For a brief moment, the ministers of the Zhenguan era forced the chaotic, blood-soaked visions of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms out of their minds. But the theme the light screen was presenting made their hearts pound against their ribs. The historical trajectory was pointing somewhere terrifying.
Li Shiji, carefully selected a question that seemed relatively safe to ask aloud.
"Your Majesty," he began, his voice echoing slightly in the vast Ganlu Hall. "These so-called Famous Scholars of the Later Han... did they actually possess genuine talent? Practical learning?"
Li Shimin threw a sideways, highly disdainful glance at his general.
"Genuine talent? Practical learning?" He shook his head.
"What does it matter if they did? What does it matter if they did not? Look at those men branded as the Eight Kitchens. They were nothing more than glorified rich boys using their status as scholars to brazenly buy public clout with cold, hard cash."
Li Shimin leaned back on his dragon throne, muttering mostly to himself.
"The actual academic brilliance of a Famous Scholar is completely irrelevant. What truly matters in their twisted game is locking down a monopoly on hiring power and ensuring their great-grandchildren inherit that exact same monopoly.
Once you hold the absolute power to hand out government jobs, the desperate, ambitious young students will naturally swarm around you, eagerly singing your praises and building your legendary reputation for free."
Every single minister present instinctively straightened their spines. They felt an invisible, icy pressure crawl up their tailbones. Their Emperor understood the brutal mechanics of power far too well.
Zhangsun Wuji, the master of diffusing tension, let out a hearty, jovial laugh.
"If not for Your Majesty's unmatched strategic vision, and if not for the absolute loyalty and diligence of your humble ministers, how could the Great Tang exist? How could the Prosperous Tang flourish? And how could that glorious Great Tang of the future ever come to be?"
Li Shimin offered a slow, satisfied nod. He smiled warmly at his court.
"Why are my beloved ministers so silent?"
The atmosphere in the Ganlu Hall finally relaxed. Du Ruhui, stepped out from the ranks and bowed respectfully.
"Your Majesty, since the divine screen explicitly stated that the Civil Service Examination System will influence our civilization for over a thousand years, it implies that our current examination policies still have massive room for improvement."
Li Shimin nodded slowly. He completely agreed.
Just last year, he had issued an imperial decree to patch a glaring loophole in the exam system, adding a mandatory section requiring candidates to interpret a specific classic historical text.
The Tang had inherited the basic framework of the exams from the previous Sui dynasty, and they were constantly tweaking and patching it.
But discovering exactly where the system was flawed and what needed upgrading was a slow, agonizing process of trial and error.
"Well, we certainly cannot copy the absurd practices of the Later Song dynasty,"
Li Shimin muttered, a look of sheer disbelief crossing his face. "Imagine incorporating landscape painting into the official imperial exams."
The ministers stared at him, completely baffled. Li Shimin realized he had spoken his private thoughts aloud and quickly provided context.
"Before all of you arrived, when I was viewing the screen alone, it mentioned a specific ruler of the Later Song, a man known to history as the Brothel Emperor. This absolute fool actually made painting a core subject for selecting government officials."
The Brothel Emperor!!!!
The Tang ministers were struck completely dumb. The sheer conceptual shock of the phrase left them reeling. They collectively felt that this future Song dynasty was constantly breaking through the absolute rock-bottom limits of human imagination.
"Any ruler saddled with such a disgraceful moniker is undoubtedly a tyrant of the highest, most incompetent order," Wei Zheng declared flatly, his face set in stone.
The other ministers nodded in fierce agreement.
Li Shimin silently mocked them in his head. You lot think the Brothel Emperor is bad?
You have not even heard the titles of that Mediterranean king from the Roman Empire. If I told you about that degenerate, your minds would literally shatter.
Unfortunately, he had not paid close attention to the Roman segment, and the foreign emperor's name was far too long and complicated to remember. He internally mourned the lost opportunity to traumatize his ministers with global history.
Shifting his focus back to the present, Li Shimin reviewed the transcribed notes that Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui had taken from the screen. He locked onto the final paragraph detailing the horrific aristocratic monopolies.
"The screen noted that the tyrant Wang Mang expanded the Imperial Academy, but only succeeded in empowering the aristocratic disaster," he declared, his voice ringing with unprecedented, iron-clad determination.
"Therefore, I must be the one to massively expand the Civil Service Examinations. I will do this to empower the commoners, ensuring that the grotesque, twisted tragedies of the Wei and Jin dynasties never stain the earth again."
The ministers bowed deeply, their voices echoing in unison as they accepted the imperial decree.
[Lightscreen]
[When discussing the Wei, Jin, Southern, and Northern Dynasties, there is a bizarre, highly toxic trend on the modern internet lately.
A certain subset of people, who are either completely historically illiterate or hopelessly deluded into thinking they would have been born as noble lords, love to sigh and post the following quote:
"The Wei and Jin Dynasties. chaotic, yet deeply beautiful."
First of all, let us set aside the sheer mental gymnastics required to put the words "chaotic" and "beautiful" in the same sentence regarding this era.
If we are strictly talking about chaos, this period is the undisputed, back-to-back world champion of Chinese history.
In the early years of the Eastern Han, when Emperor Liu Xiu was unifying the realm, he faced a stubborn enemy general named Zhu Wei, who was heavily fortified inside the city of Luoyang.
Liu Xiu pointed at the Luo River and swore a solemn, binding oath that if Zhu Wei surrendered, he would absolutely not be punished. Zhu Wei surrendered.
Liu Xiu kept his word, eventually elevating Zhu Wei to the rank of Marquis. This set a shining, golden standard for the absolute sanctity of an Emperor's promise.
Now, fast forward to the Gaoping Tombs Incident.
Sima Yi was facing down the supreme commander Cao Shuang, who held the ultimate military advantage.
Sima Yi pointed at that exact same Luo River and swore a solemn, binding oath that if Cao Shuang surrendered his military power, his life and wealth would be perfectly protected.
Cao Shuang surrendered, but Sima Yi immediately executed Cao Shuang and exterminated his entire family, down to the third generation.
This legendary betrayal left behind the glorious historical meme known as "The Luo River Bullshit." Swearing an oath by the river meant absolutely nothing. It was just bullshit and a lot of dead bodies.
Later on, the powerful minister Jia Chong actively orchestrated the public assassination of the reigning Emperor, Cao Mao.
His thugs literally hacked the Emperor to death in the middle of the street. When Jia Chong eventually died, the court officials rightfully wanted to brand him with the posthumous title 'Huang'-the absurd."
The founding Emperor of the Jin dynasty, Sima Yan, flatly refused and officially branded him 'Wu'-the martial,instead.
Let that sink in. A man who murdered his own Emperor in broad daylight got the same posthumous honor as a conquering general. The Jin dynasty was not even trying to hide what it was.
After that, staging military coups and violently murdering emperors became a casual, everyday occurrence.
This is exactly why, when the warlord Liu Yu finally rose up and completely exterminated the entire Sima royal family, the most common historical review was a resounding: "Good job. Good riddance. Took you long enough."
The "Luo River Bullshit" and the public assassination of Emperor Cao Mao set the fundamental tone for the entire Wei, Jin, Southern, and Northern Dynasties. The Jin dynasty was never a real empire. It was just a fragile, chaotic coalition of aristocratic mafias constantly trying to backstab each other.
The total decentralization of power and the absolute removal of all moral bottom lines in political warfare triggered a catastrophic chain reaction of historical events.
The War of the Eight Princes. The Disaster of Yongjia. The Uprising of the Five Barbarians. The complete collapse of the Western Jin.
The frantic, terrified mass migration of the aristocracy and civilians to the south, while the North plunged into the apocalyptic era of the Sixteen Kingdoms.
And the South was not much better.
The Rebellion of Wang Dun. The Rebellion of Su Jun. The dictatorship of Huan Wen. The Rebellion of Huan Xuan. The Uprisings of Sun En and Lu Xun. Qiao Zong declaring independence. Liu Yu slaughtering the Sima clan. The devastating Hou Jing Rebellion.
If the Cao clan's usurpation of the Han possessed at least a small, hypocritical shred of warmth and protocol, the Sima clan's violent usurpation and brazen emperor-slaying was basically a declaration of total war against the core tenets of Confucianism.
In the eyes of Confucian scholars, their actions were the ultimate, unforgivable treason against the natural order.
This created the most massive, absurd contradiction in their society. The Sima clan desperately wanted to use Confucian loyalty to govern their empire, but the incredibly bloody, treacherous way they stole the throne was a living, breathing refutation of everything Confucianism stood for.
When Emperor Wu of Han established Confucianism as the state ideology, it was not just a tool for government.
It was the universal moral compass for the entire civilization. It was built on ritual, propriety, and honor. When the Sima clan took a sledgehammer to that moral compass, the immediate result was the catastrophic, collective moral collapse of the entire aristocratic class.
On one hand, they worshipped extreme wealth and normalized sickening levels of luxury.
On the other hand, they pretended money was garbage and obsessed over empty, nihilistic philosophical debates.
The history books are absolutely overflowing with examples of this brain rot.
Take Yuan Chen, the Prince of Hejian during the Northern Wei.
He really loved expensive horses. So, he built a hyper-luxurious stable. The feeding troughs were cast from solid silver. The decorative pillars were carved from pure jade in the shape of phoenixes, and solid gold was poured into the molds of leaping dragons.
Or look at the Southern Dynasties general, Yu Hong.
He openly bragged to everyone that his governed territory possessed the "Four Exhaustions." What did that mean?
It meant he had exhausted and caught every single fish and turtle in the rivers.
He had exhausted and hunted every single deer in the mountains.
He had exhausted and looted every single grain of rice from the fields.
And he had exhausted and kidnapped every single commoner from the villages to serve as his slaves.
After stripping an entire province down to the bedrock, he proudly justified it.
"A real man only lives for a hundred years! If I do not enjoy myself now, when will I?"
So, he hoarded over a hundred concubines. He decorated his private carriages with solid gold and rare jadeite. When building his massive bedroom, he demanded the lumber come exclusively from ancient cypress trees growing on terrifying, sheer cliff faces.
He then used pure silver threads and gold flowers to spell out the words "Longevity" and "Fortune" across his walls. The people of his time called it "breathtakingly unmatched.
Then there is Chen Sunyang. His massive estate, filled with private singing boys, dancing girls, elaborate pavilions, and artificial forests, was considered without equal.
When the government ordered him to take a post in Ying Province, he decided that riding in a carriage was too boring. So, he lashed over a dozen massive cargo ships together to create a floating mega-yacht.
He built artificial mountains and lotus ponds on the deck, and threw a massive, unending party with his VIP guests as he floated lazily down the river.
But the absolute worst is Wang Ji, a high-ranking member of the supreme Taiyuan Wang clan.
There is a horrifying anecdote recorded about him. The founding Emperor, Sima Yan, went to Wang Ji's house for dinner. The Emperor took a bite of the pork and was amazed by how incredibly tender and flavorful it was. He asked for the recipe.
Wang Ji casually smiled and replied, "There is no secret recipe, Your Majesty. It is just really good meat. We feed our little piglets exclusively with human breast milk.
The historical record casually notes that this behavior was "something even Shi Chong and Wang Kai had not thought of."
Let me remind you who Shi Chong and Wang Kai were.
These two were the most famously corrupt billionaires in Chinese history. Their legendary wealth battles are still taught in modern textbooks.
Wang Kai washed his walls with sugar water just to flex. Shi Chong fired back by using expensive wax candles as cooking fuel.
Wang Kai built a forty-li fence out of pure silk. Shi Chong built a fifty-li fence out of gold-threaded brocade just to one-up him.
The Emperor himself gave Wang Kai a giant red coral as a gift, and Shi Chong smashed it with a hammer, shrugged, and said, "Relax. I have dozens bigger than that. Take your pick."
These two men turned wasting resources into an Olympic sport. They were the undisputed champions of aristocratic excess.
And Wang Ji beat them.
With breast milk pork.
Let that sink in. The most depraved billionaires in Chinese history looked at this man and thought, Well. We never thought of that.
During this era, the local strongman attributes of these noble houses reached their absolute final form. Let me give you one final, crushing example.
Remember Xie Lingyun, the famous poet who praised Cao Zhi's incredible talent?
The private family estate belonging to the Xie clan was physically larger than the modern-day capital city of South Korea. It covered roughly 1.4 million mu of land.
This private estate completely sealed off entire mountain ranges and massive lakes. Other than needing to import raw iron ore and salt, the estate was a fully independent country. Paper-making. Textile weaving. Medical clinics. Iron smelting. Pottery kilns. Breweries. They handled it all internally. They were a perfectly closed, self-sustaining ecosystem.
And the Xie clan owned more than one of these mega-estates.
The supreme Wang clan owned over a dozen.]
Inside the Chengdu government office, the atmosphere was suffocatingly heavy.
"Kongming," Pang Tong whispered, his usually cynical face completely pale. "Yide was right. Compared to these monsters, we really are just pathetic country bumpkins."
Zhang Fei's face was completely obscured by a terrifying, thunderous darkness. The veins on his thick neck pulsed dangerously.
"Peasant women in our villages watch their infants starve to death because they cannot produce enough milk,"
Zhang Fei growled, his voice vibrating with pure, murderous rage. "And these... these aristocratic parasites use human milk to fatten their dinner pigs? What is the difference between them and rabid dogs?!"
He slammed his massive fist into the table, cracking the wood. "On the surface, they preach poetry and the ancient classics. Behind closed doors, their actions are vastly more wicked than the most bloodthirsty mountain bandits!"
Liu Bei sat frozen, his mouth slightly open in sheer, unadulterated horror. These brief historical anecdotes struck his soul like physical blows. The aristocratic families had achieved a level of absolute, untouchable power where they could act out their most depraved fantasies without consequence.
And what about the common people? Where were they in this story?
Liu Bei lowered his head, staring at the transcribed notes. He could only find the commoners suffering in the darkest margins of the text.
They were the ones being slaughtered in the streets during the Uprising of the Five Barbarians.
They were the ones kidnapped and enslaved by Yu Hong.
They were the ones breaking their backs to build Chen Sunyang's floating mega-yacht.
And the mothers... the poor, desperate mothers were the ones forced to act as livestock feeders for Wang Ji's pigs.
The common people were treated worse than the dirt in the fields. They were valued far less than the horses sleeping in silver stables.
These elites had forged an aristocratic dynasty that set the absolute historical record for sickening luxury.
Yet, this exact same dynasty was completely incapable of defending its borders against foreign invaders, and totally powerless to control its own warlords.
"If this Jin dynasty did not fall," Liu Bei rasped, his voice trembling with sorrow and fury, "then the very concept of Heaven's Justice is a lie."
His eyes tracked further down the page, and his breath hitched. He felt his eyes bulging.
"One point four... million mu?"
Liu Bei stammered. "And that is just one estate? And the Wang clan owned over a dozen of them?!"
Liu Bei looked at his strategists, completely bewildered. "How is that any different from establishing an independent kingdom?"
"It is vastly different, my lord," Pang Tong explained, his voice grim and hollow.
"If you establish a kingdom, you must appoint a Chancellor. You must draft a legal code. Your actions and punishments must follow established laws and precedents."
Pang Tong pointed a trembling finger at the notes. "But inside a private estate of that size? The aristocratic lord is a living god. He takes whatever he wants. He kills whoever he wants. His passing mood is the only law."
"That is infinitely more comfortable than being an Emperor," Zhang Fei clicked his tongue in disgust.
He analyzed the logistical nightmare. "If I had to lead an army to besiege one of those self-sustaining mega-fortresses, I would need at least three thousand elite, heavily armored shock troops just to breach the outer walls."
Zhang Fei looked up at the sky, utterly baffled by the future generations.
"And despite all of this horror, there are actual idiots in the future who think this era was beautiful?"
Zhang Fei spat on the floor, his absolute disdain echoing in the quiet room.
"People dreaming about being born into a noble house. They should take a long, hard look in the mirror. Do they really think they would spawn as the lords? They would be the ones feeding the pigs!"
Kongming slowly waved his feather fan, recalling a line of poetry the screen had displayed in a previous session.
His voice was soft, carrying a heavy, philosophical weight. "'The swallows that once nested in the grand halls of the Wang and Xie families, now fly into the homes of ordinary commoners.'"
Kongming let out a long, slow breath. "Looking at the grand scheme of history, it seems even these untouchable Wang and Xie clans could not escape the ultimate fate of extermination. Their bloodlines were severed, and their legacy is despised by eternity."
Having lamented the grand tragedy, Kongming finally allowed his own personal disgust to surface.
He traced the timeline backward, his mind focusing on the root cause of the disease.
"This Sima clan," Kongming said, his voice dripping with cold. "What an absolute plague upon the earth.
To desire the imperial throne is one thing, but to seize it through such utterly vile, honorless methods? How are they any different from that pathetic traitor, Yuan Shu?"
Liu Bei shook his head, disagreeing slightly. "Yuan Shu was simply an arrogant fool with no strategic vision. Even his actions were not this fundamentally treacherous and vile."
Wei Yan, who had been listening quietly from the side, finally spoke up, his brow furrowed in deep confusion.
"This Cao Shuang... the screen said he held the ultimate military advantage. How could he be tricked so easily by a single oath? Was he truly that incompetent of a commander?"
Pang Tong stroked his chin, his brilliant mind piecing together the political puzzle.
"The Gaoping Tombs, based on the name, sounds like the royal burial grounds of the Cao clan emperors,"
Pang Tong deduced. "Sima Yi must have launched his coup exactly when the royal family was outside the capital visiting the graves. He seized the city, taking their families hostage. Cao Shuang was likely paralyzed by the threat to his loved ones."
Pang Tong immediately shook his head, refining his own theory.
"But the screen previously mentioned that Cao Shuang was the absolute head of the imperial clan, and he had even commanded armies against our Shu forces. He could not have been a weak-willed coward. And Sima Yi is destined to be Kongming's greatest rival, which proves he is a man of terrifying intellect and patience."
Pang Tong sighed. "When two apex predators clash, the internal politics must have been unfathomably complex. This Gaoping Tombs Incident was merely the final, bloody climax of a political war that must have raged in the shadows for decades."
His eyes darkened as he thought about the horrific consequences. "But by assassinating the Emperor in the open street, the Sima clan did not just kill a man. They killed their own legitimacy. They sowed the seeds of their own destruction. It was incredibly short-sighted, exactly like the treacherous rats of Jiangdong!"
Wei Yan turned to look at Kongming, his eyes filled with a sudden, desperate burning light.
"Military Advisor... if only you..."
Wei Yan choked on his words. He could not finish the sentence.
If only what? If only Kongming lived long enough to march north and personally sever Sima Yi's head from his shoulders? What difference would it make now? The screen had already revealed the tragic truth. The brilliant Wolong's days were numbered.