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[Everyone learns a sentence in school sooner or later:
"Objective laws do not bend to human will."
So what are "objective laws," exactly?
From the moment Wu Zetian began preparing to change the dynasty's name, all the way up to this point, everything she did for the sake of appearances could be counted clearly.
The Hall of Myriad Forms and Paradise were each rebuilt twice, front to back.
The Heavenly Pivot bronze pillar, worth billions of coins, was erected.
Great Cloud Temples, grand Buddhist assemblies, man-made auspicious signs, the Mount Song Fengshan ceremony. Every single one of them burned money.
And during the Wu Zhou period, two things very conspicuously did not happen.
First, there was no population explosion.
Second, there was no industrial revolution.
The old lady lived carefree and unrestrained.
The common people lived lives of wailing and curses.
That was objective reality.
Trying to achieve immortality through spectacles that could neither advance technology nor mass-produce soldiers or flying ships was human will colliding headfirst with reality. The result needed no elaboration.
Just as Wu Zetian was having the time of her life changing era names and declaring amnesties, news came from the north.
The Khitan had rebelled.
The court's first reaction was disbelief.
Among the northern tribes, the Khitan had never been the ambitious type.
Back in Northern Qi, limited by their strength, they were beaten into the ground by Gao Yang.
Under the Sui, the Turks rose to power, and the Khitan were squeezed miserably between the Turks and the Sui court.
When the Tang was founded, the Khitan chieftain saw that Li Shimin had designs on Illig Qaghan, promptly switched sides, accepted the imperial surname Li, and was enfeoffed as Khitan Khan.
From the second year of Zhenguan until now, sixty-eight years had passed. The Khitan had always followed the Great Tang's lead. How could they possibly rebel?
The chain of events itself was not complicated. The root cause was still natural disaster.
In the years 695 to 696, when the old lady was changing era names with alarming frequency, calamities arrived one after another.
In the second month, hailstones fell from the sky over the eastern prefectures of Luoyang, throwing the people into panic.
In midsummer, the Jiangdong region was struck by frost, causing massive crop losses.
By the time the year turned, what greeted the people was spring famine and severe drought.
Life became unimaginable. The only thing left to rely on was government relief grain.
The Khitan were no exception.
In theory, any official entrusted with guarding the frontier should possess at least minimal political sense. No one demanded enlightened ethnic integration, but at the very least, they should know how to borrow strength and apply leverage.
But the Wu Zhou's Grand Protector of the Eastern Barbarians, Zhao Wenhui, did exactly the opposite.
From the moment he took office on Wu Zetian's orders, he treated the two minority peoples under his jurisdiction like personal servants, barking orders and issuing commands at will.
This famine was no exception. No matter how the starving cried and pleaded, he issued a death order: the granaries were not to be opened.
Under such circumstances, once the era name Wansui Tongtian was adopted, it immediately recorded the first major event of that era:
The Songmo Governor Li Jinzhong, together with his clansman Sun Wanrong, raised troops in rebellion against Zhou. They killed Zhao Wenhui, captured Yingzhou, and laid siege to Tanzhou.
After confirming the news, the old lady prepared two responses.
First, she ordered Yan Zhiwei to lead an embassy to the Turks and inform their khan: the proposed marriage alliance was approved. As long as they fought the Khitan together, everyone would still be family.
The small miscalculation was this.
The Turkic khan wanted to marry Wu Zetian's daughter. At the very least, he was willing to recognize the old lady as his godmother.
What Yan Zhiwei brought instead was Wu Yancheng's son, Wu Yanxiu, sent under imperial orders to marry the Turkic khan's daughter.
The Turkic khan flew into a rage.
"If we play it like this," he demanded, "then in another generation, will the Turks also have to take the surname Wu?"
The embassy was scattered. Some were imprisoned, some killed, some surrendered, all trapped within Turkic territory.
With foreign aid off the table, Wu Zhou had no choice but to fight alone.
The suppression of the Yingzhou rebellion took two full years and two campaigns.
In the first, members of the Wu clan led tens of thousands of troops. They were utterly defeated, the army wiped out.
In the second, Yang Xuangan and Zhang Jiujie jointly commanded two hundred thousand troops and finally put down the rebellion.
If Xue Rengui's defeat at Dafeichuan marked the end of early Tang invincibility, then the Yingzhou rebellion was the prelude to the decline of the High Tang.
After Goguryeo fell, most of its people were dispersed and relocated within Tang territory. Among them, the Mohe tribes were settled in Yingzhou.
Taking advantage of the chaos, the Mohe leaders Dae Joyeong and Qiqi Zhongxiang led their people back east across the Liao River to their ancestral lands.
During this process, the Mohe joined forces with the Khitan and decisively defeated Tang forces at Tianmen Ridge. From that point onward, Balhae emerged as an independent state.
In the years that followed, Balhae maneuvered among the powers of Liaodong and the Korean Peninsula, engaging the Tang in over a dozen major battles within a decade, including the Battle of Dengzhou, the Battle of Madushan, and the Balhae campaigns.
Frontier crises pressed closer and closer, eventually forcing Emperor Xuanzong to adopt the strategy of "using barbarians to control barbarians."
Thus, An Lushan stepped onto the stage of history.
Oh, and one more thing was worth mentioning.
Yan Zhiwei himself.
Within the embassy, Yan Zhiwei panicked and lost his composure. Wu Yanxiu knelt on the spot. Only the deputy envoy Pei Huaigu remained steadfast, choosing death over surrender.
To the Turkic khan, neither Wu Yanxiu nor Pei Huaigu mattered. The one he truly valued was Yan Zhiwei, the legitimate grandson of Yan Liben and a figure of considerable reputation at court.
Yan Zhiwei was forced to surrender and was granted the title of "Southern Khan," intended as bait to attract more defectors.
When the news reached the court, Wu Zetian acted decisively and exterminated the Yan clan. Only two Yan clansmen who had married into the Wu family were spared.
After hostilities temporarily ceased, Yan Zhiwei returned to Wu Zhou. Wu Zetian sentenced him to death by dismemberment by chariot and ordered all officials to shoot arrows into his corpse.
Afterward, his flesh was stripped, his bones crushed, and three generations of his clan were posthumously executed.
Wu Yanxiu returned as well, was rewarded with the title Duke of Heng, and lived until the Tanglong Coup, when Li Longji had him beheaded at Suzhan Gate.]
Pa.
In the silence of the Ganlu Hall, the sound was especially sharp.
Everyone turned to look.
Yan Liben was hurriedly bending down to pick up the hard stylus he used for drawing.
The man who once wore a calm smile on his face now looked dazed and unfocused.
After all, Yan Liben was only thirty-five years old. He was still waiting for his eldest son's coming-of-age ceremony. Who could have imagined that he would suddenly learn his grandson would meet such a fate, along with the extermination of three generations?
Those three words weighed like a mountain.
Even someone as optimistic as him fell silent.
Li Shimin hesitated. Encouraged by Empress Zhangsun's gaze, he finally spoke.
"Liben…"
Yan Liben shook his head.
"Your Majesty need not say more. The Yan family will withdraw from officialdom."
Without waiting for Li Shimin to speak, Yan Liben drew the line himself. He was done playing this game.
And it was hardly surprising.
Whether painting or mathematics and engineering, each was enough to occupy a lifetime of study.
If serving the imperial house was this dangerous, and one's descendants might not even be competent, then avoiding it altogether was the simplest answer.
Yet this single sentence left Li Shimin speechless for quite some time.
Du Ruhui sighed inwardly. Fortunately, the Yan family devoted themselves to architecture and painting. And fortunately, it was this emperor, who would not fly into a rage over words spoken in grief.
Before Du Ruhui could step forward, the long-silent Zhangsun Wuji rose.
"What Yan the Director resents," he said calmly, "is not posterity itself, but the laws of Wu Zhou."
His expression was composed, but inside his sleeves his hands were clenched together, slick with sweat.
Standing in the Ganlu Hall, Zhangsun Wuji had no desire to bind the rise and fall of the Zhangsun clan solely to the empress.
But knowing the future as he did, returning to office would mean remaining in a long state of uncertainty.
Later generations would summarize it clearly. During the Zhenguan era, one more Zhangsun Wuji changed little, one less changed little as well. If he wished to fulfill his long-held ambition, he needed to demonstrate irreplaceable value.
What was Zhangsun Wuji good at?
He knew both civil and military matters, but above all, he understood law.
Everything he had pondered for days was for this moment.
"From later generations we learn that without a monarch, there are no imperial relatives. Without merit nobles, there is no mercy beyond the law."
"How does one restrain the people? After much thought, only four words come to mind, spoken casually by later generations when judging Marquis Zhuge: rule the state by law."
Li Shimin listened intently.
In his mind surfaced Ma Su, executed according to the law, followed by Yan Zhiwei's brutal punishment and Wu Yanxiu's reward. Placed side by side, the contrast was deeply ironic.
Thinking further of later generations' attitude toward Confucianism, and their inclusive stance, Li Shimin began to grasp Zhangsun Wuji's intent.
No one present was foolish. Almost instantly, many gazes turned toward him.
That serious?
At the center of the storm, Zhangsun Wuji continued without wavering.
"Han Feizi said: the strength of a state lies in the strength of those who uphold the law. I believe the strength of those who uphold the law lies in whether the law favors no noble."
"Shang Yang once said that when law is not enforced, it is because those above violate it first. Thus he punished Prince Qian and Gongsun Jia, and the people of Qin obeyed."
"Today, our Tang can still be called newly established. Though we have the Wude Code, it is but a derivative of the Kaihuang Code."
"Emperor Yang upheld this law and lost his state. If we wish to establish an achievement that endures beyond our age, we must have laws that run through past and present to govern the people."
"I request the revision of the Zhenguan Code, to restrain Zhenguan, to expand its authority, clarify its justice, and proclaim its virtue."
Having finished, Zhangsun Wuji bowed deeply, raising his clasped hands above his head as he awaited the Tang emperor's judgment.
As for Wei Zheng's gaze behind him, he could not see it, but could imagine it well enough. It was unlikely to be pleasant.
After all, Confucianism revered ritual, not law. This was a question of fundamentals.
But for Zhangsun Wuji, borrowing the later slogan of ruling by law, raising the banner of Legalism, securing control over the compilation of the legal code, and using that to return to office was the most stable path he could envision.
Remaining unmoving would preserve wealth and status, but he did not wish for later generations to remember him only as an imperial relative with a ducal title.
The time spent holding his petition aloft once again made each day feel like a year.
At last, after an indeterminate stretch, he heard that distant voice.
"Approved."
The quiet air turned noisy at once. The Ganlu Hall, chilly upon arrival, now felt stiflingly hot. The sweat-soaked back of his robes was especially uncomfortable.
If there was one regret, it was that Hou Junji was not present. Otherwise, that brute would surely have been awed by his learning and methods.
Zhangsun Wuji exhaled softly, excitement flickering in his chest.
Li Shimin, in truth, had not thought this far ahead.
He knew Han Feizi and Shang Yang's words well, and also remembered Han Feizi's other maxim: punishments do not spare ministers, rewards do not omit commoners.
He had the ambition to act thus. But what of his descendants?
Setting that troubling thought aside for now, Li Shimin sighed and turned his attention back.
"This Yingzhou rebellion… compared to the palace's scheming, this emperor's handling of frontier affairs seems equally flawed."
In his view, his son and daughter-in-law were not so different. Both were raised deep in the palace and issued distant orders without understanding the tribes.
The barbarians feared force, not virtue.
Four million jin of red gold cast in the capital was worth less than half a jin of crude iron hung around a barbarian's neck.
Only by making them fear the might of Huaxia could one compel them to learn Huaxia's virtue.
Otherwise, it was no different from the Song's talk of "virtue over terrain," a dreamlike muttering fit only to be laughed at.
In comparison, later generations' blunt warnings about the unreliability of frontier officials were refreshingly clear.
The responsibility of a Grand Protector required preserving central authority while pacifying the tribes. Only those who balanced authority and benevolence could shoulder it.
As for the Khitan who had been won over, they could be trusted for now. The true danger lay with the Turks and needed to be resolved thoroughly.
Li Shimin filed these thoughts away one by one.
Du Ruhui, meanwhile, noted down two phrases that caught his interest.
What did a population explosion look like?
What kind of scene was an industrial revolution?