[Lightscreen]
[Zhang Yichao started his uprising as a commoner in Shazhou in 848 AD. By 861 AD, thirteen years of blood and grit had passed, and he had finally succeeded in reclaiming the Hehuang territories that had been lost for over a century.
"In the west, it reaches Yiwu; in the east, it connects to Lingwu. Over four thousand li of land were recovered, home to a million households.
The mountains and rivers of the six commanderies are exactly as they once were."
The Restoration of the Late Tang was, in essence, pushed to its absolute zenith by Zhang Yichao's own hands.
But the legend of Zhang Yichao did not just stop at a few reclaimed border towns.
Once the Hexi Corridor was blasted wide open, the Tang court re-established the Liangzhou Jiedushi post, with Zhang Yichao as the man in charge.
In 866 AD, he sent another report to Chang'an. Xizhou, Beiting, Luntai, and Qingzhen had also been liberated.
That October, Zhang Yichao ordered the Uighur King, Pugu Jun, to engage the Tibetan warlord Lun Kongre. It was a crushing victory. Lun Kongre was decapitated, and his head was sent across the empire to Chang'an.
That same year, the Kingdom of Yutian in the Anxi region followed Zhang Yichao's lead and rose up to liberate southern Xinjiang. Intimidated by the sheer reputation of the Guiyi Army, they re-submitted as a vassal state to the Tang.
Finally, the Tibetan influence in Hexi was scrubbed clean.
The roads from Chang'an through Guanzhong, across Hexi to Beiting and Yutian, were finally safe for travel again. For a brief moment, the Late Tang actually looked and felt like the Great Tang at its peak.
The following year, Zhang Yichao's brother, Zhang Yitan, who had been staying in Chang'an as a hostage for his brother's loyalty, passed away.
Zhang Yichao did not hesitate. He traveled to the capital himself to take his brother's place as a hostage, leaving the affairs of the Guiyi Army to his nephew, Zhang Huaishen.
Grateful for his uncle's incredible life, Zhang Huaishen commissioned a massive mural in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang: The Military Procession of Zhang Yichao.
He even had a biography carved there. When Zhang Yichao finally reached the gates of Chang'an, the commoners lined the streets to cheer for him, and every official in the court sang his praises. The Emperor appointed him Grand Commander of the Right Shenwu Army, gifted him fertile land and a grand mansion, and promoted him to the rank of Situ.
In 872 AD, Zhang Yichao passed away at the age of seventy-four. He was posthumously granted the title of Taibao, and the entire Hexi region went into mourning.
This hero of the Late Tang was born in the dust of Shazhou and died in the glory of Chang'an. He led an army east, swept away the enemies of the realm, and fulfilled his lifelong dream. He returned home to the Tang.]
"A warrior of the Great Tang, trapped in the body of a man of the Late Tang!"
Zhangsun Wuji could not help but lead the praise. The room was buzzing, but Li Shimin remained uncharacteristically silent.
The words "hostage" and "posthumously granted Taibao" were flashing on the screen, and he did not like them one bit.
"The future generations were right. With merit like that, he should have been granted the title of Loyal and Martial while he was still alive!" Li Shimin muttered, his mood darkening. "And they call that Emperor the Little Taizong? Since when was I ever that stingy?"
He remembered the few Loyal and Martial titles the screen mentioned earlier, one of which he had personally granted. This descendant of his using his name while being so miserly with rewards felt like a personal insult.
Did I really become that petty later in life? Li Shimin wondered, actually taking a moment for some rare self-reflection.
Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui exchanged a quick glance. Du Ruhui gave a subtle shake of his head. Both of them had a pretty good idea of why that Emperor was called Little Taizong, but saying it out loud would probably just make the Emperor go from annoyed to actively homicidal.
Better to keep that one in the vault for now.
Du Ruhui smoothly pivoted the conversation. "Zhang Yichao is a general for the ages! Moreover, by watching his life play out, we have essentially been given a blueprint for how to stabilize the Western Regions. This is a cause for celebration."
He was right. Li Shimin looked back at the simplified map on the light screen. Even with basic colors, you could see how the provinces were split.
By tracing Zhang Yichao's path, they could estimate the Tibetans' strength and their original invasion routes.
To two masters of statecraft like Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui, these fragments of future knowledge were pure gold.
"Keming, you are absolutely right," Li Shimin nodded, his eyes flashing with a dangerous light.
He already had a mental hit list forming. The Western Regions, the Tibetans, Goguryeo, the Wa... one by one. Do not worry. Everyone gets a turn.
Still, he sighed. Zhang Yichao was born in the wrong time. That Little Taizong just did not cut it. How could a cheap imitation ever compare to the real Eternal Emperor?
---
"Now that is a man!" Guan Yu slammed his hand down on the table in admiration.
"To single-handedly quiet a chaotic world and have your name sung in the halls of power!
To have the people rejoice in your victories and weep at your passing.
That is a life lived without regrets!"
Huang Zhong found the whole thing incredibly inspiring. "When Zhang Yichao started, Lun Kongre was one of the two biggest powers in the Tibetan Empire. And yet, barely a decade later, everyone from Chang'an to the Western Regions knew Zhang Yichao's name, and that great enemy was snuffed out with a single word. He was a true hero."
The generals were all sold. Even Zhang Fei was starting to get offended on Zhang Yichao's behalf. "With that much merit, with a man that legendary, they say the empire only felt one-tenth of the Great Tang's glory? Are they being serious right now? That is some harsh grading!"
Wei Yan nodded in agreement. As a fellow military man, he felt Zhang Yichao had done the impossible. "He stabilized the Western Regions basically by himself, and they say he is only a fraction of the original glory?
Did the original Great Tang destroy entire countries with just a polite letter or something?"
The group looked around, shaking their heads. They figured the light screen was probably just being dramatic.
Zhang Yichao had led a ragtag force, broken a hundred years of occupation, and brought back thousands of li of land. If that was not peak performance, they did not know what was.
Liu Bei shook his head, thinking out loud. "I wonder which was stronger. The Great Han or the Great Tang?"
He barely finished the sentence before he felt the burning gaze of every general and advisor in the room. He quickly corrected himself. "I mean, obviously, the Tang could not possibly match the might of the Great Han!"
Pang Tong, as usual, did not hold back. "The Tang might have had strong martial power, but they clearly did not kill enough barbarians to make them stay scared! Whether it was the Western Han or our current era, when have our people ever been humiliated by barbarians for a century?"
The group nodded in silent agreement. Yeah, the Han is definitely better. As for that Five Barbarians disaster the light screen mentioned earlier? Well, the Han had been gone for years by then, so it did not count.
[Lightscreen]
[The Tang people loved their poetry. Verse witnessed the rise of the Great Tang, and verse bore witness to its agonizing collapse.
A year before the An Lushan Rebellion, the poet Du Fu could already smell the rot in the empire, famously snarling: "What use is all this Confucian learning? Sage or bandit, saint or sinner... we all turn to dust in the end."
Before Zhang Yichao rose up, the sunset smell of the Late Tang was even stronger.
The poet Xu Hun lamented: The clouds rise from the stream as the sun sinks behind the tower;
the wind fills the hall,
signaling the mountain rain is about to fall.
But Zhang Yichao's uprising gave the people of Hexi a glimpse of the dawn.
The Dunhuang manuscripts, currently held in the National Library of France,
record the praises of the local people: Since ancient times, Dunhuang breeds divine generals, earning the distant admiration of all tribes... Soon the wolf-barbarians will be destroyed, and we shall all bow before the Emperor's face.
After Liangzhou was reclaimed and the corridor opened, a man named Zhang Qiao, who had been stranded in the occupied lands, wrote a poem about his complex feelings: As a youth, I followed the general to reclaim Hehuang; now my hair is white and the world is quiet as I return home. The hundred thousand men of the Han army have all withered away, and I play a border tune alone toward the fading sun.
Three years after Zhang Yichao died, the rebellions of Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao broke out.
The poet Wei Zhuang described the end-stage Tang he witnessed: Dancers and singers are all cast aside, babies and young girls are abandoned to the streets...
the imperial storehouses are burned into silk-ash, and the bones of high officials are trampled into the dust of the capital.
Zhang Yichao could not turn back the tide or stop the collapse of the Tang Dynasty. He was merely a streak of light like a shooting star in the darkness of the Late Tang, the final bit of dignity the history gods granted to the dying giant of the Tang.]
"The Dunhuang manuscripts... why are they in France?"
Kongming leaned forward, his brow furrowed in confusion. He remembered the story of the National Treasure Panda. France was the first one to get its hands dirty there, too.
The generals had zero patience for this. Zhang Fei spat on the ground. "I bet it is just like those other guys. They stole our stuff and then pretended it was theirs. I just hate that those future dynasties let their guard down enough for some French barbarians to take advantage!"
Kongming sighed, pushing the mystery aside for now. He was becoming increasingly curious about the history between the Fall of the Tang and the rise of this Kingless Era.
"The wind fills the hall, signaling the mountain rain is about to fall... what a haunting line," Pang Tong whispered, savoring the poetry. He noticed that every poem the light screen picked out had a specific, raw emotional power.
Even the poems stolen by the French were stunning. They were not flashy, but they were honest. "The heart of the people in Hexi was still beating for the homeland. What a magnificent, tragic generation of survivors."
In the side hall of Gong'an, everyone was quiet, reflecting on the fate of the Tang. The disaster of Dong Zhuo had only lasted twenty years and Luoyang was burned to the ground. Seeing the same thing happen on a larger scale to the Tang felt all too familiar.
---
Maybe because he had already braced himself for bad news, Li Shimin did not scream this time. He just kicked a nearby stool across the room.
"The An Lushan Rebellion?! Things got that bad?!"
He felt a sense of profound powerlessness. It was like knowing a crushing defeat was waiting for you in the future, but you did not know who the enemy general was or how it happened.
"A hundred thousand soldiers lost, and the survivors turned into the White-Haired Army..."
Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui were focused on something else. A new word the light screen used.
"Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao... an Uprising?"
Fang Xuanling paused. "Does that not just mean... a peasant revolt?"
To the two ministers, Uprising usually meant a righteous army, but...
"The Tibetans were swept away by Zhang Yichao," Du Ruhui said, measuring his words. "And after Zhang Yichao returned to Chang'an, there are no records of him leading troops again. That suggests the external threats were gone. So, these men, Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao... they led an Uprising to overthrow the Tang?"
Zhangsun Wuji jumped a little, wanting to say something in defense of the dynasty, but he quickly checked the Emperor's face. Surprisingly, Li Shimin was not exploding. He was just staring at the screen, silent. Zhangsun Wuji chose to keep his mouth shut.
Du Ruhui took a bold step forward. "Your Majesty, please forgive my bluntness. But it seems the future historians do not view the rebels as mere bandits. Perhaps it is because the Late Tang was so rotten that the officials had become the enemies of the people. Just like..."
Li Shimin waved it off. He did not need the examples. There were plenty.
He had basked in the praise of being an Eternal Emperor and hallucinated that he had built a thousand-year dynasty. But according to Zhang Yichao's timeline, the Tang only lasted about three hundred years.
"So an Eternal Emperor can only guarantee a century of peace?"
In that moment, Li Shimin's mind became as sharp as it was during his days as the Prince of Qin. "If I want the Tang to last, I have to make the first century so strong it cannot be broken. The longevity of the Golden Age depends on my descendants, yes, but it depends even more on the foundation I lay right now."
I, the Grand Commander of Zhenguan, will build a Tang that is even stronger than the one in the history books!
Li Shimin was fired up. His first goal? To be even better than the version of himself the light screen was talking about.
[Lightscreen]
[Looking back, Zhang Yichao was one of the few true saviors of the Late Tang. It is just a tragedy that his power was built on such a fragile foundation.
He used the chaos of the Tibetan civil war to reclaim his homeland, but he was always operating with one hand tied behind his back by the court in Chang'an.
The century of Tibetan rule in Hexi was a double-edged sword. It gave Zhang Yichao the chance to win legendary glory, but it also poisoned the region so deeply that even the Guiyi Army's best efforts could not save the dream in the long run.]