Through the window of the Light Screen, Kongming and his colleagues finally got a chance to peek at another neighbor sharing this same round earth.
After absorbing the full sweep of Western history, Jian Yong leaned back in his chair with a look of disappointment. He crossed his arms and sighed.
"The histories of East and West are almost identical," he said, shaking his head. "When it comes to climate change, we are all just lame donkeys stuck in the mud."
Kongming burst out laughing. He pointed his feather fan at Pang Tong, his eyes crinkling.
"Xianhe, would you call yourself a lame donkey?"
Pang Tong smiled and shook his head, looking far too pleased with himself.
"Facing a century of climate shifts, we might look like stumbling beasts to heaven," he said smoothly. "But I see myself differently. I am a bird mending its nest before the autumn storms arrive. Or perhaps a dried fish learning to respect the water before it drowns."
Jian Yong fell into thought at that, his earlier grumbling fading a little.
Fa Zheng nodded along, tapping his fingers on the table in a steady rhythm.
"From the Spring and Autumn period to today, our ancestors never just sat down and waited to die," he said firmly. "They built irrigation systems. They protected fertile farmland. They dug mines and smelted iron. They felled timber and raised houses. Every single one of those acts was preparation before the rain fell."
Kongming voiced his full agreement.
"Look at the Sui dynasty digging that canal from north to south," he said. "You could argue they saw the centuries of chaos between the Wei, Jin, and the Northern and Southern dynasties, and decided to build a lifeline before the next disaster hit. Smart, if a little reckless in execution."
That argument finally convinced Jian Yong. He cupped his hands and conceded the point with a polite bow, properly defeated.
Once the philosophical debate wound down, Zhang Fei immediately shoved his way into the conversation, nearly knocking over a small table in his excitement.
"Right, but what in the world is a volcano?"
Every mind in the room froze for a beat. They closed their eyes and tried their best to picture it.
First, you need a mountain. Then, that mountain is somehow full of fire. Then, boom. The mountain explodes. Simple enough on paper, but absolutely absurd to imagine.
Zhang Fei stood in the middle of the room, waving his arms around and making explosion noises with his mouth. He was doing his best to pantomime a mountain blowing itself to pieces, and he was taking the role very seriously.
"But why would a mountain just shatter like that?" Jian Yong asked, his face full of confusion. "Mountains are supposed to sit there and be mountains. Not blow up."
Zhang Fei had zero idea about geology. But he fired back with the confidence of a man who had never once admitted he was wrong about anything in his life.
"Well then, Xianhe, let me ask you this. Why does the earth dragon roll over and cause earthquakes?"
Jian Yong opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. He felt like Zhang Fei was comparing apples to horses, but he could not find the words to prove it.
He just furrowed his brow and sank back into his chair to think on the problem, thoroughly outmaneuvered by brute confidence.
While Zhang Fei strutted around looking smug like he had just won a great debate, Kongming slowly frowned.
Zhang Fei's careless joke had triggered something in Kongming's mind. The Light Screen had completely avoided explaining earthquakes. Now it was casually dropping exploding fire mountains into the conversation. Judging by the name alone, volcanoes were clearly a natural disaster. And since they involved mountains ripping themselves apart, they were probably in the same family as earthquakes.
Kongming suddenly remembered a question he had been ignoring for ages.
They now knew the sky above was an endless void. But what was under their feet? What did the inside of the earth actually look like? Did the future generations know?
Did the screen avoid talking about earthquakes because they had nothing to do with climate? Or did they skip the topic because earthquakes were simply impossible to predict?
Kongming shook his head slowly and waved his fan. The old philosopher Zhuangzi was right. Human life has limits, but knowledge has none. What a headache.
---
Meanwhile, in the Ganlu Hall of the Tang dynasty, Li Shimin was running a completely different analysis, his mind moving as fast as a cavalry charge.
"So this Rome. It is basically Byzantium?"
As the political sponsor and military protector of the exiled Sassanid Persian royal family, Li Shimin paid close attention to anything related to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. He cross referenced the maps on the screen with his own timelines, furrowed his brow, and offered this tentative conclusion.
Du Ruhui nodded firmly. He had a sharp memory for the notes he had personally transcribed, and he never missed a detail.
"I recall the screen mentioning the great Arab dynasties before," Du Ruhui said. "It split them into the White Clad Umayyad dynasty and the Black Clad Abbasid dynasty."
Those foreign names felt awkward rolling off his tongue. He pushed past the linguistic discomfort and continued, not letting a little thing like strange names slow him down.
"Future generations call both of them the Arab Empire. The situation with Rome is probably the same. Last year, the screen mentioned the Antonine dynasty. So this Byzantium must be a continuation of the same state."
Li Shimin tapped his temple as the logic clicked into place with a satisfying mental thud.
"I see. It is like our Western Han and Eastern Han. Same empire, different era, different capital."
Of course, a dynasty splitting into eastern and western halves and surviving a catastrophic collapse was rare in Chinese history. In the West, they apparently treated it like a normal administrative procedure. Wild.
Li Shimin thought about the Crisis of the Third Century the screen had mentioned. Thirty different warlords claiming the Roman throne in rapid succession. Did the imperial bloodline literally change hands thirty times in a single generation?
This bizarre phenomenon of the ruling family getting wiped out while the nation survived intact fascinated Li Shimin to his core. He slapped his hand flat on the desk, his eyes lighting up with curiosity.
"If our maritime exploration goes smoothly, we must gather every Western historical text we can find," he declared. "We will translate their books. We will read their history. We will figure out exactly what they did right and what they did wrong. No detail is too small."
Every minister in the hall nodded in unison. The emperor was not the only one burning with curiosity. They all desperately wanted to know how this strange foreign system actually worked.
After Rome outlawed all pagan faiths and established Christian orthodoxy, what did daily life look like for common people?
When Rome tried the Tetrarchy with four emperors ruling at once, how did the bureaucracy not collapse under conflicting orders?
At the village level, who held real power? Did the Christian temple priest outrank the Roman county magistrate? When a dispute happened, who listened to whom?
At the administrative level, if two equal emperors issued conflicting military commands, who had the authority to override the other?
Furthermore, as a proper emperor who had killed his own brothers to secure absolute power, Li Shimin smelled something unique in Roman political evolution.
During their early history, the Romans had a powerful institution called the Senate. But in later eras, the screen completely stopped mentioning it. The Senate had vanished. Poof. Gone.
From a powerful deliberative Senate to a four emperor power sharing arrangement, Roman political experiments seemed far more reckless and bold than anything attempted in China.
It would be a tragic waste not to study their failures and steal their best ideas. Knowledge is power, after all.
While Li Shimin sat plotting to pirate Roman political theory, Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui whispered in the corner, heads bent close together.
"A huge volcanic eruption," Fang Xuanling muttered, his voice barely audible. "Is it truly an unmatched natural disaster? One powerful enough to alter the global climate?"
Du Ruhui rubbed his wrist, a habit he had when thinking deeply. He reviewed the sparse details the screen had given about the Mediterranean, turning each fact over in his head.
"I suspect it is a disaster unique to their specific geography," Du Ruhui whispered back. "Ban Chao once said you cannot catch tiger cubs without entering the tiger's den. Since the Mediterranean offers such convenient maritime trade, it makes sense that a terrifying natural disaster hides beneath the water to balance the scales. Heaven rarely gives out free gifts without a catch."
It was a hypothesis built entirely on blind logic and a belief in universal balance. But Fang Xuanling nodded slowly and filed the thought away, making a mental note to test it later if they ever got more information.
"However, compared to exploding mountains," Du Ruhui added with a dark smile, "the Arab tribes driven out of the desert by the cold were Rome's true nightmare."
A natural disaster, no matter how terrifying, eventually runs out of energy. The smoke clears. The ash settles. The earth stops shaking. But a motivated nation of warriors pushed to the brink of starvation is a completely different story. Especially when you already know how their military campaign ends.
Fang Xuanling nodded, rapidly organizing the timeline in his head like he was sorting official documents.
"These Arab tribes abandon their homeland," he summarized quietly. "They annihilate the Sassanid Persian Empire. They crush the Roman legions. They build a sprawling empire, lock down the trade routes between East and West, and absorb the best cultural achievements of both civilizations."
This was the rough geopolitical narrative he had pieced together from the screen's casual commentary. It was messy, but the broad strokes were clear.
Fang Xuanling made a firm mental note. Once he finished compiling the Book of Jin, his next project would be organizing all these chaotic global details from the screen into a proper categorized reference. Otherwise, reading through their raw notes later would be a headache of epic proportions.
A hazy academic ambition floated to the front of his mind, warm and bright.
"If I could read a translated Roman history before I die, I would consider my life fulfilled," he whispered, almost like a prayer.
But then a practical thought popped into his head, raining slightly on his academic parade.
Did the Romans actually record their history with the same obsessive detail the Chinese did?
Considering their bizarre political reality where the ruling family constantly died violently but the country somehow survived, Fang Xuanling felt uncertain about their record keeping priorities.
They probably wrote things down. Right?
[Lightscreen]
[Some people say that in the agricultural civilization was nothing more than a puppet controlled by the invisible strings of climate change.
This statement is not wrong, but it is hard to call it completely accurate.
The vulnerability of farming societies in the face of climate change is well known. But from ancient times to the present, our Chinese ancestors never simply sat down and waited to die. Chinese history has always been a chronicle of humanity fighting against the forces of nature.
Suiren discovered fire. Cangjie invented the written word. These breakthroughs separated our ancestors from the wild beasts.
From antiquity to the present, Qin Shi Huang unified the chaotic lands. Emperor Wu of Han forged the warrior spirit of the nation. Emperor Taizong of Tang opened the doors to a glorious golden age. Step by step, these legendary figures hammered the spiritual identity of the Chinese nation into shape.]
Inside the Ganlu Hall, every pair of eyes instantly locked onto one person.
Li Shimin stood perfectly still with his hands clasped behind his back.
Internally, he was screaming with pure joy at being ranked alongside Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han.
Externally, he maintained the calm expression of an enlightened sage. He tilted his chin up just a fraction and refused to say a single word, trying very hard to look humble.
But Sun Simiao had sharp eyes. He noticed the emperor's hands, hidden deep inside his wide sleeves, were curled into tight fists. The most powerful man in the world was physically vibrating with barely contained excitement.
The old physician had to bite back a smile.
Meanwhile, in the General's Manor of Han era Chang'an, Liu Bei also stood with his hands behind his back. His eyes were dark and deep, burning with a new intensity that had not been there before.
Ten years ago, his highest ambition was to secure a small plot of land to survive the warlord era. Five years ago, his goal was to resist Cao Cao and revive the dying Han dynasty. But today, after seeing the scale of the globe and witnessing the rise and fall of foreign empires? He wanted something vastly bigger. Something that would echo through the ages.
Standing nearby, Kongming and Pang Tong exchanged a knowing glance. They turned to look at their lord, their eyes filled with warm approval.
[Lightscreen]
[Chinese history is like a brilliant galaxy. From childhood to old age, we hear these familiar names. These are the people who, step by step, built our nation.
Cai Lun revolutionized papermaking and sparked a cultural explosion. Zu Chongzhi dedicated his entire life to pushing the limits of mathematics.
Zhang Heng pioneered the beginnings of natural science and astronomy. Li Taibai used his poetry to carve the glory of the High Tang into eternal memory.
If we tried to list every one of these legendary names, we would be talking for three days and three nights without stopping.]
As the screen narrated the legacy of these famous figures, a powerful choral chant began to play in the background.
The crisp rhythmic singing instantly grabbed the attention of every official in both the Han General's Manor and the Tang Ganlu Hall.
In a heated room in the Song capital of Bianliang, Zhao Kuangyin and his brother Zhao Guangyi held their breath and listened.
Zhao Pu's expression shifted instantly. He grabbed a fresh sheet of paper, dipped his brush in ink, and started frantically transcribing the lyrics echoing from the sky, his hand moving so fast it blurred.
At that same moment across different timelines, both Kongming and Du Ruhui perked their ears up. Their hands flew across their desks. Their brushes blurred in a frenzy of motion, terrified of missing a single syllable. This was too important to let slip.
The singing voices belonged to a choir of young men and women. The vocals overflowed with explosive energy and martial pride. The song echoed down from the glowing screen, traveling through Kongming's ears and flowing out of his brush tip onto the parchment.
"Have you not seen, Zhong Jun of Han, who at twenty years old begged for a long rope to bind the foreign king?"
"Have you not seen, Ban Chao the Great, who led light cavalry across the edge of the world to summon the storm of war?"
The Light Screen provided a brief note about the song's origins.
The anthem was titled the Knowledge Youth Army Enlistment Song, originally published in 1945 during a brutal global war. Written by an author named Bai Lei, it served as a rallying cry for educated students to drop their pens, pick up rifles, and march into the meat grinder of history to defend their nation.
Among all the military hymns submitted during that dark era, this specific verse survived the test of time to become the most complete and widely recognized anthem of youthful defiance.