[Lightscreen]
[The so-called elegance of the Wei and Jin elites was summarized perfectly by the historical chronicle Zizhi Tongjian.
It recorded that those seeking office treated doing the bare minimum as a mark of noble character. Anyone serious about duty was mocked as crude and unsophisticated. Officials already in power praised empty talk and idle detachment as the height of wisdom, while laughing openly at people who actually worked.
Read that carefully.
The idle looked down on the diligent.
The useless sneered at the capable.
The men who contributed nothing considered themselves superior to the men keeping the empire alive.
During this era, the aristocratic elite even coined a fashionable insult: "Vulgar Clerk."
That label was reserved for officials who refused to join their empty debates, drunken gatherings, and performances of cultivated detachment. Anyone who still believed government existed to govern was treated as uncouth.
Take Liu Song, for example. He devoted himself to local administration and worked tirelessly to keep the people fed during times of chaos. Or Fu Xian, a strict and upright magistrate who despised corruption with absolute intensity.
Both men were highly capable officials, yet the aristocrats dismissed them as nothing more than "Vulgar Clerks."
But here is the thing.
While the aristocrats were busy being useless, there were people who actually did something. People who looked at the rot and refused to join in. People who still had iron in their spines while everyone else was melting into puddles of self-indulgent goo.
These are the real heroes of the era.
The men the history books should have celebrated. They were mocked in their own time as "Vulgar Clerks" by the naked philosophers and the coin-hating trust fund babies.
But a thousand years later? We know who the real legends are.
True elegance was Zu Ti.
While the nobles were debating the meaning of nothingness, he woke up at the sound of a rooster crowing and immediately drew his sword to practice.
His heart was with the common people. He swore a blood oath to march north and reclaim the homeland, famously striking his oar against the river and vowing: "If I fail to reclaim the Central Plains, let this river carry me away."
That is not philosophy. That is a spine made of steel.
True elegance was Liu Kun.
During the Disaster of Yongjia, while the Jin court was fleeing south like headless chickens, he stayed behind and defended the isolated city of Jinyang for nine years.
Nine years. Alone. Surrounded. And when the end finally came, he faced his executioners with total peace, chanting poetry about tempered steel.
The aristocrats could not even defend their own estates. Liu Kun held a city.
True elegance was Huan Wen. He understood what hunger felt like.
He crushed the corrupt political factions that had been strangling the state. He reformed the rotting civil service.
He had the presence of a true conqueror, a man who made even Cao Cao look tame by comparison.
And true elegance was also found in the grassroots. The men who rose from nothing.
Shi Le, the former slave of the Jie tribe who became an Emperor.
Liu Yuan, the Xiongnu chieftain who shattered the Jin's northern defenses.
Li Te, the Ba-Di leader whose refugee army became the foundation of a new kingdom.
They were born in the dirt, treated like animals by the Jin nobles, and they shattered the aristocratic monopoly with their bare hands. They soared out of the mud like dragons riding a storm.
They possessed iron in their bones.
They refused to decay with the age around them.
They refused to drown in empty sophistication and cultivated weakness. And beside their unbending resolve, the fragile elegance of the Wei and Jin aristocracy revealed itself for what it truly was.
Pathetic.]
Inside the Chengdu government office, the atmosphere was incredibly tense.
Everyone present was currently living through an era of brutal warlords and constant chaos. They were used to bloodshed.
But the sheer, concentrated absurdity of the Wei and Jin era was continuously opening their eyes to new levels of human depravity.
Earlier, they could at least mentally justify the behavior of the future elites. Powerful local lords being greedy, luxurious, and lustful? That was standard human nature. It was terrible, but it made sense.
But seven grown men stripping completely naked, refusing to wear pants, and actively insulting their house guests while calling themselves philosophers?
And these lunatics were officially recorded in history as the "Seven Sages"?
The civil and military officials in the hall stared at each other in total, bewildered silence.
Right in the middle of the room, two heavily armored generals were exchanging wide-eyed, intensely suspicious glances. They did not say a single word, but their exaggerated eye movements screamed volumes.
Suddenly, the vertically challenged advisor Zhang Song leaped out of his seat like he had been sitting on a hot coal.
"Yide!" Zhang Song squawked, his face turning a blotchy red. "Are you implying something with those eyes? Do you honestly think that we, the scholars of Shu, behave like those absolute lunatics?!"
Liu Bei immediately reached out, his long arm clamping down firmly on Zhang Song's sleeve to suppress the panicked advisor.
"Calm yourself, Ziqiao," Liu Bei said, his voice a soothing rumble.
"Your reputation throughout the Shu region is built entirely upon your phenomenal intellect and practical talent, not some bizarre celebrity status. Why on earth would you worry about being compared to those fools?"
Zhang Song instantly flipped his attitude completely. His panicked expression melted into a look of overwhelming, gratitude.
"There is no one in this world who understands me better than you, my lord!" Zhang Song cried out, visibly moved by Liu Bei's unwavering support.
Watching this dramatic display, Kongming quietly waved his feather fan. He had a sudden, sinking realization that his lord was going to attract a very large collection of eccentric, overly emotional retainers.
Shaking that amusing thought from his head, Kongming recalled an older piece of history.
"Speaking of naked scholars," Kongming mused aloud, his voice cutting through the tension. "It has been over a decade since Mi Heng stripped off his clothes, beat that drum, and cursed Cao Cao in the main hall."
A collective sigh rippled through the room. Whenever the topic of famous scholars acting insane without clothes came up, Mi Heng was the very first person any of them thought of, he was the original madman of their current era.
Zhang Song, who had heard the wild rumors floating around the Shu region but did not know the exact details, leaned forward with burning curiosity.
"I heard that Mi Heng and Cao Cao had absolutely no prior grudges," Zhang Song asked.
"The rumor is that Mi Heng stripped naked and started screaming insults simply because Cao Cao forgot to offer him a chair. Is that actually true?"
Pang Tong let out a sharp, incredibly cold sneer. "Do not believe the tavern gossip, Ziqiao. Mi Heng was a native of Pingyuan Commandery. When that butcher Cao Cao decided to massacre the entire civilian population of Xu Province, Mi Heng was forced to abandon his ancestral home and flee as a refugee to Jing Province. How could you possibly say they had no prior grudges?"
Pang Tong shook his head, his ugly face twisting into a scowl of pure disdain for the warlord in the north.
"But the story does not end there," Pang Tong continued. "Later, Mi Heng traveled to the capital city of Xuchang, genuinely hoping to serve the Han Emperor. At that time, Cao Cao was the Minister of Works and controlled the entire hiring process. Cao Cao purposely suppressed and blockaded brilliant young talents to force them to submit to him directly. Mi Heng was a victim of this political blockade. The hatred between the two men was deeply personal and entirely justified."
Hearing the full, tragic context, Zhang Song nodded slowly. Factoring in Cao Cao's notoriously treacherous background, the naked drumming incident suddenly made perfect sense.
"If that is the case," Zhang Song concluded, clicking his tongue, "then these so-called elegant scholars of the Wei and Jin dynasties are truly pathetic by comparison. They have no righteous anger, only madness."
Looking back at the screen's description of Wang Yan, the noble who pretended money physically hurt him, Zhang Fei voiced a brutally honest opinion.
"Big Brother," Zhang Fei grumbled, scratching his thick beard.
"Looking at the facts, having that barbarian warlord Liu Yuan wipe out the Jin dynasty does not seem like a bad thing at all. Honestly, how could the invading Xiongnu possibly be more rotten than the Jin court?"
Liu Bei sat rigidly in his chair, staring blankly at the light screen.
He finally, completely understood the concept of a race to the bottom that the narrator had mentioned in a previous session.
A society where the lazy mocked the diligent. A government where officials who stared at the ceiling criticized the men actually doing the paperwork.
The Jin imperial court was entirely, irreversibly rotten down to its microscopic roots.
Zhang Fei, however, found a new historical figure to admire. He grinned, showing his teeth.
"This Shi Le fellow, though," Zhang Fei boomed with a hearty laugh. "Burying that annoying, abstract philosopher alive by pushing a mud wall over on him? That is my kind of poetry. What a brilliant man."
Zhang Fei offered only a snort of utter contempt for the dead Wang Yan.
"This Jin dynasty," Zhang Fei spat. "A court packed to the rafters with exalted ministers, and every single one of them was a parasitic worm?"
Giving those men even a single ounce of attention felt like a criminal waste of time.
Pang Tong chose to focus on the positive notes at the end of the segment.
He nodded approvingly. "At least this pathetic Jin era produced a few men with spines of true iron. Heroes like Zu Ti salvage a tiny fraction of dignity for that otherwise cursed timeline."
Kongming, however, could not take his eyes off the title "National Hero" hovering above Zu Ti's portrait. He slowly shook his head, a heavy sigh escaping his lips.
"If only," Kongming whispered, his grip tightening on his feather fan. "If only I could just kill Sima Yi now."
Zhang Fei immediately slapped his massive hand onto Kongming's shoulder, nearly knocking the brilliant strategist out of his chair.
"Do not worry about a thing, Military Advisor!" Zhang Fei roared cheerfully, totally misunderstanding the philosophical weight of Kongming's regret.
"Once we capture that Sima rat on the battlefield, I will personally build a wall just for you! You want a mud wall? You want a stone wall? You just pick the spot, and I will bury him right under it!"
Kongming did not know whether to laugh or cry.
He decided it was too much effort to explain the complex, timeline-altering implications of assassinating Sima Yi, the ultimate thief of the Han people's destiny.
He simply smiled and patted Zhang Fei's hand.
[Lightscreen]
[When some people look at the absolute emptiness and abstract nonsense of Wei-Jin era Dark Learning, it might remind them of another incredibly famous philosophical system that heavily emphasizes the concept of emptiness. I am talking, of course, about Buddhism.
Before the Wei-Jin Dark Learning trend exploded, Indian Buddhism had already undergone its first massive wave of localization by the early Han dynasty pioneers.
They used a technique called "Ge Yi," which translates to "Matching Meanings."
In simple terms, through creative translation and heavy annotation, they completely dismantled the original, native Indian Buddhist texts.
They chopped them into pieces and violently reassembled them to create a brand new, highly customized version of Buddhism that specifically appealed to Chinese cultural tastes.
However, even after this massive localization patch, the core Buddhist concept of "Sunyata," or ultimate emptiness, was incredibly difficult for the average Chinese person to grasp.
The monks basically had to borrow concepts from classic Confucian and Daoist texts just to explain their own religion.
Then, the Wei-Jin Dark Learning trend hit the mainstream. The elites latched onto a concept called "Wu," which means Nothingness, or Non-being. They pulled it straight out of the ancient texts of Laozi and Zhuangzi, the two founding fathers of Daoism.
Now, do not confuse this "无 (Wú)" with the other "武 (Wǔ)" that means martial or military. Completely different character. Completely different meaning. This "无 (Wú)" is the void. The emptiness. The idea that everything in the universe emerges from nothing and will eventually return to nothing.
Laozi and Zhuangzi wrote extensively about this. Deep, mystical, philosophical stuff. But the Wei-Jin aristocrats were not interested in the deep spiritual wisdom.
They just wanted the part that justified doing absolutely nothing.
The Buddhist monks saw this and threw a massive party. They pointed at the Daoist "Wu" and yelled, "Yes! Exactly! That is basically the same thing as our Buddhist Emptiness!"
Now, on a deeply theological level, the two concepts are actually vastly different, but the monks did not care.
To hitch a ride on the incredibly popular Wei-Jin Dark Learning hype train and spread their faith to the masses, Buddhism launched its second massive localization update.
They essentially deleted almost all the original Indian Hindu-adjacent elements, they kept only the core philosophy of the Middle Way and Prajna, and aggressively, forcefully merged it with the Daoist concepts popularized by Dark Learning.
This brilliant, cynical marketing fusion created what scholars call "Ge Yi Buddhism." You probably know it by its much more popular, streamlined brand name: Zen Buddhism.
During this era, schools like Tiantai and Huayan exploded in popularity. Buddhism entered its very first golden age in China.
Looking back at the historical timeline, the reason for this massive success is actually very simple and incredibly depressing.
If you count from the start of the Yellow Turban Rebellion all the way to the founding of the Tang dynasty, you have roughly four hundred years of nearly nonstop warfare. Four centuries of blood.
Living in an era where you could literally be slaughtered at any second created a profound sense of total disillusionment.
From the highest kings in their palaces to the lowest peasants in the mud, everyone felt completely hopeless about the mortal world.
Why build anything? Why plan for the future? Tomorrow, you might be dead.
And right at that moment, Buddhism steps in and offers the ultimate, flawless blank check.
They promised the "Next Life." A better rebirth.
They promised the "Next Life." A better rebirth. A reward for enduring the suffering of the present. It was a perfect product because nobody could ever verify if it was real, of course, if you wanted verification, you just had to die. But it offered infinite comfort
During the chaotic period of the Sixteen Kingdoms, many of the warlords were of foreign barbarian descent, they quickly realized that Buddhism was an incredibly useful tool for pacifying the conquered Chinese population.
So, these warlords poured massive amounts of government funding and military support into building temples and sponsoring monks.
Surprisingly, it worked perfectly on the upper classes, too.
Think about it, even if you were a powerful king, if you looked at the history books, you saw nothing but a bloodbath.
Backstabs everywhere.
Fathers murdering sons.
Brothers slaughtering brothers.
Ministers assassinating emperors.
It was endless paranoia, the throne was the most dangerous seat in the world. Buddhism offered an escape from that fear.
Buddhism provided the exact same psychological numbing effect as the abstract Wei-Jin Dark Learning, but with better marketing.
Dark Learning offered emptiness, and Buddhism offered emptiness plus a reward in the next life.
During this rapid expansion phase, the Buddhist building boom got completely out of control. We all had to memorize that famous poem by Du Mu in school: "Four hundred and eighty temples of the Southern Dynasties, how many towers and terraces shrouded in the misty rain."
The "Southern Dynasties" in that poem refers specifically to the Southern Liang, and the real number of temples was vastly higher than four hundred and eighty.
Emperor Wu of Liang, Xiao Yan, was an absolute fanatic. He personally converted to Buddhism and imposed vegetarianism on the entire court. He banned animal sacrifices at the imperial ancestral temple, replacing them with vegetables and flour shaped to look like meat.
Then he took it further, he literally abandoned his throne to become a monk. Not once. Four separate times. Each time, the government had to bankrupt the national treasury to pay a massive ransom to the temples just to buy their Emperor back. Four times they paid. Four times he went back to the monastery.
Emperor Wu essentially donated the entire gross domestic product of the Southern Liang to the monks, he personally ordered the construction of over five hundred massive temple complexes. And that was just the official count. Temples, pagodas, monasteries, nunneries. They sprouted across the landscape like mushrooms after rain.
The Buddhist sangha became the single largest landowner in the empire, controlling vast estates worked by temple servants and slaves, all of it completely tax-exempt.
A foreign religion, imported from India, had essentially become the shadow government of Southern China.
And Emperor Wu of Liang was just the most famous addict. After his death and the collapse of his dynasty, the rulers who followed in the south, the princes of the Chen dynasty and others, carried on the same tradition. They took religious vows, blindly worshipped Buddha, and burned state funds to build endless pagodas.
By the time the Sui and Tang dynasties rolled around, the momentum was unstoppable. Buddhism only experienced a little, brief dip in power during the early reign of Li Shimin.
But the moment the legendary monk Xuanzang returned to the capital from his journey to the West, Buddhism instantly rocketed into its second, even more massive golden age.
Looking back from the modern era, there is absolutely no denying that Xuanzang was a titan of human history.
He traveled to India and back over the course of seventeen years. He walked fifty thousand li. He crossed through one hundred and thirty-eight distinct countries, and he did almost all of it completely alone.
Just surviving a journey of that magnitude is a miracle, his sheer willpower is one of the most precious cultural treasures of our entire civilization.
But the physical journey was just the beginning.
The massive cache of authentic Sanskrit texts Xuanzang brought back to Chang'an triggered the ultimate evolution of localized Buddhism. The translations that emerged from his team were so precise, so philosophically rigorous, that they completely changed the game.
During the peak of the Prosperous Tang, the intellectual landscape shifted violently.
The newly updated Buddhist philosophy had become incredibly sophisticated. When Buddhist debaters stepped onto the stage, the Confucian scholars, who were still obsessively trying to copy ancient Zhou dynasty rituals, and the Daoist scholars, who had been coasting on Laozi and Zhuangzi for centuries, suddenly found themselves getting absolutely destroyed.
They could not keep up. The Buddhists hung them up and beat them like drums.
To survive this intellectual slaughter, the Confucians and Daoists were forced to wake up and adapt.
They started aggressively stealing and copying concepts from each other, and from the Buddhists, desperately trying to patch the holes in their own philosophical armor. An intense, high-stakes academic arms race began.
This battle continued through the chaos of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and into the early years of the Northern Song.
That was when the Confucian scholars achieved the ultimate fusion, Zhou Dunyi, the Cheng brothers, and finally Zhu Xi successfully merged the core concepts of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism into a single, unified operating system. They created the Cheng-Zhu school, what we now call Neo-Confucianism.
After this massive philosophical update, Buddhism never fully recovered its political dominance. It remained a powerful spiritual force among the common people, but the imperial court and the examination halls now belonged to the Neo-Confucians.]
In Chengdu, Zhang Fei rubbed his temples. He once again felt the painful reality that he had not read nearly enough books in his youth.
However, his sharp tactical mind locked onto a single, overriding theme from the narrator's chaotic history lesson.
"So," Zhang Fei said slowly, looking at Kongming. "Is it fair to say that Buddha is fundamentally just Dao?"
Kongming burst into a fit of genuinely delighted laughter. He reached out and slapped Zhang Fei firmly on the shoulder.
"Yide, oh Yide!" Kongming chuckled, his eyes shining. "Who dares to call you foolish? That is a brilliantly insightful summary!"
Zhang Fei let out a booming, goofy laugh. He decided to just assume Kongming was giving him a massive compliment and happily accepted the praise.
Kongming, meanwhile, quickly grabbed a brush and began organizing the flow of history onto a bamboo slip. He wrote down the sequence of ideological updates:
The Philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi.
Wei-Jin Dark Learning.
Ge Yi-Zen Buddhism.
Neo-Confucianism.
Pang Tong leaned over to read the slip and nodded in deep realization. "No wonder the future generations constantly talk about the absolute necessity of social progress. It is not just about forging better steel or writing better laws. Even the fundamental philosophies used to understand the universe must constantly evolve, or they will be destroyed by newer ideas."
Zhang Song, standing nearby, nodded vigorously. He processed the information through his own geopolitical lens.
"The Shu region is protected by massive, natural mountain fortresses," Zhang Song analyzed aloud. "It is incredibly easy to defend and virtually impossible to invade. But that exact same isolation cuts us off from exchanging ideas with the great minds of the Central Plains. Our scholars are stuck in echo chambers."
Zhang Song looked slightly panicked. "Does this mean the intellectual development of the Shu region is doomed to stagnate?"
Kongming nodded slowly, his expression serious. "Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom. It is meant to guide humanity on how to understand the world and how to act within it, just as the ancient sages did. If a doctrine stops adapting, it dies."
They quickly shelved the deep theological debate.
After all, Kongming was the only person in the entire room who had ever actually bothered to read a Buddhist sutra.
Off in the corner, Liu Ba and Mi Zhu, the two financial masters of the Shu Han, were aggressively whispering to each other.
They had locked onto the phrase "blank check" and were furiously debating how to apply the concept of selling invisible promises to their wartime economy.
Liu Bei, however, completely ignored the philosophy and the economics. His heart was bleeding for the commoners trapped in that chaotic timeline.
"To be born a human in a chaotic era," Liu Bei whispered, his voice trembling with sorrow. "It is truly a worse fate than being born a dog in an era of peace."
A heavy, mournful silence fell over the room.
Only Zhang Fei seemed immune to the depression.
"Big Brother," Zhang Fei interrupted. "I am going to have to heavily disagree with you on that one."
Everyone turned to stare at him. They simultaneously offered a silent, preemptive prayer for whichever wealthy aristocratic family was about to become the target of Zhang Fei's unique brand of wealth redistribution.
Liu Bei's sorrow quickly morphed into burning anger as he thought about the Emperor of the Southern Liang.
"This Emperor Wu of Liang," Liu Bei growled, his fist clenching. "He is exactly like that treacherous parasite Ze Rong! They are both traitors to the state!"
Liu Bei pointed angrily at the screen. "Ze Rong stole the grain and tax revenue meant for the survival of Xiapi Province just to build extravagant temples and feed thousands of useless monks. And this Emperor Wu exhausted the entire treasury of a sovereign nation to build pagodas and cast golden statues!"
Liu Bei's voice rose to a furious shout. "Wealth that should have been spent on strengthening the military, securing the borders, and feeding the starving peasants was literally burned to ashes in exchange for a fantasy about the next life! This Emperor Wu treated the survival of his entire empire like a child's game!"
The unspoken conclusion hung heavily in the air. No wonder your pathetic dynasty was wiped off the map.
Kongming, however, was focused entirely on the image of the lone traveler. He felt a profound sense of respect.
"This monk, Xuanzang," Kongming said softly, his eyes filled with admiration. "To accomplish such a monumental feat entirely through the strength of his own will. He must be revered as one of the greatest founding sages of Han Buddhism. A man whose name is permanently carved into the bedrock of eternity."
Having watched the divine screen for so long, Kongming had trained himself to look past the immediate details and see the grand, sweeping arcs of history.
The screen had been very clear about the massive flaws and incredible benefits of Buddhism.
Kongming recalled a piece of ancient wisdom from the Chinese sages: The stones of other hills may be used to polish the jade of this one.
To travel beyond the Western Regions, to acquire the sacred texts of foreign lands, and to forcefully integrate their brilliant ideas into native Chinese philosophy.
In Kongming's brilliant mind, this was the exact same glorious process as the legendary Hundred Schools of Thought contending during the ancient Pre-Qin era.
A sudden, burning curiosity ignited in Kongming's chest.
I wonder, he thought, what kind of magnificent, world-altering philosophical texts exist in that distant empire of Rome?
Inside the Ganlu Hall, Li Shimin's eyes were practically glowing with an intense light. He had only one thought racing through his mind.
"Where exactly is this Xuanzang right now?" Li Shimin demanded, scanning his ministers.
A man possessing that level of terrifying physical endurance and unbreakable willpower was incredibly rare. It perfectly aligned with a highly classified espionage plan Li Shimin was secretly developing in his head: sending elite monks deep into enemy territory disguised as harmless pilgrims to gather military intelligence.
"Finding him should not be difficult, Your Majesty,"
Fang Xuanling replied smoothly, stepping out from the ranks. "I will immediately dispatch personnel to consult with Minister Dai. There will absolutely be an official record of his movements."
During the chaos of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there had been two massive, bloody purges designed to exterminate Buddhism.
As a result, there actually were not that many active temples left in the early Tang, and the government kept them all strictly registered and heavily monitored.
Listening to the screen's breakdown of the ideological wars, even someone as militarily focused as Li Shimin realized a terrifying truth.
"It appears," Li Shimin muttered, his brow furrowed in deep thought, "that this Buddhism is going to become a major, unavoidable force in the future of the Great Tang."
Li Shimin felt a sudden, sharp pang of hesitation.
If anyone had asked Li Shimin for his personal opinion on Buddhism yesterday, he would have instantly pointed to Emperor Wu of Liang and loudly declared that obsessing over religion destroys empires.
His personal motto regarding the monks was simple: Those who beg for the Dao have yet to prove it brings any actual blessings for the future, and those who practice the teachings only end up suffering for the sins of the past.
For Li Shimin, Buddhism was a massive, relentless financial black hole. The monks were always demanding outrageous amounts of state funding to build giant temples or construct towering pagodas. He always thought: Why am I wasting my gold on statues when I could be buying better armor for my heavy cavalry?
But now, looking at the historical data... this Neo-Confucianism upgrade seemed incredibly vital for the long-term stability of the civilization.
Wait.
Li Shimin stiffened, a cold jolt of paranoia hitting his spine.
"Hold on," Li Shimin said, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. "This Neo-Confucianism... is this philosophical system the reason why those future Song dynasty emperors and their cowardly ministers acted so shamelessly? Did this upgrade turn them all into spineless cowards?"
The ministers froze. Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui exchanged a highly panicked look. That was an incredibly dangerous question to answer.
Wei Zheng, however, possessed a spine forged from pure iron. He stepped right up to the Emperor.
"Whether a man is upright and courageous or a spineless coward is determined entirely by his own heart, Your Majesty,"
Wei Zheng declared loudly, his voice echoing in the hall. "Look at the horrifying chaos of the Wei and Jin eras we just witnessed. Would you honestly blame the catastrophic betrayal of the Sima clan on the books they read? Did a philosophical doctrine force them to murder their Emperor in the street?"
Of course it did not. Li Shimin knew that perfectly well.
If anything, the horrific collapse of the Wei and Jin society happened precisely because the moral framework of true Confucianism had completely disintegrated.
But whenever Li Shimin thought about Confucianism, his mind immediately jumped to the incredibly stubborn, infuriatingly pedantic scholars from the Shandong region who constantly criticized his every move. The Emperor felt an overwhelming urge to start yelling and throwing things.
Zhangsun Wuji, the absolute master of reading the Emperor's rapidly shifting moods, stepped in with a perfectly timed, highly flattering observation.
"Your Majesty," Zhangsun Wuji said, a sly smile playing on his lips.
"Since the future dictates the creation of this unified Neo-Confucianism, and since we know that all the great aristocratic monopolies are destined to be crushed after our glorious Tang dynasty... does that not mean the arrogant Kong clan of Shandong will simply coast along and be worshipped as living saints without actually doing any of the hard work?"
Du Ruhui immediately shook his head, instantly dismantling the political theory.
"Highly unlikely," Du Ruhui countered sharply. "The screen explicitly stated that the Song dynasty failed to recover the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun. Later, they were beaten so badly they had to flee south and become the pathetic Southern Song. Given that massive military collapse, how on earth could they possibly defend the Shandong region?"
Du Ruhui scoffed. "When the barbarian cavalry sweeps through, what happens to the untouchable aristocratic families? They are slaughtered. Are you suggesting the direct descendants of Confucius would completely abandon their morals and surrender to foreign invaders just to survive? That would instantly and permanently destroy their sacred brand."
The surrounding ministers nodded in firm agreement. Du Ruhui's brutal geopolitical logic was flawless.
There was no need to worry about the Shandong scholars getting a free ride in the distant future.
Li Shimin rubbed his temples, thinking deeply about the immediate policy implications.
"What if," Li Shimin proposed slowly, "we establish dedicated departments for Buddhism and Daoism within the Imperial Academy? We strictly mandate the academic study of their philosophies, but absolutely forbid the students from taking religious vows. How does that sound?"
Fang Xuanling instantly stepped forward, shaking his head.
"Inappropriate, Your Majesty," Fang Xuanling advised. "It would be much wiser to adopt the terminology of the future generations. Let us establish a department of Philosophy. Within this department, scholars can comprehensively study and debate the texts of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism side by side. It would serve as an excellent experimental pilot program."
Li Shimin nodded, highly satisfied with the compromise. That was a much safer route. Otherwise, the incredibly manipulative Buddhist factions would undoubtedly use the official backing of the Imperial Academy to aggressively market their religion and swindle more donations from the gullible masses.
[Lightscreen]
[Now, we all know the legendary story of Xuanzang through the massive Ming dynasty blockbuster novel, Journey to the West. But the actual historical reality is vastly different, and quite a bit darker.
First of all, Master Xuanzang submitted an official request to leave the Tang Empire. The government explicitly rejected it. In the third year of Zhenguan, a massive famine hit the region. The imperial court issued an emergency decree, allowing the starving citizens to flee and seek survival wherever they could.
Xuanzang decided to take advantage of the chaos. He packed his bags and essentially illegally smuggled himself across the border, heading toward India. Because he was technically a fugitive sneaking out of the country, he obviously did not have a dramatic, tearful blood-brother ceremony with Emperor Li Shimin like he does in the novel.
The man Xuanzang actually swore a blood-brother oath with was Qu Wentai, the King of Gaochang.
And King Qu Wentai is one of history's most spectacular victims of terrible luck. When he was young, he traveled to the Sui dynasty to pay tribute. Years later, after generously funding Xuanzang's journey, Qu Wentai voluntarily submitted to the Tang dynasty. Li Shimin was absolutely thrilled and treated him with massive respect.
But then, Qu Wentai returned home. He was aggressively bullied and coerced into joining a massive military coalition led by the Western Turks. He participated in a sneak attack on the Yanqi kingdom, actively severed the vital Silk Road trade routes, and started publicly hurling massive, explosive insults at the Great Tang.
Li Shimin's reaction was entirely predictable. In the fourteenth year of Zhenguan, the Tang army marched west and completely obliterated the Kingdom of Gaochang. Xuanzang's beloved blood-brother, Qu Wentai, literally died of sheer terror when he saw the Tang banners approaching his walls.
When Master Xuanzang finally returned to the East in the nineteenth year of Zhenguan, his route took him directly through the newly established Tang military headquarters in what used to be Gaochang. One can only imagine the incredibly awkward, profoundly complicated emotions swirling in the great monk's heart as he walked over the ashes of his brother's kingdom.]