Fa Zheng, Zhang Song, and Liu Ba sat around the glowing Light Screen in the Chengdu manor, and to their credit, none of them looked particularly shocked by Zhang Liao's legendary performance at Hefei.
Normally, hearing about eight hundred men routing a hundred thousand would stop the heart of any reasonable man. But these three had cheat code : 'Zhao Yun sitting right there in the room with them'.
When you spent your days watching a man treat entire armies like his personal training ground, the bar for impossible climbed rather high.
Fa Zheng, however, was having a far harder time keeping his composure. His face had ripened to a shade of crimson that could rival a pomegranate, and he quickly buried his features behind his wide silk sleeves. He refused to say a word. The earlier revelations about his own future still churned inside him. Specifically, the part where he did not exactly make it to old age.
Kongming looked at his colleague. His eyes softened, a mix of genuine concern and strategic calculation settling there. He remembered the sighs of his future self on the screen, that worn-down version of him who had lamented the catastrophic cost of the Battle of Yiling.
Xiaozhi, you really should pay more attention to your health," Kongming said, his voice smooth and carrying that signature calm that could soothe a stampede of elephants.
"Restoring the Han is no short campaign. Pace yourself, or you will not reach the end. If you are plagued by illness, how are we supposed to finish the work? I happen to have some methods for nurturing long life. Divine Physician Zhang Zhongjing taught them to me back in Jingzhou. Come over and study them with me when you have a spare moment."
Fa Zheng perked up at once. The prospect of not dying young was an excellent motivator. He bowed deeply, his hands clasped in gratitude.
"I shall certainly take you up on that, Kongming."
[Lightscreen]
[We talked before about how the historian Chen Shou described Liu Shan as 'plain silk'. A blank slate that soaked up whatever dye was closest.
But honestly? Sun Quan was not so different. Across his reign, he appointed four successive Grand Commanders.
You could say the ruler and his ministers shaped each other, so the final judgment on each commander is really just a backdoor judgment on Sun Quan himself.
In the Records of the Three Kingdoms, Chen Shou places Zhou Yu, Lu Su, and Lu Meng into a single biographical chapter.
But the way he groups them is what makes it funny.
Zhou Yu and Lu Su share one section. Lu Meng sits in another category entirely. Zhou Yu and Lu Su, Chen Shou calls them men of decisive brilliance, heads and shoulders above the crowd, true geniuses of their age.
High praise, right ? No doubt they were the MVPs of their era
Then comes Lu Meng. Chen Shou says he was reckless and prone to impulsive killing, but eventually learned some self-restraint. Was he not more than just a military man?
Translated plainly: Hey, at least he's slightly better than a meathead brute, I guess? I suppose that counts for something. The sarcasm practically drips off the page.
The praise and criticism are crystal clear. Chen Shou was, after all, a master of sarcasm..
We do not even need to discuss the brilliance of Zhou Yu or Lu Su. One gave us the Two-Division Strategy. The other gave us the Couch Strategy.
They had vision. They had a plan.
But what was Lu Meng's grand strategy? Take Jingzhou, and after that, they would have nothing to fear from Cao Cao and no need to depend on Guan Yu.
That was it.
No long-term blueprint.
No vision for what came next.
His entire strategy was just: 'Let's be rats and hide in the grass.'
He even spent his time cozying up to Sun Quan, assuring him that Guan Yu could have sailed down the river and attacked them at any moment, and the only reason he had not done so yet was because the Lord Sun was so holy and wise.
Projecting much? Anyone with eyes could see that if Lu Meng and Guan Yu had traded places, Lu Meng would have sailed down that river and stabbed his ally in the back before breakfast.
In the book Military Strategy of Successive Chinese Dynasties , published by the modern People's Liberation Army, Lu Meng received a scathing review. He learned plenty of dirty tricks and tactical deceit from his reading, but he never absorbed the grand, nation-building strategy of a true statesman.
This shortsighted rats-hole operation of Lu Meng's actually resembles what India attempted against China after the modern nation was founded.
It drove the Great Teacher to wonder aloud, "I thought about it for ten days and ten nights, and I still cannot figure out why India wants to provoke us."
The new China did not hesitate to defend its dignity. At the cost of just over seven hundred brave soldiers, and in a mere thirty-two days, it wiped out three Indian brigades and took down more than ten thousand enemy troops. That kept India quiet for sixty years.
A perfect demonstration of the Teacher's most famous maxim. "If we seek unity through struggle, unity survives. If we seek unity through compromise, unity perishes."]
Pang Tong's eyes were practically glowing, a manic intensity burning behind them.
He slammed his hand down on Kongming's shoulder hard enough to nearly send the man's brush flying across the room.
"Kongming! Carve those words into your skull!" Pang Tong roared, his excitement spilling over.
"Allies are not family! There is no room for this let us all just get along nonsense. Constant yielding is not an alliance. It is being a house slave with a fancy title!"
Kongming did not mind the rough treatment. He was already scribbling the phrase down onto a scroll.
He did not quite grasp all the modern nuances of the word unity, but the core logic struck something deep. It felt like a missing piece sliding into place inside his mind.
"This applies to everything," Kongming murmured, his eyes still fixed on the text.
"From squabbles between neighboring villages to the great game of empires. Even our handling of the Southern Barbarians. We show them kindness, but only after we have shown them we can break them if we must. The same principle."
Pang Tong pursed his lips. He was slightly annoyed that Kongming had already refined the idea into doctrine while he was still just enjoying the feel of it.
"These descendants of ours are absolute monsters,"
Zhang Fei barked, his voice thick with genuine respect. "They really know how to throw down."
The Light Screen shifted. Text dissolved and a tactical map took its place. The ancients watched, utterly still, as a swarm of red and blue arrows began to dance across the terrain.
The red arrows moved with a terrifying singular purpose. They shattered the blue lines and plunged into the enemy's heartland like a hot knife through fat.
"Less than a month," Zhao Yun whispered. He stood so fast his chair scraped hard against the stone floor.
As a general, he felt it in his gut, a visceral shock of adrenaline. He wanted to be there. He wanted to lead those red arrows himself. "They wiped out their army and stood at the gates of their capital. It was like walking through an empty hall."
"Just how large is a brigade?" Zhang Song asked, his head tilting as he tried to work through the numbers. "Ru Junzi's History of Qi: say two hundred men make a squad, two thousand make a brigade, and ten thousand make an army."
Kongming's expression was far more serious now. "The world has changed too much to rely on ancient tallies, especially for foreign lands. But I would guess a brigade falls somewhere between two thousand and ten thousand men. To achieve that scale of victory with so few losses is nothing short of miraculous."
He paused. His mind was doing something else entirely, tracking the timeline of this future China from dates mentioned in earlier streams. "The numbers do not add up. If seventy years have passed since their nation was founded, why did the voice say India has been quiet for only sixty?"
"Seven hundred brave boys," Zhao Yun sighed.
His voice carried the weight of genuine regret. "The future is surrounded by wolves. Even with a victory like that, all they could do was force the enemy into a fake smile. If the Han or Tang had pulled off something like this, we would not have just made them quiet. We would have scrubbed their names off the map."
The fire in Zhao Yun's eyes was unmistakable. He was not just a bodyguard anymore. He was a hunter looking for a worthy hunt.
In the Tang Dynasty, Ganlu Hall, the atmosphere was no less electric. While Hou Junji and his fellow generals were still arguing over where exactly this India was meant to be on a map, Zhangsun Wuji had already taken action.
He had personally rolled out Li Shimin's most prized map of the known world and spread it open right beside the glowing screen.
"Today, I finally understand how vast this world truly is," Wei Zheng said, leaning over the map with an expression that could only be called infatuation.
"This is the real national treasure. Look at all that land. How many kingdoms are out there?"
Hou Junji, ever the cold-blooded military mind, had no interest in the scenery. "Are there strong enemies? Are there more of these 'India' types who do not know their place?"
Li Shimin chuckled and leaned back into his throne. Wei Zheng calling a map a national treasure reminded him of those giant pandas the screen had mentioned before.
He filed away a mental note to tell the Jiannan officials to send a pair over. Might as well have some actual national treasures roaming the gardens.
"A thousand years from now, it seems China is the world's punching bag," Li Shimin said, his tone deceptively light.
"There are nations called France, Germany, England. All of them apparently lacking even a shred of honor. And then there are the Japanese pirates, always nibbling at the edges."
Hou Junji went quiet. His mind was already tracing invasion routes.
Wei Zheng, however, had spotted something else entirely. Li Shimin had already circled the word Japan on his map in thick red ink.
"Your Majesty," Wei Zheng said, bowing low. "That decree you issued six months ago about building a massive naval fleet. Was it meant for the Japanese?"
Li Shimin simply nodded and braced himself for the inevitable lecture on the burdens of war.
"Your Majesty is truly wise!" Wei Zheng exclaimed, catching the Emperor completely off guard.
"Why stop at river ships? We should turn the whole fleet into ocean-going vessels. We have the Japanese to the east and these Indian sorts to the west. It is our duty to use our soldiers to deliver the benevolence of the Great Tang to everyone. Whether they want it or not."
Li Shimin blinked. Is this really Wei Zheng? Did someone swap my grumpy advisor for a war hawk?
Wei Zheng was not done. "And since Your Majesty has been granted access to this divine screen and is hailed as the Emperor of the Ages, you must be all the more diligent. You cannot afford to slacken now. You would be letting the future down."
Li Shimin gave a slow, tired nod. Ah. There he is. The nagging has returned. All is right with the world.
Deep down, however, the Emperor was burning to know one thing. How exactly did those future military history books rate him?
[Lightscreen]
[The twilight years of Sun Quan were, in some ways, a lot simpler.
Mainly because after the Yiling disaster, he found himself trapped in a pathetic situation where the officials were strong and the ruler was weak.
It was not that he lacked ambition. He wanted to conquer Taiwan and Hainan. He wanted to cross the sea and strike at Gongsun Yuan.
But his Great Commander, Lu Xun, shot down every single proposal. In the end, Sun Quan could not get anything done.
From a historical perspective, he might be the most pitiful emperor of the late Han era. His old ministers treated him like a junior partner because of their ties to his father and brother, and he had to swallow it with a smile.
The local Jiangdong elites clan looked at him as though he were a northern beggar who had come to scavenge on their land, and he had to humble himself just to get them to cooperate.
Trapped in this corner, and after his hand-picked successor Sun Deng died of illness, Sun Quan essentially snapped.
He ignited the Two Palaces succession struggle. He set his two remaining sons against each other, stepped back, and watched the four great aristocratic families tear themselves apart.
He let them pick sides. He let them kill each other. And when the dust settled, he felt refreshed for the first time in years.
He finally vented every frustration, and a year after the purge ended, he kicked the bucket. He was buried at Jiangling. One thing you have to give him credit for. He picked an excellent spot. Meihua Mountain, composed of hard conglomerate rock.
Centuries later, when the Ming Dynasty founder Zhu Chongba was building his own tomb, he originally wanted to flatten Sun Quan's grave.
But the tools of the time could not break that rock. Zhu Chongba, whom the Teacher praised as second only to Li Erfeng in military talent, decided to be magnanimous. He said, "Sun Quan was a tough guy. Let him stay and be my gatekeeper."
Zhu Chongba was being gracious, but the construction workers were lazy. They moved Sun Quan's stone lions and tore up the sacred path to his tomb.
Fast forward to the Qing Dynasty, and Sun Quan's descendants decided to settle the score.
They bought the land that used to be Zhu Chongba's backyard when he was the King of Wu and turned it into a vegetable patch.
You made our ancestor a gatekeeper? Fine. We will grow cabbages on your old palace grounds. A true eye for an eye.
Today, Sun Quan's tomb is just a tourist spot. There was a funny story recently. A student who had just been accepted into a top university visited the tomb. He brought a little tiger toy, a tiger-patterned cake, a map of Hefei, and his admission letter to the University of Science and Technology of China.
USTC is one of the finest schools in the country, and it is located right in Hefei. The very place where Sun Quan's army was famously humiliated. We hope that wherever Sun Quan is now, he can appreciate the irony and at least get a good laugh out of it.]
Zhang Fei's face settled into a mask of pure gloom. He could already tell that his own tomb was not going to get any fancy stories or tiger-patterned cakes.
Liu Bei, however, was feeling rather satisfied about his own resting place. But as a descendant of the royal house, he felt obligated to defend the family honor.
"So Li Shimin is number one in military talent. Fine," Liu Bei grumbled. "But how is my ancestor Gaozu not even number two? That is just disrespectful."
Kongming waved a hand, his eyes still locked on the images of the future. "My lord saw earlier, in Tiangong Kaiwu, that farmland and grain yields grew ever greater in later ages. With more land and people, unifying the realm naturally becomes more difficult."
Mi Zhu sighed and shook his head. "Sun Quan's end truly was karma..., was it not?"
"Exactly," Pang Tong said. "When you build your kingdom on betrayal and just trying to stay alive, you can never truly control the great clans. I would wager that by the end, no one in Jiangdong could land an official post unless they came from one of those four big clans."
Liu Bei stared at the image of the tomb on the screen. A little tiger toy sat in the grass, cute and utterly out of place against the ancient stone.
"Sun Quan loved hunting tigers in his youth," Liu Bei said. "It seems he never really lost that Sun family fire. He just kept it buried under a mask for far too long."
His thoughts drifted to Lady Sun, his wife. She was unquestionably a Sun. The fire in her was enough to burn a house down. He also remembered her father, Sun Jian, the Tiger of Jiangdong. Strange to think that years after meeting that man, he had ended up married to his daughter.
Kongming, meanwhile, was squinting at the admission letter in the image.
"University of Science and Technology. We hereby admit you."
Science and Technology. Kongming's heart nearly stopped. This was the dream. This was the ultimate academy. No ancient texts. No dusty scrolls debating rituals from five hundred years ago. Just pure, unadorned knowledge about how the world truly worked.
If he could spend just one day in a place like that, he would die content.
To enter through an exam... and rise based on talent alone," Pang Tong mused.
"No powerful families to kiss up to. I bet Sun Quan is looking at that student and feeling more jealous than he ever did of Cao Cao."