[Lightscreen]
[The various factors leading to the collapse of the Tang Dynasty actually answer a completely different historical question. Why did the Song Dynasty refuse to choose Chang'an or Luoyang as their capital?
The most obvious answer is that those two legendary cities were destroyed.
After the apocalyptic chaos of the late Tang and the bloody slaughter of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, both ancient capitals were reduced to smoking ruins. The grand palaces were burned to ash. The bustling markets were replaced by overgrown weeds. A graveyard emptiness hung over streets that once held millions.
Take Luoyang, for example. During the early years of the Northern Song, the official census recorded a mere 20,000 registered households in the entire city. If you run the math, the total population of that once glorious metropolis barely cracked 100,000.
That pathetic level of population and output was nowhere near enough to support the huge bureaucratic machine of a central government.
But the fundamental reason was the exact same logistical nightmare that tortured the Tang emperors. The grain tribute system. Or to put it bluntly, getting enough food to eat.
It did not matter how theoretically powerful the Tang Empire was on paper. If there was a famine in the northwest, the Emperor still had to pack his bags and march his entire court to the eastern capital of Luoyang just to beg for a bowl of rice.
And where did Luoyang get its food? It relied entirely on massive barges sailing up the waterways, delivering rice from the fertile southeast.
Scholars in the Song Dynasty fully recognized this geographical trap. They wrote clearly on the subject. The Guanzhong region was called a fertile paradise, but the arable land was too narrow. The local grain output was insufficient to feed the capital and survive the cycle of droughts and floods. Therefore, the court had to constantly transport grain from the southeast.
After the Tang Dynasty collapsed, the entire Central Plains underwent a massive software update. History patched the geography.
They patched the bug that allowed rice to grow north of the Yellow River. From then on, the northern plains would constantly spawn aggressive nomadic cavalry enemies instead.
They patched the bug where winters were mild. From then on, massive blizzards would drop on the north right on schedule. The freezing winds would howl across the plains, burying crops and livestock under mountains of snow.
They nerfed the logistical capacity of the Yellow River and severely reduced the crop yields in the Guanzhong region, permanently locking Luoyang in a state of economic depression.
Faced with this endless barrage of geographical debuffs, the southern regions became absolutely critical. The north was a brutal survival server. You had to fight freezing temperatures and endless waves of barbarian raiders. The agricultural environment was completely hostile.
The south did not have to worry about nomadic cavalry trampling their fields. The sweeping climate shifts had a much softer impact on the southern weather patterns. Therefore, shifting the economic core of the empire to the south was an inevitable historical trend.
Given this reality, imagine if the founding Emperor of the Song, Zhao Kuangyin, had lost his mind and violently forced his capital back into the Guanzhong region. The resulting logistical map of the Song Empire would be a nightmare.
You would rely on the Jianghuai region for money and grain. You would rely on the Hebei region for military defense. You would rely on Bianliang as a central shipping hub. And then you would stick the actual political capital hundreds of miles away in Guanzhong.
If you set up an empire like that, you would not even need an incompetent emperor to ruin everything later. The Great Song would violently tear itself apart under the strain of its own supply lines.
The truth is, the meteoric rise of Bianjing, also known as Kaifeng, was directly tied to the legacy of the Tang.
Before the An Lushan Rebellion, Guanzhong served as the political and military brain of the Tang Empire. The Jianghuai and Hebei regions served as the economic heart. These regions were connected by the Yongji Canal and the Tongji Canal. Luoyang sat perfectly in the middle, balancing these two massive supply lines, making it the ideal eastern capital.
Then the rebellion burned Hebei to the ground. The local military governors and the central court descended into an endless cycle of suspicion. The Tang Empire lost one of its two economic legs.
For the remainder of its existence, the mid to late Tang court relied almost entirely on the Jianghuai region. The Tongji Canal became the single fragile artery keeping the empire alive.
Under these desperate conditions, Bianzhou emerged as a critical new anchor point to protect the canal shipments. It slowly and inevitably stole the geopolitical status of Luoyang.
The Northern Song Dynasty learned from the slow death of the Tang. Establishing their capital in Bianjing was essentially a massive logistical shortcut. They deliberately stacked their military command, political center, economic hub, and primary transportation network directly on top of each other in a single city.
In the very early years, Emperor Zhao Kuangyin might have briefly entertained the romantic idea of moving the capital back to Luoyang. In the year 972, Bianliang only processed about 500,000 dan of grain through the canals. The economic cost of relocating was actually affordable.
But a mere 10 years later, the annual shipping volume exploded to 4 million dan. Twenty years after that, it skyrocketed to 6 million. The sheer crushing weight of that logistical reality meant that moving the capital away from the canal hub was equivalent to stabbing yourself in the heart.
Unfortunately, the brutal speed of the later Jin Dynasty cavalry invasions proved that Emperor Zhao Guangyi's famous quote, that a capital should rely on the virtue of the ruler rather than defensive terrain, was absolute garbage.]
Liu Bei stared at the map on the screen and drew a sharp breath.
"These huge water channels. Were these truly carved out by human hands?"
The projection left zero room for interpretation. A huge blue line slashed across the map. It started way up north near his hometown of Zhuo County, carved a path to the Yellow River, and then pushed deep south to connect with the Jianghuai region.
Liu Bei's mind reeled. The scale of the engineering required to dig a trench that long was beyond his comprehension. How much gold did that cost? How many men had to dig? How could any empire pull off a miracle of this magnitude, and why had the Light Screen never mentioned it before?
"That is not the work of the Tang, my lord," Pang Tong said, slowly shaking his head. "That is the legacy of the Sui."
Pang Tong pointed at the screen. The evidence was right there. Small timestamps hovered next to different sections of the canal on the map. If you cross referenced those completion dates with the huge climate graph Zhuge Liang had copied earlier, the answer was obvious.
The Grand Canal was a monumental public works project initiated by the incredibly short lived Sui Dynasty.
"Still, this canal is truly..." Pang Tong trailed off. His usually sharp tongue failed him. He simply could not find the right adjective to describe the sheer arrogant ambition of the project.
The map was relatively simple, allowing Zhuge Liang to quickly sketch a rough copy. He stared down at his parchment, his brow furrowed in deep thought. He traced his finger along the different sections of the canal, piecing together the engineering logic.
"The true genius of this project," Zhuge Liang murmured, his mind working rapidly, "was not just raw digging. It was synthesis. They dredged and connected the fragmented achievements of the past."
He tapped a specific winding section of the waterway. "This segment here is the Han Canal. It was originally dug centuries ago by King Fuchai of Wu. He also dug the Huang Canal to link the Si and Ji rivers."
Zhuge Liang moved his finger further north on his sketch. "And here, Cao Cao excavated the White Canal to connect the Yellow River to the Qing River. When he marched north to crush the Wuhuan tribes, he dug two more military canals for supply lines."
Zhuge Liang analyzed the historical fragments. But even with all those older projects factored in, he had to admit the final result was staggering.
"However," Zhuge Liang said, his voice filled with genuine awe, "the Sui Dynasty possessed the will to connect all those broken pieces, dig huge new arteries, and successfully fuse the north and the south into a single aquatic highway. It is an engineering triumph that rivals anything in ancient or modern history."
"It is just..." Zhuge Liang hesitated. He pressed his lips together and shook his head, choosing to keep his darker thoughts to himself.
Zhuge Liang could hold his tongue, but Zhang Fei certainly could not.
Zhang Fei spun around and slapped Ma Chao right on the thigh.
The impact was so loud that Ma Chao physically jumped, his knee banging against the table as he grabbed his leg with a pained grimace.
"Hey, Yide! That's my leg!" Ma Chao hissed, his face twisted somewhere between pain and annoyance.
Zhang Fei did not even look at him.
"What is there to hide, Kongming?" Zhang Fei bellowed, his voice rolling through the tent like distant thunder. "Even an uneducated brute like me can see the reality! The Sui Dynasty dug this huge ditch and completely worked themselves to death doing it!"
Zhang Fei possessed practical experience. When Liu Bei took control of Chengdu, Zhang Fei personally supervised the dredging of the local riverways. Back in their wild youth in Zhuo County, he had dug irrigation ditches in the mud.
He knew exactly how brutal that labor was. Digging a normal local canal broke men's backs. The mud caked your boots. Blisters tore open on your palms. Your aching shoulders made it impossible to sleep. Digging a trench that stretched across the entire land? The mathematical reality of the required peasant labor force was too terrifying to even imagine. Millions of men drafted. Millions of families broken.
Fa Zheng nodded slowly. He saw the political angle clearly.
"The collapse of this Sui Dynasty," Fa Zheng noted quietly, "does not align with the historical pattern of climate disaster the future generations described earlier."
He pointed at the climate graph. "Look at the data. When the Sui established their empire, the freezing temperatures of the chaotic era had already broken. They enjoyed a period of peace and rapid recovery known as the Reign of Kaihuang. The weather was warming up. The crops were growing. They possessed all the necessary foundational elements for a golden age."
Fa Zheng shook his head in pure disbelief. "Yet the empire barely lasted forty years. It imploded in the second generation. And the posthumous title given to the final emperor is practically unheard of in the historical records."
Ma Chao stopped rubbing his bruised thigh. He leaned forward, genuinely curious.
"What exactly does the posthumous title Yang mean?" Ma Chao asked.
Jian Yong, the diplomat, stroked his beard.
He opened his mouth to provide a nuanced scholarly breakdown of the historical terminology. He was ready to explain the deep philosophical implications of the ancient texts regarding the character Yang.
Zhang Fei did not give him the chance.
"Hahaha... that is easy!" Zhang Fei shouted proudly. "It means he was a lazy degenerate! Addicted to his harem and negligent in governance equals Yang!"
Zhang Fei crossed his arms, looking incredibly pleased with his own vocabulary. "Basically, it means this Emperor Yang spent all day rolling around in bed with his concubines and never bothered showing up to court to do his job."
Jian Yong nearly choked on his own spit. He stared at Zhang Fei in absolute shock.
Oh Heaven. Yide, did you seriously ignore all the other complex historical definitions of that word and just memorize the part about him being a pervert?
Jian Yong stared at Zhang Fei with the expression of a man who had just discovered that his supposedly illiterate brother had been reading palace scandal records in secret.
He definitely reads books, Jian Yong thought to himself. But his selective memory is terrifying. What other historical texts has he skimmed just to find the dirty parts?
Ma Chao, completely ignoring the internal crisis of the diplomat, was visibly impressed by the rapid fire historical analysis.
"Living like that," Ma Chao blurted out without thinking, "would make any man incredibly jealou... I mean, incredibly angry! Yes! I hate men like that!"
Ma Chao caught Jian Yong glaring at him out of the corner of his eye. He immediately straightened his posture and tried to look as morally outraged as possible.
"If the Son of Heaven acts like a degenerate," Ma Chao declared loudly, puffing out his chest with righteous fury, "how deeply the common people must suffer! It is an absolute tragedy!"
Liu Bei watched the exchange and let out a long breath. The joke in the room was a welcome relief, a brief gust of wind in the middle of a suffocating storm. But even as the laughter echoed around him, the lesson of the Sui Emperor remained etched in his mind like a scar that refused to fade.
A ruler could build a miracle that connected the world. He could dig a river that defied the gods. But if he forgot the people holding the shovels, his empire would drown in the very water he commanded.
Liu Bei looked back at the map. The blue line of the Grand Canal shimmered under the light. It was a monument to human ambition. It was also a graveyard of human bones.
"We will build our own future," Liu Bei said softly, his voice carrying across the quiet room. "But we will not build it on the backs of broken men. Let the Sui keep their grand canal. We will keep our humanity."