[Lightscreen]
[For an Emperor, robbing the people is the easiest thing in the world.
Step one: You mint a new batch of coins. Step two: you issue an imperial decree declaring that one new coin is now legally worth ten old ones. Step three: you collect the old currency, melt it down, and mint even more new coins.
Congratulations.
You have just discovered the ancient version of an infinite money glitch.
And Li Zhi? He found the glitch, immediately exploited it, and looked like a man who had just unlocked cheat codes.
He issued a decree across the realm: "Come exchange your currency immediately! Hurry! Because by year's end, the old coins will be declared worthless and abolished!"
The imperial treasury swelled rapidly. Li Zhi grinned from ear to ear.
Meanwhile, commodity prices skyrocketed overnight. The commoners wept in the streets and cursed the heavens.
Let us appreciate the math for a moment. One new coin equals ten old coins. Simple. Elegant. And utterly disastrous for anyone trying to buy food.
The prices of grain and cloth soared. Families that had spent decades saving money suddenly discovered that their life savings were now worth little more than a pile of dried leaves.
The curses directed at the palace grew louder with every passing day.
Markets across the empire began to malfunction. Some merchants returned to direct barter. Others simply shut their doors and refused to do business.
Imagine being a merchant in Chang'an.
You wake up one morning and discover that all your coins are worthless.
You look at your shelves. You look at your customers. You look at your coins. You make a rational decision. "I will trade my silk for your grain. And that is the only transaction happening today."
In tea houses and taverns, merchants gathered in hushed circles and whispered among themselves.
They vaguely recalled that the last time the economy looked this apocalyptic was during the dying days of the Han Dynasty.
They seriously wondered if their Emperor had been possessed by the ghost of Cao Cao. Because honestly, that would explain a lot.
It took six grueling months of economic chaos before Li Zhi reluctantly issued another edict. He scrapped the new currency and restored the old system.
Six months of chaos. Six months of people starving. Six months of markets collapsing. All because someone wanted to get rich quick.
Throughout the reign of Emperor Gaozong, the imperial court constantly invented bizarre new methods to hoard wealth.
Simultaneously, they relentlessly slashed the basic welfare and combat pay of their own soldiers. The Emperor lived in increasingly extravagant luxury. The soldiers lived in increasingly squalid poverty.
Under these precise conditions, the collapse of Tang military power was not just expected. It was a mathematical certainty.
When you rob your soldiers, do not be surprised when they stop fighting for you.]
Inside the Ganlu Pavilion, Li Shimin felt a familiar throbbing return to his temples. The headache that had finally subsided hours ago was back with a vengeance.
He finally understood his own complicated emotions.
When he previously watched the Light Screen casually mention Li Zhi conscripting an army of three hundred thousand men, a knot had formed in his stomach.
Now he knew why.
He had never lived extravagantly. He wore patched robes and pinched every coin to fund border defenses. Every string of cash in the treasury was part of the war chest he had bled to build.
At this exact moment, Li Shimin completely agreed with an old saying: A spoiled son never feels the pain of selling his father's hard-earned farmland.
"I never would have imagined," Li Shimin rasped, his voice trembling with genuine rage. "The enormous cost of those Fengshan sacrifices at Mount Tai was entirely squeezed from the blood of the common people!"
He slammed his fist onto his desk. The inkstone rattled.
"Future generations know the saying perfectly well. The people are the water, and the sovereign is the boat. The water can carry the boat, or it can capsize it. How dare that boy forget this truth!"
A terrifying, urgent compulsion began to brew in Li Shimin's chest.
Ok, maybe I could not physically reach across time to beat Li Longji or Li Yu. They were too far away, too far in the future. But Li Zhi? Li Zhi was right here. Still within reach. Still breathing. Still making my blood pressure rise.
You are the closest target, boy. And right now, you are looking very hittable.
He had always assumed that the Tang Dynasty's century of prosperity was a relay race, with wise rulers and capable ministers passing the torch from one generation to the next.
The reality was a bitter pill to swallow.
"I had only kicked the bucket for a dozen years," Li Shimin muttered while pacing the floor, "and that brat already dared to run the empire like this?"
He found himself increasingly fond of the Light Screen's modern slang.
Saying he had "passed away" or "ascended to the heavens" felt far too dignified for the absolute circus his dynasty was about to become.
Down in the audience hall, the assembled ministers of the Ganlu Pavilion exchanged helpless glances.
Listening to their terrifying Emperor transition smoothly from screaming about dynastic collapse to casually saying he "kicked the bucket" gave everyone a sense of whiplash.
Du Ruhui stepped forward. He chose the path of gentle de-escalation.
"Your Majesty, the Zhenguan era was defined by expansion," he said calmly. "The court and the army shared a common vision of opening new frontiers. Campaigns were frequent, military merit was abundant, and the rewards were correspondingly generous."
He pointed toward the map on the wall.
"But in later years, the lands west of the Pamirs were simply too distant from the Central Plains. And Liaodong had already consumed thirteen years of grinding warfare. The wealth gained from those campaigns likely could not compare to what we seized when we destroyed the Eastern Turkic Khaganate."
Li Shimin nodded slowly. His minister made a fair point.
According to the Light Screen, the early Tang could recruit a hundred men for every ten required. One could proudly claim that this was because the Emperor enjoyed the people's wholehearted support. But the harsher, more pragmatic truth was that military service during the Zhenguan era paid extremely well. It was a gold rush.
By the time Prince Zhi took the throne, the empire had transitioned from rapid expansion to maintaining the status quo. It was economically impossible to replicate the endless river of rewards that defined the Zhenguan era.
However, Li Shimin's face darkened again.
"Even if the rewards must be reduced, you cannot simply abandon the families of the dead!"
He slammed his hand on the desk.
"No! They bled and died for the Great Tang. It is our job to take care of their families. It is mandatory. Tell me, where is your conscience? How can you let them die and then abandon their families? I cannot do that. I will not do that."
This was the one point he absolutely could not forgive.
Forget brotherhood and sentiment for a moment. Consider it purely from a practical perspective.
When a victorious army marches home, and the survivors see that the families of those who died screaming for the empire receive absolutely nothing, what happens?
The soldiers project that fate onto themselves. If no one cares about the dead, who in their right mind would ever volunteer to charge the enemy vanguard again?
Ignoring those who died for the nation severed the very root of the Tang Dynasty's martial spirit.
Flipping the national currency back and forth like a cheap gambling trick destroyed the fundamental trust of the people.
Li Shimin could not fathom it.
He had only been in the grave for roughly ten years. How did his son manage to take a butcher knife to the Great Tang and accurately stab every single vital organ?
Zhangsun Wuji saw an opening and immediately stepped out of the ranks to demonstrate his loyalty.
"Your Majesty, the young prince is currently under your direct, living guidance. When he ascends the throne in the future, he will naturally inherit your style of accepting open criticism. Furthermore, he will be surrounded by fiercely loyal Tang ministers who are unafraid of death to guide him. Why worry about the stability of the state?"
Standing in the back row, Hou Junji stared at the back of Zhangsun Wuji's head and sneered silently.
Look at this guy. Laying it on thicker than a layer of winter fat. "Fiercely loyal ministers who are unafraid of death to guide him." Bah. I know what you mean. It is just another way of saying: "I, Zhangsun Wuji, will be there to hold his hand and tell him what to do."
It is a pity that those playing the game are often blind to the board.
Hou Junji reflected on the Light Screen's earlier revelations. Old Zhenguan veterans like Zheng Rentai, Su Dingfang, and Xue Rengui were heavily promoted and trusted by Li Zhi. This proved the young Emperor had a nostalgic streak and respected his father's old guard.
So why was Zhangsun Wuji the only one specifically targeted? Why was he exiled to the malaria-infested swamps of Lingnan and forced to hang himself?
To push a supposedly mild-mannered nephew to that level of lethal extreme, this fat Duke of Qi must have been more arrogant than a peacock on parade.
Hou Junji felt a sudden wave of self-righteousness. Unlike this power-hungry aristocrat, his own historical crimes were minor. Sure, he let his troops pillage a conquered city once or twice. That was just poor middle management. And maybe he just got wrapped up in a treason plot? He was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A simple misunderstanding. A bureaucratic error.
Look at me, Your Majesty, Hou Junji thought proudly. I am the true loyalist of the Great Tang!
Unfortunately for both men, Li Shimin was completely ignoring them. He was busy giving urgent instructions to Fang Xuanling. He ordered the Prime Minister to accelerate the compilation of the official Book of Jin.
Li Shimin had officially abandoned all hope that his personalized instruction manual, the Rules for Emperors, would actually fix his son. If that book could not save the empire, then nothing could.
[Lightscreen]
[Another major factor behind the decline of Tang military power was the utter collapse of its horse administration.
To understand this, we need to talk about one of the most underrated legends of the Zhenguan era: the Minister of Stud, Zhang Wansui.
During the chaotic transition from Sui to Tang, nearly all of the imperial warhorses were seized by the Turks. Only a pitiful three thousand horses remained. Emperor Li Yuan relocated this surviving herd to the Longyou region and began rebuilding from scratch.
Later, Li Shimin placed Zhang Wansui in charge of the imperial pastures. The man dedicated his entire life to this single responsibility. He did nothing else.
By the end of the Zhenguan era, Li Shimin left his successor a strategic reserve of approximately seven hundred thousand warhorses.
That number was one of the fundamental pillars of Tang military supremacy.
Zhang Wansui's genius for animal husbandry was extraordinary. Unfortunately, after the old master passed away, Tang horse administration entered a slow and painful decline. By the time Emperor Xuanzong ascended the throne, the national reserve had fallen to roughly two hundred and forty thousand horses.
During Gaozong's reign, the minister Wei Yuanzhong submitted a memorial addressing the growing horse shortage. His proposal was straightforward: abolish the restrictions on private horse ownership.
In the early Tang, horses were legally divided into three grades according to shoulder height. The highest grade consisted of Large Horses, followed by Small Horses, and finally Shu Horses, which were mostly suitable for pulling carts and turning millstones.
Because the early Tang desperately needed quality cavalry mounts, the law prohibited commoners from owning Large Horses. These animals were reserved for military service and for officials of the third rank and above.
Wei Yuanzhong proposed scrapping this restriction entirely. Let the people ride and breed Large Horses. Give ordinary families a financial incentive to cultivate good bloodlines, and the government could simply purchase the finest animals from the market.
On paper, Li Zhi approved the policy.
In practice, he did absolutely nothing.
There were no subsidies. No incentives. No support.
If the spending did not involve himself or Empress Wu, the Emperor suddenly became remarkably frugal.
As a result, the policy accomplished almost nothing.
It would take Emperor Xuanzong to finally fix the problem. He aggressively subsidized civilian breeders and allowed them to profit from horse production. The result was a highly unusual military phenomenon during the Kaiyuan era.
Historical records state that 'the conscripts all possessed private horses.'
When the draft was announced, newly recruited soldiers literally rode their own privately raised warhorses to the recruitment camps.
Xuanzong's policies borrowed heavily from Emperor Wen of Han's famous Horse Restoration Decree. Encourage private breeding. Share the profits. Artificially increase the empire's horse population.
This also explains why the Song Dynasty's famous Mutual Security Horse Law was such a spectacular failure.
In the Han and Tang dynasties, the horses belonged to the people.
Under the Song system, civilians were essentially raising government horses.
It was an unpaid state quota.
Worse, the promised subsidies were only distributed after the horse was delivered, and the amount depended entirely on the government's final evaluation of the animal. Faced with such a terrible arrangement, Song peasants naturally put in the bare minimum effort necessary to keep the horses alive.
But flawed policy was not the only reason the Song failed at cavalry. The problem was much deeper.
It touched nearly every aspect of society.
Consider the famous scholar Wang Yucheng.
He once wrote an essay beginning with the classic 'I have a friend' routine. This friend supposedly visited an imperial horse farm and witnessed breeders mating a mare with her own offspring. According to the story, the mare immediately committed suicide from moral shame.
Yes. That was apparently the argument.
The noble horse realized she had violated Confucian ethics and chose death.
This perfectly captures a certain type of Song scholar. Instead of studying actual animal husbandry, they preferred to invent fictional stories and use farm animals to preach morality.
In reality, the breeding method Wang was condemning is known today as linebreeding or backcrossing. It is a completely normal and essential technique for stabilizing desirable traits.
Unfortunately, genetic selection and breed conservation were historically among China's weakest areas of horse management.
Some historians argue that the Song lacked cavalry because they lost the great northern grasslands and no longer had access to Western Region horses.
That is only part of the story.
Modern genetics tells us that horses of the same bloodline can naturally differ in shoulder height by as much as twenty centimeters. Such variation is entirely normal.
The purpose of selective breeding is to identify the best specimens, carefully control pairings, and improve the breed generation after generation until it meets military requirements.
This problem can be seen much earlier.
Emperor Wu of Han spent enormous sums importing the legendary Ferghana horses, the famous Heavenly Horses that 'sweated blood.' Yet over time, the pure bloodline gradually deteriorated and disappeared. The dynasty failed to preserve and improve the breed.
It was, fundamentally, a failure of genetic management.
Which makes the Song's failure even more embarrassing.
Compared to the Han and Tang, Song military horse feed actually included high-protein supplements such as soybeans and bran. On paper, their horses should have been physically superior.
The opposite happened.
Put simply, the people managing the horses had no idea what they were doing.
Then came the Ming Dynasty.
By the Ming period, breeders were feeding cavalry horses soybean-rich diets and successfully raising excellent Ferghana-derived horses in the harsh climate of Hebei.
Compared to many of their predecessors, the Ming horse administrators looked like they had unlocked cheat codes.]
In another timeline, Zhang Song of the Shu region scowled at the sky. He felt personally attacked.
"These Tang people are thoroughly unreasonable," Zhang Song muttered, his famously unattractive face bunching up in offense. "If a horse is the absolute lowest grade, just call it a nag or a draft horse. Why specifically brand it a 'Shu Horse'?"
Zhang Fei, feeling a surge of regional patriotism, immediately stepped forward to console the offended scholar.
"Do not let it bother you, Ziqiao!" Zhang Fei boomed, slapping Zhang Song on the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble. "Did that great Poet Sage not travel to our Shu lands? And that Li Bai fellow, did he not originally hail from Shu?"
Zhang Fei laughed loudly. "Our lands are overflowing with peerless talent. The name of Shu is renowned everywhere!"
Zhang Song's scowl faded into a beaming smile. Sharing a hometown with the legendary Poet Immortal? When you put it that way, he actually felt a thrilling sense of pride.
Seeing his words take effect, Zhang Fei decided to push his advantage.
"Furthermore, Ziqiao!" Zhang Fei continued enthusiastically. "Look at Emperor Xuanzong and Emperor Xizong. When their capital burned, where did they run? They both fled straight to Shu to carve out a pathetic, cowardly little safe haven!"
Zhang Song's smile instantly froze. His pride evaporated.
That was not a compliment. Being known as the designated panic room for incompetent, fleeing monarchs was absolutely nothing to be proud of.
Liu Bei glared at his sworn brother. His eyes practically shot daggers. He looked like he was half a second away from drawing his twin swords and chasing Zhang Fei around the camp.
Sensing the sudden murderous intent, Zhang Fei coughed loudly and swiftly pivoted away. He ambled over to where Zhuge Liang was sitting.
"Kongming," Zhang Fei said, crossing his massive arms. "This Song Dynasty is truly bizarre. They preach human morality to livestock, and they call invading barbarians their respected brothers. It makes no sense!"
Zhuge Liang barely registered the loud general. The brilliant strategist was completely lost in deep thought, mentally dissecting the Light Screen's concepts of 'genetic selection' and 'backcrossing'. He merely offered a distracted nod.
Fa Zheng, however, leaned into the conversation with a sharp smirk.
"I cannot help but wonder, " Fa Zheng mused aloud. "Do these great Confucian scholars of the Song Dynasty eat pork? And before they slaughter the pig, do they sit it down and lecture it on the grand principles of righteousness?"
Zhang Fei shook his head in mock pity.
"Xiaozhi, you simply do not understand," Zhang Fei said, using Fa Zheng's courtesy name. "A great scholar still needs to eat meat. It is not like they have to ride a crippled horse to the vanguard of a battlefield."
Zhang Fei sighed, genuinely bewildered by the history he was learning.
"This Great Song Dynasty... why does it feel like simply joining their army was a miserable, impossible task?"
After spending a few more seconds glaring intensely at his oblivious third brother, Liu Bei finally let out a long, heavy breath.
He looked up at the fading text on the Light Screen, his heart aching with pure, unfiltered jealousy.
"How does Li Shimin possess such terrifying luck?" Liu Bei asked the open air. "Every single ministry, every single obscure administrative post. He has an absolute genius perfectly suited for the job."
Zhang Fei saw that his older brother had not drawn his swords. Feeling safe, he offered a final, blunt observation.
"Who knows, Big Brother? Maybe he traded his legitimacy to the throne in exchange for all that luck."