Zhuge Liang finally felt okay about his own lifespan.
In the original timeline, Sun Wu killed Guan Yu. And not in a fair fight. Sun Wu's hobby was backstabbing allies. They stabbed Guan Yu in the back while he was fighting Cao Cao.
Liu Bei lost his brother. His second brother. The one who had followed him since the beginning. He couldn't think straight. All he could see was revenge. He gathered every soldier he had and charged east.
The result was Yiling.
It wasn't just a loss. It was a disaster. Shu Han nearly collapsed. The army was shattered. Supplies burned. Officers killed. Liu Bei himself barely escaped with his life.
And when the smoke cleared, too many capable people were gone. Dead. Wounded. Broken.
Too many responsibilities landed on Zhuge Liang's shoulders at once. Running the court. Managing the military. Handling diplomacy. Keeping the economy alive. Preparing for the next war.
He'd been forced into a corner. No one else could do it. So he took over everything. Wrote a painfully detailed survival plan for the next decade. Then worked himself to death making it happen.
But the story is different now.
Guan Yu was healthy. Liu Bei was happy. Pang Tong was alive. Fa Zheng was alive. Xu Shu was back. Jingzhou was secure. And Zhang Fei? Still loud. Still annoying. Still somehow everyone's problem.
The smartest people of their generation were still breathing. The administration was packed. The military had more capable commanders than they'd ever had before.
His job was no longer carrying the whole kingdom on his back. He just had to sit in the middle. Be the playmaker. Keep things balanced. Fix the occasional leak.
Even if something went wrong, Liu Bei had his back.
Pang Tong and Fa Zheng were running Hanzhong. Guan Yu and Xu Shu were holding Jingzhou. With a lineup like that, what was there to be afraid of?
The thought made him smile.
Then his smile faded slightly.
Speaking of Jingzhou, Zhuge Liang sighed. Too bad they didn't catch Cao Cao alive at Wancheng.
The plan made sense. The timing was right. The encirclement worked like clockwork.
The problem was manpower.
They just didn't have enough men. Not enough soldiers to seal every escape route. The net wasn't big enough. A trap can only be as tight as the number of men holding it. And Cao Cao was too experienced to miss the smallest opening.
He found a gap. He slipped through.
Zhuge Liang tapped the map in front of him.
Opportunities like Wancheng don't come twice.
[Lightscreen]
[Relatively speaking, Li Jing's most famous achievement wasn't beating Xiao Xian. It was wiping out the Eastern Turkic Khaganate completely.
Now, history books have a bad habit of squeezing major events into a few sentences. When people read that Li Jing "defeated the Eastern Turks," it sounds like some routine border fight.
Don't be fooled.
The Eastern Turkic Khaganate wasn't just another nomadic confederation. At its peak, this was one of the most powerful states in Eurasia, period. We're talking about an empire that stretched from the Caspian Sea in the west all the way to Manchuria in the east. Four million square kilometers of steppe, mountain, and everything in between.
They dominated the northern steppe like no one had since the Xiongnu. Their cavalry was the terror of every settled kingdom from the Black Sea to the Pacific. And their favorite hobby? Raiding China. Treating neighboring states as personal ATMs.
During the Sui Dynasty's collapse, the Turks played puppet master. They supported every rebel warlord they could find, keeping China divided so they could pick off the pieces one by one. Among the rebels they backed? Li Yuan himself, the founder of the Tang Dynasty. Yes, even the Tang's own founding emperor once owed his survival to Turkic support.
They demanded silk. They demanded horses. They demanded women. And if you didn't pay? Their cavalry would show up at your doorstep. Literally.
During the early Tang years, the Turks were a constant nightmare. They raided border settlements, extorted tribute, interfered in regional politics, and generally made life miserable for anyone trying to build a stable empire.
At one point, things got so bad that Li Yuan seriously considered abandoning Chang'an, the imperial capital, and relocating the entire government somewhere safer. Let that sink in. The founder of the Tang Dynasty was ready to run away from his own capital because of the Turkic threat.
And the Eastern Turks knew it. They exploited it. For years, they treated the Tang like a bank account they could withdraw from whenever they needed cash.
Take the fourth year of Wude (621 AD), for example. Illig Qaghan led his cavalry to raid Tang borders. The Turks won more than they lost. They dragged the Tang Dynasty into a cycle of fake peace treaties and sudden wars. It gave Li Yuan endless headaches.
By the seventh year of Wude (624 AD), a frustrated Li Yuan had seen enough. He reactivated the old Twelve Armies system, reorganizing the garrisons around Chang'an into a dozen elite standing forces.
It was his way of fortifying the heartland and finally expanding the military to match the Turkic threat
Then came the ninth year of Wude (626 AD). The year of the Xuanwu Gate incident. In simple terms, Li Shimin ambushed his own brothers at the north gate of the palace, killed them both, and forced his father to make him the new emperor. It was a bloody coup.
Illig Qaghan heard the news and immediately sensed opportunity. From his perspective, the Tang had just gone through a violent succession struggle. A new emperor had seized power. Internal stability was uncertain. If there was ever a moment to apply pressure, this was it.
So he marched south with roughly one hundred thousand cavalry.
Look at the map.
The Turkic army advanced all the way to Wugong County. That's not some distant frontier outpost. Wugong sits near the Guanzhong heartland. Less than sixty miles from Chang'an.
Li Shimin responded by sending Yuchi Jingde to intercept them at Jingyang. Official records call it a Tang victory. Tactically? It was a desperate pushback.
Jingyang is only thirty miles from Chang'an. If Yuchi Jingde had failed there, the Tang would have collapsed right there.
Twenty days later, Illig Qaghan regrouped and pushed south again. His vanguard reached the north bank of the Wei River Bridge. He parked his army about twelve miles from the Emperor's throne.
We all know how this ended.
The Wei River Alliance.
The Tang emptied its treasury to buy peace. Illig Qaghan took the money and left. Li Shimin saw the whole thing as a humiliating disaster.
But here's where it gets funny.
Internet historians love to joke about this. Because if the Wei River Alliance had happened during the Song Dynasty? They would have celebrated it as a glorious victory.
Think about it.
The Tang didn't give up any land. They didn't agree to pay annual tribute. They didn't call the Turkic ruler 'Uncle' or 'Big Brother.' They didn't send princesses as hostages. The capital walls weren't breached. The Emperor wasn't captured.
By Song standards? That's a perfect victory.]
Inside Ganlu Hall, the Tang officials exchanged glances.
They knew the Wei River Alliance well. It had happened less than four years ago. The memory was still fresh.
The mood in the room was surprisingly relaxed.
Someone chuckled. Then another. Soon, a few of them were shaking their heads, smiling.
Because here's the thing. Illig Qaghan wasn't a threat anymore. Not even close.
Less than a year ago, that same Khan had been paraded through the imperial temple in chains. The whole court had watched. The nobles. The officials. The foreign envoys.
And the best part? The Emperor had made him dance.
Right there. In front of everyone. The mighty Khan of the Eastern Turks, dancing like a court jester.
One of the generals snorted. "Remember his face?"
"Which time? When he was in chains or when he was dancing?"
"Both."
More laughter.
The Eastern Turkic Khaganate was history. A footnote. A story they could tell their grandchildren.
They could laugh about it now.
But today's focus was on Li Jing. The man who hadn't yet become the Duke of Wei in the screen's timeline.
Li Jing stroked his beard, eyes tracing the memories.
"When His Majesty rode out to negotiate at the bridge," he said, nodding toward Zhangsun Wuji, "he secretly ordered me and Li Shentong, the Duke of Qi, to set up an ambush near Youzhou. Our orders were to hit the flank the moment Illig Qaghan showed any sign of pulling back."
He paused.
"I was terrified at the time. I kept thinking His Majesty might get angry and charge straight into the Turkic camp. We all know our Emperor has a bit of a temper."
Yuchi Jingde, who usually treated strategy sessions as nap time, leaned forward.
"Back then, everyone said the barbarians only wanted gold and didn't have the stomach for a real fight," he boomed. "Who can just sit there like a rat when the enemy's right in front of you? Keep trash talking us? Treat us like walking ATMs? That's it. I told the court I wasn't afraid to die. Man, if they'd just let me charge their commander, I would've beaten those cowards and rubbed their faces in the ground."
He turned to Qin Qiong. A rare look of regret crossed his face.
"If Shubao had been healthy enough to ride that day, the two of us could have cut through their vanguard. We could have ripped Illig Qaghan's head off and thrown it into the Chang'an market."
Qin Qiong just smiled. His face was still pale from his long illness. He said nothing, just patted Yuchi Jingde's hand.
Qin Qiong had been hurting for years. By the time Xuanwu Gate happened, he could only advise from the rear. If he'd tried to charge Illig Qaghan's guard, he would have just slowed his friend down.
Fang Xuanling smoothed his robes and shuddered.
"Looking back, His Majesty riding out alone to face Illig Qaghan was a huge gamble," he murmured.
Li Shimin shook his head. A sharp smile played on his lips.
"If I had locked the gates or kept the army on defense like a turtle, that would have shown weakness," he said smoothly. "The Eastern Turks would have known we were scared. They would have raided the countryside. I'd be safe behind walls, but tens of thousands of my people would be dead."
He tapped his knee.
"Riding out alone was a calculated act of arrogance. It projected confidence. It made the Turks hesitate. It made them paranoid."
His eyes narrowed.
"Besides, the Turks had no discipline. While Illig Qaghan and I stared at each other across the river, some of his own warlords were secretly crossing the water to beg for secret meetings with me. He couldn't control his own coalition. Even Zhishi Sili, the son of a Turkic noble, offered to be our inside man."
He let out a short, cold laugh.
"I knew that if I ordered an attack, we would crush their front lines. With Wuji and Li Jing waiting at Youzhou, victory was guaranteed."
He stopped.
The room went quiet. Every man there had lived through that moment. They all knew the unspoken truth.
Li Shimin had just taken the throne through a bloody coup. His political standing was shaky. He couldn't afford a major border war.
More importantly, winning a battle was easy. Trapping one hundred thousand nomadic cavalry was nearly impossible.
If Illig Qaghan escaped, the Tang would be stuck in a long, grinding war with no time to recover.
Li Jing understood this better than anyone. He bowed his head.
"It was precisely because His Majesty swallowed his pride and took that hit," he said clearly, "that we got to watch Illig Qaghan dance for us last year."
The tension broke. Li Shimin smiled. Warm. Genuine. He nodded once.
As for the screen's jokes about the Song Dynasty? The Emperor ignored them. If he didn't comment, the ministers knew better than to bring it up.
Wang Xuance sat on his small stool, practically vibrating with curiosity.
What's this about the Song Dynasty? Is it real? Is it a joke? Why is everyone laughing except me?
He desperately wanted someone to explain. But he was sitting an arm's length from the Emperor. He couldn't just ask.
So he kept quiet. He stared at the screen. He pretended to understand.
It was killing him.
[Lightscreen]
[We already established that the Eastern Turks could field around one hundred thousand cavalry.
For an agricultural empire like the Tang, fighting steppe nomads is one of the most annoying wars imaginable.
Here's why.
First, nomads don't have fixed cities.
You can't just capture their capital and declare victory. They live on horseback. They move with their herds. Their "cities" are portable tents that can be packed up and gone in a few hours.
So your army marches two hundred miles, finds nothing, and the enemy has already vanished into the steppe.
Second, their entire lifestyle is warfare.
Nomad children learn to ride before they can walk. They learn to shoot arrows before they can read. Every adult male is a cavalryman. They don't need supply lines. Their horses drink from rivers. Their soldiers eat whatever they capture.
An agricultural army needs grain, roads, wagons, and supply depots. A nomad army just needs grass for their horses.
Third, they control the engagement.
Nomads choose when to attack and when to retreat. They raid your border villages, burn your crops, steal your livestock, and disappear before your army even arrives.
If you chase them into the steppe, they lead you deeper into the grasslands, stretch your supply lines, and ambush you when you're exhausted and hungry.
Fourth, there are no decisive battles.
You win a major engagement, kill ten thousand riders, and feel great. But the survivors scatter into the grasslands, regroup with other tribes, and come back next year with another ten thousand.
They don't surrender. They don't negotiate from weakness. They just keep coming.
And fifth, even when you "win," you can't occupy their land. What are you going to farm? Grass? Your soldiers don't want to live in tents and follow herds of sheep.
So you retreat back behind your walls, and the nomads move right back into the territory you just "conquered."
It's like trying to punch water.
Miss your chance to completely destroy them, and six months later they're back across the border stealing your livestock. It's like trying to kill a venomous snake. If you don't crush the head in one strike, it comes back and bites you. Worse, it remembers where you live.
When Li Jing took command, he decided to solve the problem permanently.
And here's how he did it.
Step One. Ignore the military textbook.
In the first month of Zhenguan's fourth year, right in the middle of winter, Li Jing took only three thousand elite cavalry and plunged deep into Turkic territory. Not spring. Not summer. Winter. The kind of winter where normal people stay indoors and argue with the fireplace.
His cavalry rode through blizzards, frozen grasslands, and temperatures that made horses question their life choices. Within days, Li Jing had penetrated more than two hundred miles into enemy territory and appeared outside Dingxiang like an angry ghost.
Winter campaigns are notoriously miserable. Keeping soldiers warm. Feeding horses in the snow. Stopping bowstrings from snapping. Soldiers lose fingers. Everyone complains.
The official history doesn't explain how Li Jing solved all those problems. It just says his ghost-like strike shattered Illig Qaghan's nerve. The Khan fled in panic.
At the same time, General Li Ji hit from another direction. The two armies played a deadly game of ping-pong with the fleeing Khan.
Illig Qaghan, desperate, sent messengers to Chang'an begging for peace.
Step Two. Commit diplomatic terrorism.
You might think Li Jing would follow up with a standard attack.
You'd be wrong.
Li Shimin publicly accepted the peace request. To prove his sincerity, he dispatched his best diplomat, Tang Jian, as chief envoy. This wasn't some random bureaucrat.
Tang Jian was Li Shimin's childhood best friend. They grew up together. Playing in the mud, chasing each other through the palace corridors, probably getting into trouble that their royal parents had to smooth over. The kind of friendship where you know exactly which embarrassing childhood stories to never bring up in public.
His portrait would later be placed inside Lingyan Hall among the greatest contributors of the dynasty. But before all that, he was just the guy who had seen the Emperor fall out of a tree more than once.
Sending him as an envoy was like sending the Emperor's most trusted confidant. The message was clear: we're serious about peace.
Illig Qaghan looked at this and relaxed immediately. If the Emperor's best friend was sitting in his camp discussing surrender, the war must be ending.
Li Jing saw the opening. And immediately chose violence.
While Tang Jian was still inside the Turkic camp discussing peace, Li Jing gathered five thousand elite cavalry and prepared a surprise attack.
His own officers begged him to wait. "That'll get the Emperor's best friend killed!" they said.
Li Jing's reply was legendary. "Then he dies for the country."
He quoted the old story: "Han Xin used similar methods when conquering Qi. Compared to destroying the Turks, Tang Jian is a small price to pay for victory."
To be fair, that statement is much easier to make when you're not the one currently sitting in the enemy camp.
The attack began immediately. Illig Qaghan never saw it coming. One minute he was negotiating peace. The next minute thousands of Tang cavalry were charging through the camp.
The Turkic army collapsed into chaos. Illig Qaghan fled. Again.
Unfortunately for him, Li Ji was waiting further north. The moment he escaped one disaster, he rode directly into another.
As for Tang Jian? Miraculously, he survived. The official histories politely skip over how angry he was about being used as bait. Personally, I suspect there were many creative insults directed at Li Jing afterward.
Step Three. Close the net.
With his army destroyed, Illig Qaghan gave up. He took what was left and fled fifteen hundred miles west, hoping to find shelter with the Tuyuhun or Gaochang. Classic steppe strategy. Rebuild later.
Unfortunately for him, the Tang had already anticipated that move. General Li Daozong had quietly moved into position ahead of time and was waiting in the snow. Illig Qaghan ran straight into him and was put in chains.
Just like that, the Eastern Turkic Khaganate was finished. The empire that had once marched to the gates of Chang'an. The empire that had forced the humiliating Wei River Alliance. Gone.
Li Shimin designed the strategy.
Li Jing executed it flawlessly.
One provided the vision. The other provided the hammer.
Together, they achieved one of the most decisive victories in Chinese military history. The entire campaign lasted roughly two months.]
---
Inside Ganlu Hall, Li Shimin leaned back in his chair, feeling once again that history was an incredibly strange thing.
According to the light screen, the campaign against the Eastern Turks was still unfolding.
In reality, it had already ended.
Not only had Illig Qaghan been captured, Li Shimin distinctly remembered summoning the man to court just last month.
The meeting had not gone particularly well for the former ruler of the steppe.
After one look at him, Li Shimin had publicly criticized Illig Qaghan for gaining too much weight.
Then, in front of half the court, he had ordered the Khan onto a strict vegetarian diet for three months.
The officials hadn't understood why at the time.
Li Shimin hadn't bothered explaining.
Part of the reason was personal. Ever since the light screen revealed the future disaster named An Lushan, Li Shimin had developed a completely unreasonable suspicion toward excessively overweight military leaders. The screen had shown him what that fat traitor would do to the Tang. Every time he saw a fat general, a warning bell went off in his head.
The other reason was simpler. Li Shimin had chronic headaches. His doctors only let him eat lamb once a month. The Son of Heaven himself had to count sheep before eating sheep. Meanwhile, a captured barbarian was somehow eating meat more frequently than the Emperor.
It annoyed him.
Putting that aside, Li Shimin focused on another detail from the broadcast.
"What does 'playing in the mud' mean?" the Emperor demanded, offended. "Maoyue and I discussed poetry and ambition. We never did anything so undignified!"
The ministers immediately lowered their heads. "Of course, Your Majesty." "Absolutely." "Whatever you say."
In the corner, Yan Liben had a sudden idea. A vivid image of a young Li Shimin covered in mud formed in his mind. Two young boys, laughing, splashing, absolutely caked in dirt. The future Emperor of the Great Tang, looking like a swamp creature.
He gripped his brush.
This could be the greatest painting of my career, he thought. No, the greatest painting in Tang history. Future generations will marvel at my courage.
He raised the brush.
Then he lowered it.
He thought about his wife. His children. His comfortable salary. His house with the nice garden.
He thought about how the Emperor had just executed his own brothers a few years ago.
He put the brush down.
"Liben," he whispered to himself, "keep yourself sober. Don't follow your dangerous thoughts. Keep your head where it is. Keep your family safe."
He stared at the blank paper.
"But that would have been my greatest painting..."
He sighed.
As for asking Tang Maoyue to die for his country," Li Shimin murmured, shaking his head.
Everyone in the room knew the story. During the Chu-Han Contention, a diplomat named Li Yiji volunteered to persuade the Kingdom of Qi to surrender. Just as Qi agreed, General Han Xin attacked to steal the glory. Li Yiji wasn't as lucky as Tang Jian. The King of Qi boiled him alive.
Li Shimin considered the scenario.
"Ever since the Wei River incident," he said, "my only goal was to destroy Illig Qaghan. I would never let a fake peace offer make me soft."
"Maoyue's mission was a distraction. As for Li Jing's quote about sacrificing him? That was just to harden his officers' resolve. A show. To make sure the attack went through."
He said it with complete certainty.
Their reality had already drifted from the screen's timeline. Tang Jian had never even left Chang'an last year. He was perfectly safe.
Since the danger never happened, there was no need to debate the morality.
Li Jing didn't defend himself. He just bowed to Li Shimin. Deep. Solemn.
The matter was closed. The Emperor and the General shared a brief, silent smile.
---
Far away, back in Chengdu, things felt heavier.
The more Liu Bei compared himself to the Tang Dynasty, the more his impostor syndrome flared.
Li Jing had crushed a nomadic empire of one hundred thousand riders in three months. Liu Bei thought about his own desperate struggles to take Jingzhou and Xiangyang. The months of grinding. The narrow victories. The fact that he still celebrated taking two provinces like he'd just conquered the world.
Three months, he thought. He deleted an empire in three months.
I spent three months arguing with my advisors about whether to attack a single city.
He grabbed his brush.
Dear sons and grandsons. If you ever meet a Tang general named Li Jing... just surrender. It's faster.
Also, send me a postcard from Chang'an.
He stared at the paper.
Then crumpled it.
Who am I kidding? They probably don't have post offices yet.
He paused.
Wait.
I have an idea.
I'll plant a tree. A big one. With a message carved into it. So in the future, my descendants can find it and read this.
He stared at the crumpled paper.
That's ridiculous. Trees rot. Messages get eaten by insects. And my descendants probably won't know which tree to look for.
He sighed.
Then picked up a new sheet and started writing seriously.
Build Shu Han. Restore the Han. Chase the impossible glory of the Tang.
Even if it takes three hundred years.