Liu Bei could not shake the feeling that the Tang Dynasty was doomed to fall, and the thought was really starting to get on his nerves.
He stared at the fading images on the Screen, a cold sense of dread settling in his chest. History really did have a nasty habit of repeating itself. No matter how much people fought to change their fate, the same miserable cycle somehow came around again. It was not exactly an easy truth to swallow.
"Dynasties collapse. The world falls apart. Somehow, it always ends like this," Liu Bei muttered with a sigh. His mind was a complete mess, but somehow, that was the only sentence he could manage.
He did not even need to worry about what was coming next. He did not need to lose sleep over Cao Pi or the shameless abdication ceremony that was about to tear the Han apart. If he wanted to know how this story ended, all he had to do was look at the history his own family had left behind.
Centuries ago, Liu Bang had carved the Han Empire out of the bloody ruins of the Qin. He fought Xiang Yu through one brutal war after another, survived odds that should have killed him, and eventually brought the realm under his banner.
Then, a few hundred years later, Liu Xiu appeared on the chaotic battlefield of Kunyang. With a storm of meteors falling from the sky and an army that somehow managed to survive against all reason, he crushed the usurper Wang Mang and dragged the Han back from the ashes.
They had fought. They had bled. They had built a foundation that was supposed to last for ten thousand generations.
And what had all that effort accomplished?
A frightened boy emperor, pushed around by warlords, kicked from his ancestral throne, and poisoned in a dark room.
Emperor Ai, the final ruler of the Tang, had met much the same fate as the last emperors of the Han. A boy on a borrowed throne, pushed around by men who bowed in public and poisoned in private.
Take away the grand speeches and heroic legends, and betrayal was really just a matter of paperwork. The method never changed.
Wang Mang swiped the Western Han through a forced fake abdication. Cao Pi used the same political theater to steal the throne from Emperor Xian.
Different dynasty. Different names. Same old script. The only difference was how fast they swung the sword.
"This Zhu Wen guy works way too fast. Come on, you not patience enough!"
Zhang Fei's booming voice shattered the gloomy atmosphere like a rock through a window.
He was clearly trying to cheer up his depressed elder brother. He slapped his armored thigh, producing a loud crack.
"Haha, shame on you. You are supposed to wait at least eight or ten years before killing the puppet emperor! Have some professional pride! Milk the kid for legitimacy first, then slip some poison into his cup!"
Liu Bei slowly turned his head and gave him a look cold enough to melt iron.
Zhang Fei, apparently immune to danger, did not notice. He scratched his beard as his thoughts wandered back to the historical spoilers they had seen earlier.
"You know, when you think about the Luo River Oath and what happened to Cao Mao, you really have to admit that Sima Yi ruined the whole treason business for everyone else."
Zhang Fei laughed, clearly delighted with his own conclusion.
He was referring to some of the most infamous betrayals in the history they had just witnessed. Sima Yi had once stood beside the Luo River, shedding genuine tears as he swore to Heaven that if the Cao family surrendered their military authority, they could retire peacefully as wealthy and respected nobles.
The moment the Cao family handed over their seals of command, Sima Yi dropped the act and wiped out their entire extended clan.
And then came the grand finale.
Sima Yi's ambitious son eventually pushed the reigning Wei Emperor, Cao Mao, to the edge. The young emperor finally snapped, drew his ceremonial sword, and charged into the streets with only a handful of guards at his side.
He never made it far.
In broad daylight, one of the emperor's own enemies stepped forward and drove a spear straight through his chest.
"Sima Yi set a terrible precedent," Zhang Fei said with a laugh. "Big Brother, Sima Yi is only some mid level official now, right? Why don't we drag him back to camp and make him our army accountant. Just imagine it. The future founder of the Jin Dynasty sitting in our camp counting grain sacks!"
Before Liu Bei could even begin to process the sheer tactical insanity of that proposal, Ma Chao suddenly perked up.
The cavalry commander had been standing nearby with his arms crossed, only half paying attention to the conversation. But the moment he heard that name, something clicked.
Sima Yi.
Cao Cao's envoy.
If Ma Chao remembered correctly, Cao Cao had once sent an envoy to the northwest to negotiate with the local warlords. Ma Chao, being Ma Chao, had responded to this diplomatic gesture by launching a midnight cavalry raid against the envoy's camp.
He burst into thunderous laughter and slapped his huge hand onto Ma Chao's shoulder. The impact sounded like someone had just snapped a wooden beam.
Mengqi!" Zhang Fei roared. "You launched a blind night raid against Sima Yi! You beat up the future Emperor Xuan of Jin while he was sleeping! Do you realize what you have accomplished? A hundred years from now, historians will be writing poems about how you thrashed the founder of the Jin Dynasty before he even had the chance to get started!"
Ma Chao froze for a moment.
Then his brain caught up.
He had attacked a diplomatic camp.
The Screen had just revealed that the man sleeping in that camp would eventually establish a unified dynasty.
Therefore, by the questionable logic of Ma Chao's brain, he had personally ambushed a future founding emperor and won.
Ma Chao's chest puffed out so far it looked like he was trying to challenge a pigeon to a posing contest.
He straightened his back, rolled his shoulders, rested one hand on his sword hilt, and raised his chin so high he nearly dislocated his own neck.
"Hmph. So what if he becomes an emperor in some other timeline?" Ma Chao said, his voice dripping with newfound arrogance. "In this one, he is just a man I dragged out of his bed while he was still wiping sleep from his eyes."
He flicked a speck of dust off his shoulder and smirked.
"Besides, it is not my fault the future emperor could not defend his own camp. A man who cannot guard his sleep does not deserve to rule a dynasty."
Zhang Fei howled with laughter and slapped Ma Chao on the back so hard the general stumbled forward two steps.
"I like it. That is the spirit! Next time, we should tie him to a horse and parade him around the camp so the soldiers can see the future emperor of Jin with hay stuck in his hair!"
Ma Chao's eyes lit up.
"Should I start kicking his ass every time he forgets to bow to me?"
"Hahaha... do it!" Zhang Fei shouted. "And if he complains, hit his head until spinning!"
Liu Bei stared at the two men.
At this point, he gave up on trying to salvage the conversation. He would simply have to pull Ma Chao aside later and give him a very, very long lecture.
They called him Ma Chao the Splendid. He certainly looked the part, with the appearance of a war god and the general air of someone who could charge through an entire formation without blinking.
Unfortunately, he rarely seemed to use his brain for anything beyond calculating the best angle for a cavalry charge.
Liu Bei knew better, though.
Ma Chao was cut from much the same cloth as Zhang Fei. Both men had an intimidating aura that made them look like crude brutes who understood nothing but bloodshed. In reality, both had far more cunning beneath the surface than they let on. Neither was genuinely reckless when the consequences were serious.
Right now, however, they were simply being idiots.
Liu Bei rubbed his temples and walked away.
Behind him, the cheerful voices of Ma Chao and Zhang Fei continued as the two men bonded over their completely accidental achievement of making history even more ridiculous.
He glanced across the command tent and immediately felt relieved.
His three strategists were huddled together in a tight circle.
Zhuge Liang, Pang Tong, and Fa Zheng all wore the same serious expression. They whispered back and forth, looking as if they were discussing the most important military secrets in the realm rather than arguing over a bunch of numbers.
Zhuge Liang held a large sheet of parchment covered in copied climate charts from the Screen.
The three geniuses kept pointing at the falling temperature lines as they discussed future battlefield logistics, winter supply failures, and the policies they would need to survive the coming cold.
Liu Bei smiled.
This was where he belonged.
He walked over, hoping he could contribute some practical knowledge from his decades of fighting on the northern frontiers.
He got close enough to hear what they were saying.
"So, how exactly do you think future generations calculate this Rice Price Index?" Zhuge Liang asked, his eyes glowing with excitement.
"The underlying formula must account for several variables that change over time," Pang Tong replied. "Start with the total area of registered farmland. Divide that by the population recorded in the census, then compare the result with the average seasonal yield per acre. We should lock ourselves in a room and reverse engineer the entire formula. This index is an incredibly useful way to monitor the survival of ordinary people."
"You cannot simply apply one universal formula," Fa Zheng said. He tapped the parchment hard enough to leave a small mark. "Rice paddies in the south and wheat fields in the north do not produce the same caloric yield per acre. If we use a single formula, the resulting data will be badly distorted."
"Exactly."
Zhuge Liang nodded so quickly that his feather fan bounced.
"But think about the broader possibilities. If we can master this level of macroeconomic calculation, could we use the same statistical model to track illegal land accumulation by aristocratic families?"
Pang Tong's eyes lit up.
"An Aristocrat Index? A Threat Level Index? If we could calculate a real time numerical value for elite corruption and hidden land holdings, the political applications would be endless."
He grinned.
"We could tax them into the ground."
"By the same principle," Zhuge Liang continued, "we could use the formula to regulate government markets. We could even apply it to agricultural academies and measure fertilizer efficiency. The potential applications of weaponized mathematics are practically limitless."
The three strategists were buzzing with excitement.
Before long, they had dragged Mi Zhu into the circle as well. As their chief financial backer and a merchant who understood the movement of wealth better than almost anyone, he was immediately subjected to a barrage of questions.
They practically pinned him against the table and demanded that he test their new taxation models against actual market conditions.
Liu Bei stood directly behind them.
His brain felt like someone had filled it with wet mud.
He understood absolutely nothing.
Tax theories, algorithms, statistical models, market forces. The words alone were making his head hurt.
He was a warlord, not a treasury clerk.
Completely defeated, Liu Bei quietly backed away from the mathematical war council and looked toward the other side of the tent.
Zhang Fei was practically vibrating with excitement as he loudly told someone another story about stabbing a man.
Beside him, Ma Chao stood with such a smug expression that his eyebrows looked like they were trying to disappear into his hairline.
A vein began throbbing in Liu Bei's forehead.
"Yide!"
Liu Bei's roar echoed across the entire tent.
Zhang Fei stopped in the middle of his story.
He slowly turned around and stared at Liu Bei with an innocent expression.
"Huh? What's up, Big Brother?"
---
The same revelations hit the Tang Dynasty very differently.
For Ma Zhou, the newly crowned top scholar, the day had been one explosive revelation after another. He did not need some detailed textbook laying out every event of the future. He had lived enough of the world and possessed enough brains to connect the dots himself.
A century of golden prosperity.
Then the An Lushan Rebellion came along and smashed everything to pieces.
After that, the middle and late Tang struggled onward for another century, barely keeping itself alive.
Three hundred years.
That was the lifespan of the supposedly eternal Tang Empire.
A deep unease twisted inside Ma Zhou's stomach.
He was thirty years old today. The first seventeen years of his life had been spent as a starving peasant under the collapsing Sui Dynasty. He remembered the millions of people worked to death digging the Grand Canal. He remembered the endless rebellions, warlords burning farmland, and people resorting to cannibalism in besieged cities.
He had spent his youth watching the Tang claw its way out of those ashes.
At thirty, he had finally passed the imperial examinations and earned the title of top scholar.
And now, just as he had reached the peak of his life, he had been given undeniable proof that his new empire had an expiration date.
Without realizing it, Ma Zhou raised his head.
His eyes met the man standing at the center of the hall.
Emperor Li Shimin stood tall with his hands clasped behind his back.
This time, Li Shimin did not pretend not to notice. Instead, he turned his head, looked at Ma Zhou, and smiled.
"Now that you know the dark truth of the future, Binwang, do you have the ability to revive Tang and continue its mandate?"
Ma Zhou dropped to his knees.
A man who had grown up fighting hunger had finally found a ruler worth dying for.
He lowered his forehead to the polished floor.
"At Your Majesty's command, how would I dare not give my life in service?"
Li Shimin stepped forward. He reached down, grabbed Ma Zhou by the shoulders, and pulled him back to his feet.
"Future historians call you one of the foundational ministers of my Zhenguan era," Li Shimin said. "From today onward, you serve me. Hold nothing back. You will become the standard by which civil officials are judged."
Ma Zhou was so moved that he could not even speak.
Thinking back to a year ago, he had been a nameless wanderer staying in a nobleman's guest quarters, spending every day wracking his brain just to make sure he had a bowl of rice to eat.
Now the Emperor himself was standing in front of him, holding his arms and telling him that his name would one day be remembered by history.
The contrast made Ma Zhou cry, and he was even more stirred by having his talents acknowledged.
Li Shimin kept a firm grip on his arms, making sure the newly appointed scholar did not collapse.
"I will never betray this grace," Ma Zhou choked out.
Li Shimin laughed warmly. "Good. Good."
Then he turned back toward the Screen and deliberately pushed the death of Tang Ai into the darkest corner of his mind.
Honestly, a puppet boy emperor being forced to drink poisoned wine barely registered on his anger scale anymore.
Compared to everything else, that was practically a peaceful death.
He had watched future Tang emperors flee Chang'an nine separate times.
Nine times.
The capital burned while the imperial court ran for its life.
He had watched emperors sign humiliating treaties, sacrificing imperial dignity to the Uyghur Khaganate just to borrow cavalry. The thought of a Tang Emperor bowing before a nomad khagan made Li Shimin's stomach churn.
Then there were the military tragedies.
Gao Xianzhi, a brilliant general who had conquered vast stretches of the western deserts, was executed despite his achievements.
Feng Changqing died alongside him.
And Zhang Yichao, commander of the Guiyi Army, spent years fighting a lonely war in the far west to reclaim lost territory while the cowards in the capital barely bothered to remember he existed.
Li Shimin had slapped his thigh in helpless fury while watching those men bleed on the Screen.
Now, he was numb to it.
Getting angry at dead men and disasters that would not happen for another two centuries was a waste of his energy.
The future could wait.
He needed to seize the present.
Could he use the peak of his Zhenguan era to build a foundation strong enough to carry his useless descendants through a century of climate collapse?
There was only one way.
He had to weaponize the brilliant men standing in this room.
Li Shimin gently pushed Ma Zhou back toward his seat, then raised his head and looked toward the open sky beyond the wooden roof.
His mind began running through the geopolitical map.
The Northern Turks were broken and fleeing.
The Tibetan Empire in the western mountains was still young and divided.
The scattered oasis kingdoms of the Western Regions were nowhere near strong enough to stop his cavalry.
And far to the east, across the endless ocean, there was an island nation.
The Screen had shown him a thousand years of shifting borders. It had shown him the true scale of the world, along with the wonders of science, industry, and global trade.
Forcing barbarian tribes to kneel in the dirt no longer excited him.
That was too easy.
The prize felt hollow now.
Li Shimin had found a new enemy.
He wanted to fight history itself.
Military strength on the steppes and agricultural reforms in the valleys were necessary defensive measures. Stockpiling grain and strengthening walls could delay a collapse, but no one won a war by hiding behind a shield forever.
If he wanted to defeat the momentum of history, he had to attack.
His mind quickly arrived at the only answer that made sense.
Open the sea.
Build a blue water navy.
Conquer the waves.
Li Shimin's eyes suddenly snapped toward Liu Rengui.
He paused.
Liu Rengui was a rising star, and the Screen had already proven that he possessed a once in a generation talent for naval warfare.
But you did not throw your best chess piece onto the board before you even knew what game you were playing.
Liu Rengui had to be saved for the real war.
If Li Shimin was going to send a vanguard into the unknown depths of the open ocean, he needed someone desperate enough to accept the risk.
Someone with nothing left to lose.
His gaze shifted.
It landed on Hou Junji.
Hou Junji looked absolutely miserable.
His face was as pale as wet ash, and he stood trembling in the corner with the defeated posture of a man waiting for the executioner to arrive.
The Screen had made it painfully clear that, in the original timeline, Hou Junji would eventually commit treason and be executed by Li Shimin himself.
The man looked like a ghost who was simply waiting for someone to finish burying him.
He probably expected the guards to drag him away at any moment.
Li Shimin narrowed his eyes.
"Junji."
Hou Junji flinched.
His shoulders shot upward until he looked almost like a frightened turtle trying to retreat into its shell.
"Are you willing to serve as Vanguard Naval Inspector this year?" Li Shimin asked, his voice giving away absolutely nothing.
The question struck Hou Junji like a bolt of lightning.
The last bit of color drained from his already pale face.
The Emperor was not going to execute him.
Instead, he was offering him a dangerous, possibly suicidal mission into the open ocean.
A chance to buy back his life.
Hou Junji dropped to his knees and practically slid across the polished floor, coming to a stop at Li Shimin's boots.
"This subject is willing to go!" he shouted.
Desperation and relief cracked through his voice.
From the shadows at the back of the hall, Zhangsun Wuji watched the entire scene.
He crossed his arms.
A faint sneer tugged at the corner of his lips.
"Cuih."