[Lightscreen]
[So here's the question: you're a bottom-tier mixed-blood barbarian, broke, nobody, stuck in the Kaiyuan era of the Great Tang. How exactly do you pull off the biggest social climb in imperial history?
First instinct? The civil exams, because it's the safe bet. Too bad by this point they'd already upgraded the whole system into a pay-to-win scam called Xingjuan. Examiners wouldn't even glance at your poetry unless you showed up with a prestigious clan name, deep pockets, and the right political handshakes. It was a rich kid's club, and you weren't on the guest list.
Even the official records of that era didn't bother sugarcoating it: the selection process was a complete mess, rich kids traded favors over expensive wine, and talented scholars from poor families got tossed out like garbage, six or seven out of every ten.
So the civil exams? Basically a scam. Nepotism? You need noble blood for that. If you were a nobody trying to climb, there was exactly one road left.
Military merit.
Ever since the Tang Dynasty was founded, the military reward system was incredibly generous, and Emperor Li Shimin, our beloved Er Feng, didn't just rule from a throne. He personally led from the front, the ultimate warrior-emperor. So martial prowess wasn't just a career choice. It was embedded deep in the DNA of every Tang citizen.
Want a piece of historical evidence that survived over a thousand years? Look no further than the letters of a common soldier named Zhao Yishen.
Zhao Yishen was a native of Luoyang. After Li Shimin insisted on obliterating the Kingdom of Gaochang and turning it into an imperial frontier outpost, Zhao was deployed to garrison the front lines. Stationed over three thousand kilometers from his hometown, whenever the crushing weight of homesickness hit him, he would sit down and write letters to his family. When he eventually died on the frontier, he was buried right there in Gaochang, and those precious letters were buried alongside him, his final earthly treasures.
Fast forward one thousand three hundred years. The ancient Astana Tombs are excavated, finally seeing sunlight again. And tucked inside, archaeologists discover a perfectly preserved letter received by Zhao Yishen in the twentieth year of the Zhenguan era.
Through the faded ink, you can still read the ecstatic words of his parents back in Luoyang, bursting with pride as they tell him that his eldest brother has just been awarded the title of Yunqi Wei, Cloud Cavalry Commandant.
Now, let's put that into another perspective. The Tang Dynasty's military nobility scale had twelve distinct tiers. Cloud Cavalry Commandant was number eleven. Second from the absolute bottom. In terms of official rank, it was equivalent to a seventh-grade position, the kind of title that barely turned heads in the capital.
Think about it: you spend years on a brutal frontier, risking your life every single day, and your reward is basically an entry-level management position.
And yet, how did Zhao Yishen's family react? The letter describes their emotion as a 'joy beyond words'. They weren't disappointed. They weren't hoping for something higher. They were ecstatic.
That alone tells you everything about how ordinary Tang people viewed military service. Spilling blood for the empire wasn't just a duty. It was honor. It was prestige. It was something your entire family would talk about for generations, even if the actual reward was just a minor title sitting near the bottom of the ladder. That single piece of paper, buried in a desert grave for over a thousand years, still holds that pride. You can feel it through the ink.
It was precisely this fanatical, empire-wide obsession with martial honor that allowed the Tang Dynasty to forge a territory so vast and prosperous that it defied historical precedent. And An Lushan, starting his life as a penniless, mixed-blood barbarian on the outer fringes of society, naturally looked at this exact military ladder and decided to ride it all the way to the top. He was about to hustle his way into his very own, twisted version of the Great Tang Dream.]
Inside the military headquarters of Chengdu, the atmosphere among the Three Kingdoms elite was relaxed.
After all, this sprawling superpower called the Tang Dynasty sat some four to five hundred years in their distant future. To Liu Bei and his inner circle, watching these historical projections was basically like watching a high-definition play about someone else's disaster. The future was too far away to hurt them. It wasn't like a bunch of dead men from the eighth century could suddenly march backward through time and stab them in the middle of the night, right?
But the moment the light screen shifted to the high-resolution archaeological footage of the excavated Tang soldier's tomb, every man in the hall straightened his back. The casual chatter stopped cold, replaced by a deep, wordless reverence that only warriors across eras could understand.
Living in a fractured, blood-soaked era where they simply didn't have the geopolitical muscle to even dream of reclaiming the Western Regions, the sight of a unified Chinese empire stretching its iron grip three thousand kilometers into the desert stirred something complicated in their chests. Envy. Pride. A bittersweet longing they couldn't quite name.
"So, this is the foundation the Grand Tang was built on," Zhuge Liang murmured, his interest fully sparked.
His hand, gripping a bamboo pen, flew across the paper, cataloging every strategic observation with mechanical efficiency. He paid particular attention to the Tang's structural hierarchy. The way they used numerical tiers to cleanly separate military titles and official ranks looked like a brilliant refinement of the chaotic Nine-Rank System from the Wei-Jin era. This was something he absolutely intended to reverse-engineer for Shu Han.
"This system... it is fundamentally resilient," Liu Bei observed, leaning forward as he studied the shifting text.
He stroked his chin. "The rebel leader died early, yet the chaos still lasted eight years. That means the problem was never just one man. Killing the Emperor or killing the rebel would not have changed much."
The ministers nodded quietly. In some ways, they understood this better than anyone.
When Dong Zhuo was assassinated, did the Han Dynasty suddenly snap back to peaceful prosperity? Did the chaos magically vanish? Not even close.
The death of the tyrant merely cracked open the floodgates for a dozen ruthless warlords to tear the country to pieces.
Zhang Fei, who had never been the type to brood for long, tossed two roasted groundnuts into his mouth. He chewed noisily and gave an approving grunt.
"This Zhao Yishen fellow... now that's a proper border soldier. A real man."
Still, even as he admired Zhao Yishen's loyalty, Zhang Fei felt a strange discomfort whenever the screen showed future scholars brushing dust from ancient bones.
He understood that the people of later ages meant no disrespect. To them, these tombs were history itself. Even so, the thought of having one's grave dug open and displayed for all to see a thousand years later was difficult to accept.
Zhang Fei rubbed the back of his neck and snorted inwardly "At the rate people are dying in this damned age, I'll be lucky if anyone even remembers where I'm buried."
[Lightscreen]
[Let's rewind the clock to the year 712 AD.
During this exact year, a man named An Zhenjie, who was currently holding a comfortable bureaucratic seat as the Vice Governor of Lanzhou along the Hedong Circuit, received a piece of family news.
His big brother, An Xiaojie, had been living peacefully within a nomadic Turkic tribe. However, that entire settlement had just been annihilated by the rising Turkic Khaganate. Left with nothing but the clothes on their backs, his brother's entire family had fled across the border to throw themselves at his mercy.
An Zhenjie, naturally understanding the laws of family piety and political optics, didn't dare delay. He immediately organized an entourage and personally rode out to the border checkpoints to welcome the refugees.
When the two brothers finally reunited An Xiaojie couldn't stop singing the praises of a specific family that had risked their lives to drag them out of the bloodbath: The household of a man named An Yanyan.
Not only did they share a life-or-death bond forged in the fires of nomadic warfare, but both clans also belonged to the Sogdian Nine Oasis States, specifically the Kang people. Recognizing each other as cultural kinsmen in a foreign land, the two families hit it off instantly. Over cauldrons of roasted meat and heavy liquor, the elders made a solemn pact: their children would henceforth be recognized as blood brothers.
But among this newly formed circle of sworn kin, there was one person who stood out awkwardly from the rest: A boy named Galuoshan.
Galuoshan's mother was a respected Turkic shamaness from a noble nomadic lineage, but his biological father had died not long after he was born. With no one left to rely on, his mother eventually remarried An Yanyan.
As a result, Galuoshan grew up as an outsider within the household, a mixed-blood stepson with no actual ties to the An clan by blood.
Fortunately for him, Vice Governor An Zhenjie was an unusually broad-minded man. He paid little attention to the boy's complicated background. He accepted Galuoshan into the family alongside the others, included him in the sworn brotherhood, and allowed him to take the An surname.
From that day on, the boy came to be known by a new name: An Lushan.
Another young man escaped alongside An Yanyan's household: his nephew, An Sishun. Strictly speaking, An Sishun and the newly renamed An Lushan were not related by blood at all, making them cousins in name only. Even so, having grown up together in the harsh borderlands, the two shared a close bond.
With the support and recommendations of their official uncle, An Zhenjie, both men eventually stepped onto the stage of the Tang Empire. Though they began from the same household, the paths they chose could not have been more different, yet fate would continue tying their lives together.
An Sishun took the conventional military route. He enlisted in the regular army and headed for the Longyou frontier, spending the next thirty-eight years stationed along the borderlands. Through countless campaigns and skirmishes, he steadily built his reputation step by step. Future famous generals such as Geshu Han and Guo Ziyi had once served under his command as junior officers. At the height of his career, An Sishun rose to become the Jiedushi, the Military Governor, of two separate frontier regions.
An Lushan, on the other hand, looked at the rigid discipline, the freezing mud, and the slow promotional track of the regular infantry and said, 'Yeah, absolutely not.'
He rejected the military life entirely, opting instead for the wild West world of international commerce. He became a Yalang, which, in modern terms, is essentially a high-end corporate broker or real estate middleman specializing in cross-border trade.
As it turned out, An Lushan was exceptionally talented at this line of work. Growing up between multiple cultures became his greatest advantage in the chaotic border markets.
He quickly learned six different regional languages and developed an incredibly persuasive tongue. Whether dealing with merchants, caravan leaders, or border officials, he always seemed to know exactly what to say.
Just as his business prospects were beginning to open up, disaster struck. Though calling it an economic crisis would sound more modern, the historical reality was much simpler:
The Tibetan Empire launched a full-scale invasion.
The Tibetan armies swept across the mountains, cutting through the Hexi Corridor and throwing the Silk Road into chaos. Before An Lushan's ambitions in trade could truly take shape, they collapsed overnight.
With his business ruined and no stable market left to rely on, he was forced to find other ways to survive.
During the day, he worked as a livestock broker, greeting merchants with a smile and helping arrange transactions. At night, however, he slipped into nearby pastures under cover of darkness and stole sheep from local herders.
A livelihood built on theft in a heavily militarized frontier region was never going to last long. Before long, An Lushan was caught red-handed, tied up with thick hemp ropes, and hauled before the longtime Commander of Youzhou, Zhang Shougui.
Zhang Shougui took one look at the fat, smooth-talking sheep thief and didn't hesitate for a second. He merely waved his hand and gave the kind of order common on the frontier: 'Take this trash out to the courtyard and beat him to death with wooden clubs.'
Faced with the very real prospect of being clubbed into a bloody pulp, An Lushan's survival instincts kicked into overdrive. The moment the guards grabbed his shoulders, he threw his head back and screamed, voice echoing through the hall: "Does the Commander-in-Chief not wish to wipe out the two barbarian tribes?! Why beat Lushan to death when I can do it for you?!"
Let's be real for a second: An Lushan didn't know a damn thing about military strategy. The man was a bankrupt livestock broker. His entire career plan had just been "steal sheep, don't get caught," and he'd already failed the second part.
But here's the thing about guys like An Lushan. They may be useless at everything else, but they have a PhD in reading people. And he knew exactly what kept Zhang Shougui up at night.
So he took the shot. And somehow, against all odds, it worked. The sheer audacity of that scream actually made Zhang Shougui pause. The Commander looked at this fat, smooth-talking sheep thief and thought, "You know what? I'm intrigued." Not intrigued enough to give him an actual army, of course. Zhang Shougui wasn't brain dead.
But intrigued enough to spare his life and toss him into the worst job available: Zhuosheng Jiang. Frontline scout. The kind of position where your job description was basically "sneak into enemy territory, grab a prisoner, and try not to die." Emphasis on try.
By the year 732 AD, the stark contrast between the two step-brothers was almost comical.
An Sishun had already climbed the imperial ladder. Governor of Taozhou. Commander of the Momen Army. The court had just showered him with two hundred bolts of premium silk, three hundred taels of silver, five hundred thousand copper coins, and five thousand battle-hardened troops under his absolute command.
Meanwhile, An Lushan stood in the muddy trenches of Youzhou, looked left, looked right, and realized his entire military command consisted of exactly one guy: a scruffy, equally broke kid named Shi Siming.
An Lushan stared at his grand army of one, felt the freezing wind bite through his cheap armor, and genuinely wanted to cry. But as he wiped the mud off his face, something clicked. Cold. Clear. He finally understood his problem.
'Since I don't possess the classical literacy or the formal military education required to become a brilliant strategist or a Governor's chief advisor... fine. I'll just have to become a peerless, unstoppable warrior who can tear through armies single-handedly. I'll just have to become the Lu Bu of the Grand Tang!']
Inside Ganlu Hall, the heavy silence was finally broken.
Li Shimin, who had been quietly brooding over the fate of the Tang Empire, suddenly sat upright. The sheer absurdity of the timeline momentarily pulled his attention away from An Lushan's future rebellion. Narrowing his eyes, he stared at the light screen text with open disbelief.
"Wait a damn minute." Li Shimin's voice dropped dangerously low. "I personally pulverized the Eastern Turkic Khaganate. The Western Turks got wiped off the map by my son Li Zhi after he took the throne. So where in the absolute hell did this new Turkic Khaganate in 712 come from?!"
The Emperor, mid-rant, had just casually let slip a piece of information that would get anyone else executed on the spot.
Sun Simiao, who had been quietly trying to maintain the serene detachment of a mountain hermit, felt his stomach drop straight through the floor. His face went pale. Winter frost pale.
Wait. Prince Li Zhi took the throne? His mind scrambled, tripping over itself. What happened to Crown Prince Chengqian? What happened to the other princes?!
The Emperor had just casually mentioned the future imperial succession like it was dinner gossip, and Sun Simiao was standing right there, hearing all of it.
I didn't ask for this, the old physician thought, cold sweat beading on his neck. I came here to treat a man's wind-dampness, not to learn state secrets that could get me buried in an unmarked grave. Why would you do this? You dragged me out of my mountains, locked me in this hall, and now you're casually dropping bloody imperial succession secrets like it's dinner conversation.
He gripped the hem of his robes, knuckles white. Could you at least wait until I've gone home before you start confessing treason, Your Majesty?
Unlike the panicked doctor, Chancellor Yan Lide was a veteran who had survived decades of high-level political storms.
He kept his face perfectly blank, but his sharp eyes swept the room. When he noticed that Fang Xuanling, Du Ruhui, and Zhangsun Wuji didn't even blink at the mention of Prince Li Zhi, he understood immediately. Ah. The inner circle already knows about the succession change. This isn't a trap for us. This is just... reality now.
Setting aside the succession mess, the geopolitical problem was much simpler. Du Ruhui stepped forward, eyes locked on the location mentioned in the video: An Zhenjie's post in Lanzhou.
"Your Majesty, if this resurrected Turkic Khaganate is pressing against the regions north of the Hexi Corridor," Du Ruhui said calmly, "then there is no doubt. The nomadic remnants we settled along the borders are a nest of vipers. The moment our guard drops, they will rebel and try to rebuild everything we tore down."
"A war of restoration..." Li Shimin murmured, fingers tapping a slow rhythm against the armrest.
His mind was already racing back through his policies on the defeated Turkic tribes. After Illig Qaghan fell, the court had argued for weeks about what to do with the hundreds of thousands of survivors. The compromise they finally reached was the Jimi system, the loose rein. Break the tribes into smaller pieces, appoint their old chieftains as imperial governors, move the peaceful ones inland, and leave the troublemakers on the northern edge as a buffer against the deeper steppe.
At the time, it had looked like a diplomatic victory. Now, staring at the screen, Li Shimin realized with cold clarity that his so-called benevolent assimilation had just been giving the embers enough shelter to reignite.
Fang Xuanling, ever the steady hand, offered a more practical view. "Your Majesty need not worry just yet. In our current timeline, the Western Turks are still intact, and our border settlement strategy still has room to shift. We have time."
He paused, his expression hardening as his eyes moved back to the screen. "But this An Sishun... the text says he eventually becomes Military Governor of two entire garrisons. If he truly is An Lushan's step-brother, and their bond is as close as the future suggests..." He let the implication hang. "The combined weight of two provincial armies behind a rebellion would certainly explain how the empire was torn apart."
Li Shimin grunted in agreement. But as his eyes tracked the story of An Lushan's early years, the sheer absurdity of that career path made him want to grind his teeth into powder.
A bankrupt broker? A literal, low-life sheep thief? This is the pathetic piece of trash that managed to orchestrate the disaster of my Tang Dynasty?!
Li Shimin slammed his fist onto the table, his eyes burning with absolute fury. "What in the world was that Youzhou Commander thinking?! Why didn't he just follow his initial instincts and beat that fat bastard to death in the courtyard right then and there?!"
Meanwhile, back in the Three Kingdoms era, Zhang Fei caught the specific mention of 'Lu Bu' flashing across the screen, and he instantly let out a booming, thoroughly amused roar of laughter.
"Hahaha! Look at this, brother! Look at this absolute joke!" Zhang Fei slapped his knee, his voice shaking the dust from the ceiling.
"This An Lushan boy eventually recognizes the Tang Emperor as his adoptive father, and his great response is to launch a rebellion, march an army into the capital, and violently kick his dad out of Chang'an!"
"And look at our Lu Bu! He recognized the tyrant Dong Zhuo as his adoptive father, and his best response was to drive a spear through his chest and slaughter him like a pig!"
Fa Zheng, who had a natural taste for dark humor, chuckled along. He leaned back, a wry smile tugging at his lips. "To be fair, General, at least Lu Bu killing Dong Zhuo can be spun as executing a national tyrant for the sake of the Han. But this An Lushan? The empire gave him everything, and his thank-you note was burning it all down. That's not even treason with a cause. That's just premium, top-shelf betrayal."
The point was clear enough. Future generations could complain all they wanted about Emperor Li Longji not dying early enough, but An Lushan's actions were still the kind of backstabbing that got you cursed for a thousand years.
Zhang Fei wiped a tear from his eye, shaking his head with a heavy, theatrical sigh. "Man, I'll tell you what... Being an adoptive father in Chinese history might just be the most dangerous job a man can take."
His gaze drifted across the room, slow and deliberate, until it landed squarely on Zhuge Liang.
The implication was anything but subtle. Little Adou was currently residing safely within the Chengdu palace. Just a few weeks prior, during a private family gathering, Liu Bei had casually floated the idea that he wanted Adou to formally bow before Zhuge Liang and recognize the Chancellor as his official adoptive father, ensuring the boy would always have a master strategist to guide his footsteps.
Zhuge Liang's face instantly turned as black as a thundercloud.
Zhuge Liang didn't say a word. He just raised his feather fan and waved it frantically in Zhang Fei's direction, his expression screaming one message: Absolutely not. Rejected. Get that ridiculous idea out of your head right now. Do I look like I have the time to teach your family's knucklehead mathematics and statecraft, while trying to avoid getting stabbed in the back?!
Liu Bei, utterly ignoring the silent war happening right in front of him, kept his eyes fixed on the screen, reading through An Lushan's early commercial failure. A heavy, melancholy sigh slipped out of him.
"If that Tibetan invasion had never happened," Liu Bei murmured, his eyes still fixed on the screen, "An Lushan probably would've lived out his entire life as a completely forgettable merchant, shuffling livestock through some border market for a handful of copper coins. He never would've set foot in an army camp. He never would've had the chance to burn the world down."
He paused, a bitter smile flickering at the corner of his mouth. "But then again... what use are 'what ifs' against the march of history?"
[Lightscreen]
[Having escaped the jaws of death by a hair, An Lushan experienced a profound revelation: He realized that this suicidal new gig as a Zhuosheng Jiang was actually the job he had been born to do.
Think about it: He was a mixed-race barbarian who had spent his entire life operating in the cutthroat, multi-ethnic border markets. He effortlessly spoke six different regional dialects. He knew the geography like the back of his hand, and he possessed a terrifying, near-supernatural ability to read human expressions and predict behavior.
Every single one of those hyper-specific survival skills he had meticulously honed during his miserable years as a bankrupt broker transferred flawlessly into his new role as a commando leader. He didn't just know how to track enemy scouts through the mountain passes; he knew exactly how to talk them down, break their resolve, and extract clean, actionable intelligence from them.
But his ability to read human nature wasn't just weaponized against the enemy. He deployed it with terrifying, laser-focused precision against his supreme commander, Zhang Shougui.
An Lushan transformed his relationship with his boss into a masterclass in psychological manipulation. The moment he noticed that Zhang Shougui harbored a deep, personal disgust for obese, lazy people, An Lushan, who naturally put on weight incredibly easily, immediately went on a brutal, near-starvation crash diet to keep his physique sharp. He played the role of the hyper-obedient, submissive subordinate to absolute perfection. It became common knowledge around the Youzhou headquarters that An Lushan would personally carry the wooden basins into the commander's private quarters and wash Zhang Shougui's feet with his own hands, entirely unbothered by the loss of personal dignity.
Now, let's be fair to the commander: The only reason An Lushan went to such humiliating lengths to secure his favor was because Zhang Shougui was an incredibly competent, powerful, and accomplished figure.
This Youzhou Long-Serving Commander hadn't inherited his title; he was a self-made military warrior who had climbed out of the lower classes entirely on the back of his battlefield victories against the Turks.
In fact, the Tibetan invasion that had caused An Lushan's initial commercial bankruptcy in Hexi? It was Zhang Shougui who had personally marched an army out and violently crushed that entire Tibetan offensive, stabilizing the western frontier.
The imperial court had specifically reassigned this veteran commander to Youzhou for a singular, high-stakes purpose: To utterly pacify and eliminate what An Lushan had referred to as the 'Two Barbarians', the rising threats of the Khitan and Xi tribes along the northeastern borders.
Zhang Shougui's tactical brilliance remained fully online. The moment he took command of Youzhou, the frontier gates practically rattled with a relentless stream of military victories.
Riding his commander's formidable coattails, An Lushan siphoned battlefield experience like a parasite, racking up official achievements while simultaneously utilizing his silver tongue and imported luxury goods to aggressively bribe every single visiting imperial inspector or central bureaucrat who passed through the region. The return on his investment was staggering.
Deeply impressed by the fat scout's relentless sycophancy, fierce bravery in the trenches, and glowing reviews from central inspectors, Zhang Shougui officially adopted An Lushan as his formal adoptive son.
With this final political achievement unlocked, An Lushan had managed to pull off an unprecedented, historical triple crown of fatherhood. He now possessed a biological father, a nomadic stepfather, and the supreme military commander of the northeastern frontier as his adoptive father.
But the golden rule of the universe always asserts itself: Fast success built on a foundation of lies will inevitably trigger a disaster collapse.
At his absolute core, An Lushan was not a classical, trained military general. He was an exceptionally brilliant commando leader, an elite scout who could read a room and slit a throat in the dark. But commanding a massive, multi-divisional imperial army? It was a recipe for total disaster.
Zhang Shougui, completely blinded by familial affection and wanting to hand his favorite adoptive son a massive, easy military achievement that would guarantee a promotion to the high ranks of the capital, made a fatal mistake. He handed An Lushan absolute command over an elite force of sixty thousand battle-hardened Tang troops, ordering him to launch a decisive campaign to crush the Khitan forces.
The result was a masterclass in tactical incompetence.
The moment the campaign commenced, the allied Xi tribe executed a sudden, violent battlefield defection. They turned their weapons around, launching a devastating pincer attack alongside the Khitans that caught the Tang forces completely unprepared.
And what did our grand, peerless 'Lu Bu of the Grand Tang' do the moment the battle lines collapsed?
An Lushan didn't execute a brilliant tactical retreat. He didn't hold the line. An arrow struck the wood of his horse's saddle, and he completely lost his mind to panic. In the ensuing, chaotic scramble, his ceremonial helmet was knocked into the mud, his boots were torn from his feet, and he violently spurred his mount forward.
He abandoned his army entirely, fleeing the slaughterhouse alongside a pathetic remnant of barely twenty personal cavalrymen.
Because of his cowardice and incompetence, sixty thousand of the Grand Tang's finest, most elite frontier troops were left completely surrounded and annihilated in the northern wastes.
Now, if Zhang Shougui had been a leader molded in the stoic, unyielding image of Chancellor Zhuge Liang, he would have broken down into tears, upheld the absolute rule of martial law, and executed his adoptive son on the spot just like Ma Su at Jieting.
But Zhang Shougui was a mortal man trapped in a web of personal pride and political nepotism. He hesitated.
Realizing that executing his own adoptive son for a disaster of this scale would permanently ruin his own historical legacy and political career, he made the fateful choice to protect the boy.
How do you protect a general who just lost sixty thousand men? You place him in heavy iron chains, draft a highly sanitized bureaucratic report, and send him under armed guard to the capital city for official imperial judgment.
But what the veteran commander failed to realize was that Chang'an was no longer a hostile, unfamiliar territory for the silver-tongued broker.
Thanks to years of relentless bribery and meticulously cultivated political networks, the glittering capital of the empire was already halfway to becoming An Lushan's absolute home turf.]