Li Shimin felt his eyelid twitch. The veins along the backs of his hands pulsed visibly as his grip tightened on the armrests of his throne.
The solid golden wood groaned under the pressure of his barely contained fury. The Ganlu Hall had gone so still you could hear a pin strike the floor. The temperature in the room had dropped to freezing.
Hou Junji and Zhangsun Wuji traded a quick and panicked glance. They could see it plainly. The Emperor was not merely annoyed. He was balanced on the edge of erupting like a dormant volcano, and the thought of what might happen if he snapped sent ice down their spines.
Before either minister could figure out how to defuse the coming storm, Wei Zheng stepped forward. His expression was righteous. Fearless. He held his head high, utterly unbothered by the killing intent radiating from the throne.
"Your Majesty," Wei Zheng began, his voice ringing through the silent hall like a bronze bell. "I have heard it said that beginning a great task is easy, but carrying it through to the end is a hard and bitter road. This Emperor Xuanzong has lost the path. He abandoned all standards. He threw the administration into chaos."
Wei Zheng paused. He drew a deep breath and let loose the full force of his rhetoric.
"The remnants of peace and pride we see today rest entirely upon the blessings Your Majesty left behind. By breaking the laws and trampling the moral code, he has pushed the Great Tang to the brink of disaster. The government drowns in trivial matters and frivolous chatter. A reign this foolish and incompetent may well mark the beginning of the Great Tang's decline."
"This reckless indulgence in pleasure and arrogance has clouded his judgment entirely. If this continues, the foundation Your Majesty built with your own hands will crumble right here."
For a long moment, Zhangsun Wuji and Hou Junji could only stare. Their jaws hung open. They froze where they stood, abandoning every plan to rush in and soothe the Emperor.
Wei Zheng was operating at full firepower. Completely fearless. He looked as though the only thing he regretted was being unable to travel forward through time and scream directly into Xuanzong's face. The magnificent foundation their ancestors had built, squandered like this. If the Emperor chose to demote him or execute him on the spot for such insolence, Wei Zheng would take it without a single word of complaint.
Then something caught everyone completely off guard.
Instead of an explosion of imperial fury, Li Shimin's face softened. A look of grim satisfaction replaced the anger.
"Your words come straight from your heart, my dear minister. They are grounded in reason. They rest on solid fact."
Li Shimin let out a long and heavy sigh. Then he launched his own barrage straight at the screen.
"The foundation of the prosperous Great Tang was built on the blood and sweat of myself and my ministers, laboring day and night without rest. This Xuanzong simply inherited our legacy and squandered it to this absurd degree."
Li Shimin ground his teeth. His eyes narrowed as he fixed his stare on the glowing Light Screen.
"I bet the An Lushan Rebellion broke out because he was far too busy running for his life. He fled all the way to Chengdu. They built nearly two thousand relay stations. Not to send administrative orders. Not to carry military intelligence. To ship fresh lychees to the capital. Then they ran to Chengdu and made themselves a laughingstock for ten thousand generations."
Seeing the Emperor's fury shift toward the incompetent future ruler instead of detonating into a headache, the ministers let out a collective breath of relief. Zhangsun Wuji and the others finally loosened their rigid shoulders.
Fang Xuanling, who had been standing off to the side with a half-dazed expression, suddenly snapped awake as though waking from a dream.
"Wait. Did the capital of our dynasty move at some point?"
Du Ruhui shook his head. He did not agree.
"The Light Screen mentioned that lychees were still being delivered to Chang'an. If I am not mistaken, they must have established a secondary capital. The Guanzhong region is prosperous and controls the western gateway, that is true. But when it comes to ease of movement between north and south, Luoyang far surpasses Chang'an."
"After all, the territory of the empire is vast. It is natural to have a secondary capital to share the burdens of defense and administration."
Zhangsun Wuji stroked his beard and sank into thought.
"If that is the case, and this Xuanzong did not go to Luoyang but fled straight into Sichuan during the rebellion, does that mean the uprising came from the east?"
The more the ministers turned the idea over, the more sense it made.
Li Shimin stared hard at the imperial map on the wall. His eyes were sharp. What Zhangsun Wuji had said fit perfectly. On any battlefield, a defeated army's first instinct was to flee as far from the enemy's main force as possible. Draw a straight line from Chang'an to Chengdu. Extend it further.
Li Shimin's eyes narrowed.
The trouble had begun in the east.
Meanwhile, far away in the western region, Liu Bei pulled his gaze away from Cao Pi's poetry. His heart was caught between awe and envy.
A relay station every twenty miles. Add them all together, and the network would stretch over thirty-six thousand miles. The sheer economic and administrative might needed to maintain such a system staggered the mind.
"But why does this Xuanzong fellow sound so familiar?" Liu Bei asked, his brow furrowing.
Pang Tong spoke up, his words clipped and sharp. "This was the emperor who sat on the throne during the An Lushan Rebellion. He lost the western territories. He abandoned his capital. He fled to Sichuan."
Liu Bei's admiration evaporated on the spot. Envying the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty was one thing. Envying an emperor who ran from his own capital? Entirely unnecessary.
More than that, how could an empire so vast and prosperous collapse so quickly over a single rebellion? Liu Bei still remembered the Guiyi Army. He remembered the feeling of the Late Tang. It was a pale shadow compared to the golden era that could conquer a foreign kingdom single-handedly.
While the others watched the spectacle unfold, Kongming, who shouldered logistics and governance, understood the true scale of twenty thousand messengers. To keep that many riders in service, how large was the standing army of the Tang Dynasty? Estimating the number, he arrived at no less than three hundred thousand troops.
What kind of power was that? Kongming calculated that if you took the forces of Sun Quan, Cao Cao, and Liu Bei and threw them all together, they would not survive a single round against such an empire.
We still need to focus on production. Kongming let out a quiet sigh.
Zhang Fei had no idea why the military strategist had suddenly turned so somber, but it did not stop him from leaning over and whispering to Zhao Yun.
"Zilong, are the pears from your hometown truly that delicious?"
Zhao Yun's eyes took on a distant and nostalgic cast. He paused, then nodded slowly.
"The Zhending pears. Incredibly sweet. Incredibly crisp. It has been twenty years since I last tasted one."
Zhang Fei clapped him on the shoulder. He and his eldest brother had left their own hometown behind and had not returned in years. He understood the feeling perfectly.
[Lightscreen]
[Throughout his life, alongside his literary talent and his relentless sweet tooth, Cao Pi also suffered from a chronic wasting disease.
Modern historians strongly suspect it was diabetes.
In the ancient world, the illness was known simply as the wasting disease.
The name fits. Extreme thirst. Frequent urination. A body slowly consuming itself from within.
Coincidentally, when Cao Pi argued for the superiority of grapes and pears, he kept circling back to the same shared virtue.
They quench thirst.
He was also deeply addicted to sweets in his daily life.
Writing to Wu Zhi, he casually mentioned that when he went riding in the northern fields, he would often go an entire day without a proper meal. He sustained himself entirely on sweet melons and plums, washed down with cold water.
When he fired off letters roasting the cuisine of Shu, he claimed the local food was so hopelessly bland it had to be dipped in honey just to be edible.
He even preserved his own meal records in verse. Strong wine. Roasted beef. This kind of lifestyle is something modern people would look at and say, "Wow, no wonder you got sick." High fat, high sugar. If you don't get sick, who will?
As for the source of the diabetic tendency, some historians point to his mother, Lady Bian. Her nephew, Bian Lan, was recorded as dying of the wasting disease.
Lady Bian's other three sons traced a similar downward arc. Cao Zhi drowned himself in alcohol and grew mentally unstable in his later years.
Cao Zhang left no record of illness, but he died under mysterious circumstances, collapsing after a fit of rage.
Cao Xiong died young. His son Cao Bing followed him to an early grave. With no heir left, the estate was dissolved.
In the ancient world, diabetes was a death sentence. For men like Cao Pi, Cao Rui, and Cao Zhi, who indulged every appetite without restraint, dying young was simply the natural outcome.
So why was Lady Bian herself spared? Because Cao Cao personally kept her on a tight leash.
No real power. No excessive wealth. As a result, she lived a remarkably disciplined life.
Historical records note that when Cao Rui visited her, he found her table set with plain vegetables and millet. No fish. No meat. A stark contrast to the extravagant diets of her children.
The Cao family also carried another inherited burden. Wind stroke. Known today as high blood pressure. Cao Cao managed his condition with some care. The records of his diet show a preference for fish, low in fat and easy on the body. He lived past sixty.
On this front, Erfeng did a genuinely terrible job of looking after himself. Tang dietary customs leaned heavily on mutton.
Worse, since he went out of his way to obtain sugar-making techniques, he likely consumed sugar in quantities that would make a modern nutritionist weep. Both habits would have hammered his blood pressure. He only made it to fifty-two. The math is not hard to follow.
Beyond these names, Ma Zhou, the famous official of the Zhenguan era, also died of diabetes. And An Lushan, the rebel general who "added soil to the Prosperous Tang", suffered from an agonizingly severe case of the same disease, his body rotting from the inside out even as his armies marched.]
Zhang Fei had a few pieces of persimmon cake tucked inside his sleeve. He had been munching on them while watching the Light Screen. The moment the words sank in, he tossed the cakes aside and refused to touch another bite.
"Are these future people all divine doctors?"
Liu Bei was stunned.
Kongming could only shake his head, his smile tinged with helplessness.
"It must be that peculiar sense of humor the descendants have. Just like..." He found himself unable to finish the sentence.
Pang Tong burst into loud laughter. He remembered exactly how the Light Screen had roasted Kongming for having no children. The wording had been brutal and direct.
Pang Tong's mockery was no less relentless.
"You could say every one of these illnesses traces back to the same root. Cao Cao slaughtered entire cities and usurped the Han Dynasty."
Then an even more wicked idea lit up Pang Tong's face.
"My Lord, you should write him a letter. Mock him directly. The Cao clan's bloodline is already sealed. It is far too late for regrets now."
Zhang Fei's eyes went wide. He let out a sigh of genuine wonder.
"The military counselor is truly merciless."
While Kongming busied himself copying the notes for a fast boat to deliver to the medical master in Jingzhou, a sigh escaped him.
"If Cao Pi and Cao Rui had simply practiced some self-restraint like Cao Cao, they would never have met this fate. Who could have guessed that the Cao Wei dynasty would fall to the wasting disease of all things?"
Compared to the somber mood settling over in the land of Shu, the Ganlu Hall in Chang'an hummed with a current of barely contained excitement.
"Your Majesty's blood pressure condition can be treated!"
The ministers had all arrived at the same conclusion at once.
Li Shimin, however, looked far from eager. He was deeply reluctant to give up his favorite meals.
"Fish is flavorless. How can it possibly compare to roasted lamb?"
The ministers fired back from every angle.
"Your Majesty, think of the realm and learn to control your appetite," Wei Zheng said, his face perfectly straight.
"I will send men to the East China Sea tomorrow to find fresh ocean fish. The meat is said to be even more delicious than lamb," Hou Junji volunteered.
Du Ruhui remained perfectly calm. He simply listed a few words the Light Screen had just displayed.
"An Lushan. The Guiyi Army. The Little Emperor. The Yizong Emperor. Consort Yang. The Lychee road,...."
"Stop. Stop." Li Shimin pressed his temples. A sharp throb of pain pulsed behind his eyes. He rubbed his forehead and let out a long and defeated sigh.
"We will do as you suggest."
Hou Junji glanced at the last few lines still glowing on the Light Screen. His curiosity sharpened.
"What does 'adding soil to the coffin' mean for the prosperous Tang?"
Fang Xuanling remembered the phrase with perfect clarity.
"It means they are throwing the last handful of dirt onto the coffin of the golden age. And it seems the 'An' in the An Lushan Rebellion refers to An Lushan himself."