In 747 AD, the kingdom of Bolor, in what is now the Kashmir region, severed its ties with the Tang and swore allegiance to the Tibetan Empire. Capitalizing on the defection, Tibet mobilized over twenty surrounding western kingdoms to launch a coordinated revolt against Tang hegemony.
Operating from his distant palace, Li Longji issued an emergency directive ordering General Gao Xianzhi to mobilize ten thousand men and march into the western desert to crush the rebellion. A logistical nightmare bordering on a suicide mission, but the moment Gao Xianzhi read the dispatch, his eyes lit up. He knew his ticket to immortality had just been punched.
If we trace his operational route on a modern map, the scale is mind-boggling.
Gao Xianzhi initiated the march from Dunhuang, cut through Aksu, pushed into Bachu, cleared Kashgar, scaled the freezing peaks of the Pamir Plateau, and established his vanguard camp inside modern-day Tajikistan. His army spent three months on the move, covering nearly five thousand kilometers of unmapped, hostile wasteland.
The moment he arrived, Gao Xianzhi unleashed a masterclass in aggressive, unorthodox warfare.
He split his exhausted force into three lightning-fast columns, weaponized false diplomatic transit to catch Kingdom of Bolor off-guard, and annihilated the kingdom in a single strike. A staggering feat of deep-territory deployment that echoed across the continent. Seventy-two kingdoms west of the Onion Range dropped to their knees and begged to re-enter the Tang sphere of influence.]
---
"Yet another peerless commander..." Li Shimin murmured, his expression a maze of pride and anxiety.
Watching a general achieve such a legendary victory in the deep desert made his chest swell. The empire he had built was a global superpower.
But he could not shake the chilling thought: Was this display of military dominance just the final, brilliant flare of a dying candle? Could a warrior of this caliber stabilize a ship that was already sinking from the top down? Li Shimin honestly did not know.
Li Jing, however, was staring at the transcribed operational route, his hands coming together in an appreciative clap. "To push ten thousand men across five thousand kilometers of wasteland, plunge into the unknown, and casually erase a hostile kingdom to secure the border... now that is the definition of a Great Tang commander!"
Li Jing understood the complexity of that march better than anyone alive. To travel that deep into hostile territory, maintain discipline, and secure victory meant the Tang military machine possessed a casual contempt for foreign resistance, and a consuming hunger for military glory.
"The majesty of a global empire is preserved in this march!"
Hou Junji felt his mouth go dry. Are they seriously telling me that every single general in the future is a certified monster? How am I supposed to compete with this?
---
[Lightscreen]
[Gao Xianzhi was an ethnic Goguryeo commander by birth. Thanks to his spectacular deep-territory victory and the fact that his foreign heritage aligned with Li Linfu's bureaucratic strategy, he secured promotion to Military Governor of Anxi.
By this point, the geopolitical landscape of Central Asia had transformed into a raging storm. The historic master of the region, the Turkic Khaganate, had been dismantled by the back-to-back military campaigns of Emperor Taizong and Emperor Gaozong, leaving a massive power vacuum.
Because the Tang lacked the administrative manpower to garrison Central Asia, a rising, aggressive theocratic superpower, the Arab Empire, surged out of the West, swallowing up territory.
In 749 AD, the Umayyad Dynasty was violently overthrown, giving rise to the Abbasid Caliphate. The internal shockwaves of this Islamic revolution rippled into Central Asia. Seizing the chaos, the Sogdian kingdoms launched opportunistic revolts, turning the western frontier into a free-for-all.
Surveying the geopolitical dumpster fire, Gao Xianzhi made a cold, calculated assessment. This was the moment to re-establish Tang dominance over Central Asia. He ordered his war machine to mobilize.
His primary target was the Kingdom of Chach, a vital trade hub with an irritating habit of switching allegiances between the Tang and the Caliphate. Marching out in November and returning by March, Gao Xianzhi went on a blitzkrieg across the region. He dismantled the Kingdom of Qieshi, erased the Kingdom of Chach, pulverized the Turgesh Khaganate, and took every sovereign captive. For good measure, he ran over an allied Tibetan tribe along the way, capturing their chieftain.
The entire royal collection of defeated western monarchs was loaded into cages and shipped back to Chang'an. There, Li Longji celebrated by ordering the King of Chach and his inner circle publicly executed outside the palace gates.]
---
On the glowing screen, the tactical map zoomed out to an orbital view. The ministers of the Zhenguan era stopped trying to rationalize their future emperor's diplomatic choices, their eyes locking onto the geography.
Li Shimin had been sketching a copy on his own paper, but his ink drawings could not compete with the terrifying precision of this future satellite technology. For the first time, they could visually witness the spectacular rise and fall of the Turkic Khaganate, juxtaposed against the massive, black ink-blot expansion of the Arab Empire pressing from the west.
Fang Xuanling stroked his beard. "This text refers to both the Umayyad and Abbasid regimes under the singular title of the Arab Empire. By that convention, I assume our Great Tang and the preceding Great Han would be collectively categorized as the Huaxia Empire?"
Du Ruhui let out a soft chuckle. "Xuanling, how have you forgotten our own core texts? In the eyes of the world, we are always referred to by a single name: Zhongguo. The Central Kingdom."
Brushing the academic semantics aside, the sheer velocity of the Abbasid Caliphate's expansion sent a cold shiver through the assembly.
"My Tang did the heavy lifting to break the back of the Turks, only for these westerners to step into the vacuum and inherit the entire estate?" Li Shimin's voice dropped into a dangerous, competitive tone. He could not accept this.
To the early Tang, breaking the Khaganate was merely a stepping stone to securing the Western Regions. Who could have guessed that a nomad empire that broke so easily under their cavalry had been shielding a frontier of that magnitude?
Hou Junji stepped into the breach, his chest puffed out. "Your Imperial Majesty, there is no need for concern! Our Tang stands unmatched beneath the heavens. The moment our paths cross, these westerners will be exposed as paper tigers!"
Li Shimin nodded slowly. Complex, distant diplomacy was a headache anyway. It was cleaner to build an unstoppable army, march out, and beat every unaligned state into submission. Besides, if they tried to play nice with Tibet or compromise on their western borders, the concept of a High Tang would become a joke.
Still, watching the Abbasid tide rolling across the screen, Li Shimin could see the structural reality. Sooner or later, these two superpowers were going to collide.
---
[Lightscreen]
[When the gates of Chach cracked, Gao Xianzhi had entered into a solemn military covenant with the local aristocracy. He promised that if they surrendered peacefully, there would be no executions.
Relying on the honor of a Tang General, the Chach nobility happily laid down their arms.
After all, Chang'an was famous across the known world for its luxury and wealth. The captured nobles spent the long journey east fantasizing about the lavish lives they would enjoy as protected subjects of the Celestial Empire. They never expected their arrival would be met with an imperial decree ordering them lined up and beheaded like common bandits.
The moment news of the massacre filtered back to the Western Regions, fury swept through the frontier ethnicities. The young Prince of Chach had escaped the purge. He sprinted from kingdom to kingdom across Central Asia, detailing the brutality of the Tang military and rallying a grand coalition for survival.
Gao Xianzhi's display of imperial terror had backfired. Instead of breaking the region's spirit, it forced the fractured Central Asian kingdoms to throw themselves into the arms of the Abbasid Caliphate, forging a unified front to wipe out the Four Garrisons of Anxi.
Gao Xianzhi could not care less. The moment his scouts confirmed the enemy coalition was mobilizing, he made an instant decision. He would strike first, taking the fight deep into enemy territory before they could ever look at a Tang border post.
The legendary frontier poet Cen Shen, who was serving in the Anxi garrison at the time, watched the general's army march out into the desert and penned a sweeping verse:
The Protector-General unleashes his fresh legions,
In the heat of the fifth moon, their armor is bound.
Two million iron-clad warriors ride for the western regions,
Their golden mail casting a brilliant, dappled light across the ground.
In July of 751 AD, Gao Xianzhi's vanguard of twenty thousand elite Tang soldiers arrived outside the walls of Talas. There, they collided head-on with the massed coalition of Central Asian kingdoms.
At the start of the engagement, the numbers were matched.
The warriors of the Great Tang showed no fear. Heavy crossbowmen, rapid-fire archers, the legendary double-handed Mo-Dao infantry squads, and elite shock cavalry deployed in a flawless, undulating tactical matrix, hitting the coalition lines with such violence that the Central Asian front began to fracture.
"At the crisis point of the battle, the sky darkened as the core elite legions of the Arab Empire, spearheaded by the commander Ziyad ibn Salih, burst onto the field. The operational ratio shifted from a balanced engagement to a nightmare. Twenty thousand Tang soldiers against one hundred thousand fresh, veteran troops."
Even facing five-to-one odds, and even though the Abbasid reinforcements were anchored by elite columns of armored heavy infantry and cataphract cavalry, units that wielded a combination of Byzantine-style composite bow barrages and locked iron spear-walls, Gao Xianzhi looked at the field and came to a single conclusion: The tactical advantage rests with the Tang!
A savage meat-grinder erupted beneath the walls of Talas. The ferocity of the Tang infantry sent a shockwave of terror through the Central Asian ranks. Desperate to break the deadlock, the defenders of Talas mobilized every able-bodied male inside the city walls, dumping thirty thousand fresh auxiliary troops directly into the Tang flank.
Facing twenty thousand against one hundred and thirty thousand enemies, Gao Xianzhi remained ice-cold. He issued a calm tactical order for a controlled rearward containment, slowing the engagement to search for a fatal flaw in the Arab formation.
The two superpowers remained locked in a tense stalemate for five days. Then, in the dead of night, disaster struck.
The Karluk Turks, a major mercenary contingent integrated into the Tang lines, executed a pre-planned betrayal. They turned their heavy weapons from the northeast directly into the backs of their Tang comrades. The imperial formation erupted into chaos. Seizing the internal slaughter, the Abbasid heavy cavalry launched a ferocious charge through the gap, riding directly into Gao Xianzhi's central command pavilion. The Tang line shattered.
Furious and battered, Gao Xianzhi's first instinct was to rally the survivors and launch a suicidal counter-offensive the following morning.
It was only because his vanguard commander, Li Siye, physically blocked his path, delivering a brutal reality check, that the general agreed to a strategic retreat. By that point, the Arab forces had completed an iron encirclement. Out of the twenty thousand elite warriors who had marched into the desert, barely a thousand cut their way out and survived.
Historically, the Battle of Talas should have been an opening skirmish, a brutal sparring match between two global titans competing for the soul of Central Asia. Both empires expected to return to the field with larger armies within a few seasons. But three years later, the An Lushan Rebellion erupted inside the heartland, and every dream of a western empire dissolved into ash.]
---
Inside Ganlu Hall, the text on the floating screen faded, replaced by a vivid, reconstructed vision of the Talas battlefield.
They watched a sea of Tang soldiers, clad in brilliant crimson and polished iron Ming-Guang armor, standing their ground in the swirling desert sand, refusing to yield a single inch. Elite crossbowmen and archers functioned like a single, mechanical clockwork engine, swapping ranks in silence to unleash an unbroken curtain of iron rain.
When the enemy cavalry attempted to swarm the flanks, rows of lightly armored Tang shock-troopers stepped into the gap. Lifting their massive, long-handled Mo-Dao blades with a unified, guttural roar, they brought the steel down with such velocity that horses and riders were cleaved into pieces on impact.
On the other side of the field, the black-clad legions of the Abbasid Caliphate were a revelation to the watching court. Wall-to-wall heavy infantry covered in interlocking chainmail. Massive cataphracts where both rider and mount were encased in plates of steel. Specialized archers wielding an unfamiliar, recurved composite bow that sent arrows tearing through leather armor like paper.
Though the final outcome was a bitter pill, the martial pride of the Zhenguan ministers and generals was set ablaze.
General Li Jing sprang from his seat, his hand dropping onto his sword pommel as his voice boomed through the rafters.
"To be born a man... this is the exact battle you are meant to fight!"