Li Shimin wanted to build a massive fleet and conquer the open ocean. Simple as that.
Inside Ganlu Hall, the ministers sat in silence so heavy you could cut it with a knife. No one dared object. The sheer weight of this future knowledge had completely rewired their understanding of the world.
Du Ruhui traced the edge of his sleeve, his gaze fixed on the polished floor tiles. Around him, the other officials kept their eyes lowered, barely breathing. When Du Ruhui finally looked up, he spoke with the careful deliberation of a man who had spent decades weighing every single word.
"Let us assume the worst," he said. "Assume we fail to grasp their selective breeding methods. Assume we cannot replicate their chemical fertilizers or farming machinery."
He paused. To his left, a minister swallowed audibly.
"Even without those shiny technological miracles, this crop they call corn still gives us more than double our best wheat and rice yields. Double. Just by planting it in the ground."
For an empire built on the backs of peasant farmers and grain taxes, corn was not just tempting. It was a gravitational pull. It was the promise of never hearing the word "famine" again.
The ministers exchanged glances. When they considered what a global voyage would actually cost, the risks looked manageable. They had canned food to survive the journey. They had a rough world map to guide them. They had the Five-Deck Tower Ships, which even the future people admitted were impressive.
The Tang navy could handle itself. If they hugged the coastlines and sailed carefully, the real danger was low. The only real cost was time. Years, probably. But time was cheap compared to the prize.
Li Shimin did not hesitate. He had already made up his mind.
After court ended, he planned to pull Liu Rengui aside for a private chat. He would transfer him to the navy. He would ask him one simple question: Are you ready to sail into the unknown?
If the answer was yes, the fleet would be assembled. Their mission would be huge. Sail west. Find the Romans. Hunt down Euclid's Elements. Recruit foreign scholars. Steal their best ideas. And most importantly, find any information about this mythical land called America.
One thought crossed Li Shimin's mind. If the fleet moved fast enough on the way back, they could swing by India and pick up Xuanzang. Give the legendary monk a ride home. Save him a lot of walking.
Having locked in his naval ambitions, Li Shimin let his mind drift back to the Malthusian trap.
He had his own cynical take on this cycle of doom. As the Emperor, land grabbing by the rich was a direct threat to his throne. So he understood the trap perfectly.
The longer a dynasty stayed peaceful, the worse the land monopolies got. The rich got richer. The poor got poorer. And eventually, the whole system collapsed.
The future people called feudalism a cannibalistic system. Li Shimin agreed. It was an objective fact.
He only had to look at the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties. The Wang clan. The Xie clan. The Sima family. These aristocratic cartels operated on one simple philosophy. Bleed the world dry to fatten their own estates.
Li Shimin saw them as greedy pigs. They ate their villages. Then they ate their counties. Then they ate their provinces. They gorged themselves until the state starved to death. And in the chaos that followed, they usually got slaughtered too. A cycle of pure stupidity.
But Li Shimin was a realist. He knew he could not turn every greedy noble into a saint overnight. Human nature was stubborn. The strong would always eat the weak.
But now he saw a brilliant alternative.
If these aristocrats were hardwired to exploit, why let them eat his people? Why not build them ships, point them at the ocean, and let them devour the rest of the world? Let them satisfy their greed on foreign soil. Let them leave the Tang heartland alone.
Of course, this plan only worked if the ships actually survived the journey.
High above the hall, the magical screen shimmered, pulling the Emperor's attention back to the present. The voice of the future narrator echoed across the courtyard, shifting the topic back to the brutal politics of the Korean peninsula.
[Lightscreen]
[The Battle of Baekgang is a strangely quiet event in the official historical records. It gets a mere twenty words in the primary Tang annals. Short and sweet. Nothing to write home about.
But there is another artifact tied to this clash. A stone monument known as the Commemorative Stele of Tang General Liu Renyuan.
The existence of this stele is pretty ironic and deeply tragic. If you look at Liu Renyuan's final years, his career ended in total disaster. Stripped of his honors. Exiled to the malarial jungles of Yunnan. After that, his name just vanishes from history. Error 404, Liu Renyuan not found.
But if you piece together the timeline and the glowing praise carved into that stele, a different story emerges.
The Tang Dynasty eventually lost total control of the Korean peninsula. And there is strong evidence that this failure was directly tied to Liu Renyuan's unjust exile.
Let us look at what happened right after Baekgang. The Tang won a crushing victory, but their resources were stretched thin across multiple fronts. On top of that, the court wanted to pacify the conquered Baekje population and show some political goodwill.
To pull this off, the Tang installed local Baekje elites into nearly all the administrative positions in the newly established Ungjin Commandery. This was the first red flag. They were switching from direct rule to proxy rule. And proxy rule almost never ends well.
The real mess started with selecting the Supreme Commander for the Ungjin Commandery. The bureaucratic maneuvering here was wonderfully chaotic.
Liu Rengui had earned legendary merits during the war. So after Baekje was crushed for the second time, he was ordered to stay behind and garrison the territory. His veteran colleague Liu Renyuan packed up his troops and went home to celebrate.
In 664, Li Zhi issued a new order. He told Liu Renyuan to go back to Korea and officially relieve Liu Rengui as Supreme Commander. On paper, this looked like a standard military rotation.
In reality, it triggered a massive argument.
Liu Renyuan arrived with the imperial edict, ready to take over.
Liu Rengui refused to leave. He argued that the situation was still volatile. Baekje was not pacified. Silla was eyeing the territory. Changing commanders now was a stupid risk.
Here is the frustrating part. Both generals were right. Both arguments made sense. This was a classic leadership dispute that just required the Emperor to pick a lane and make a decision.
Instead, Li Zhi somehow managed to make everyone angry.
First, he ordered Liu Renyuan to go back to Chang'an.
Second, he ordered Liu Rengui to stay, but stripped him of his title as Supreme Commander.
Third, he appointed Fuyu Long as the new Supreme Commander.
Fuyu Long was a former prince of the destroyed Baekje royal family. At that moment, he was living it up in Chang'an. Fine wine. Good food. Beautiful women. When he heard about his promotion, he was horrified.
Why would he leave paradise for a frozen, war-torn wasteland? The Baekje territory was a disaster zone. Not even a stray dog would take that job.
It was a spectacular mess. One simple staffing decision, and everyone was miserable.
After this chaotic reshuffle, Liu Rengui found himself trapped in hostile territory without the official authority of a Supreme Commander. His ability to govern was crippled. Frustrated and restricted, he lasted less than a year before formally requesting a transfer back to the mainland.
Over in Chang'an, Fuyu Long was still throwing tantrums and refusing to pack his bags.
With no other options, the court forced Liu Renyuan to go back again. He traveled across the ocean to replace Liu Rengui and lock down Baekje.
To his credit, Liu Renyuan swallowed his pride. He did not complain. He put his head down and worked hard for three years in the freezing mud of Baekje. His administration was so effective that the local people pooled their resources to carve a stone monument honoring him. That is the stele we are talking about.
Then came the tragedy.
In 667, the Tang launched its final invasion of Goguryeo. Liu Renyuan was ordered to mobilize his troops and join the offensive.
During mobilization, there was a slight delay. A minor logistical hiccup. It did not affect the battle plans. But military bureaucrats filed a report.
By this point, Li Zhi was seriously ill. His health was failing. His mind was becoming paranoid and unstable.
When he read the report about the delay, his paranoia latched onto a rumor. Whispers that Liu Renyuan was planning to carve out his own kingdom in the east.
Li Zhi snapped. He ordered Liu Renyuan arrested and dragged back to Chang'an in chains.
Standing before the throne, Liu Renyuan defended himself passionately. Too passionately. His aggressive defense only made Li Zhi angrier.
In a fit of rage, the Emperor ordered Liu Renyuan executed.
Then, a moment of clarity. Li Zhi remembered that this was the man who had helped annihilate Baekje and stabilize the region. Executing him over a minor delay was a bad look.
He commuted the sentence to permanent exile. Liu Renyuan was banished to Yao'an in modern-day Yunnan. A remote, disease-ridden frontier. He vanished into the jungle and was never heard from again.
With Liu Renyuan gone, the court panicked. They grabbed Fuyu Long, the Baekje prince who had been dodging the draft for four years, and shoved him into the command post.
This was the fatal mistake. From top to bottom, the Ungjin administration was now staffed entirely by Baekje locals. It was no longer a Tang military district. It was a loose vassal state.
Silla, watching from the borders, saw their golden opportunity.
If Silla had attacked while Liu Rengui or Liu Renyuan were in charge, it would have been a direct act of war against Tang. The retaliation would have been brutal.
But now? There was not a single Tang official left. If Silla attacked, it was just a local border dispute. A fight between two proxy states. Why would Tang retaliate?
Silla launched their attack. It took four years of grinding warfare. Eventually, Tang realized they were being played and slapped Silla down. But it was too late. Silla had already swallowed the Baekje territory. The map was permanently redrawn.]
The light screen's latest broadcast was refreshingly straightforward. No mind-bending science. No futuristic farming miracles. Just a cold, clinical breakdown of bureaucratic screw-ups and political paranoia.
Li Shimin's shoulders slumped. His fingers dug into the carved wood of his throne's armrests, knuckles turning white.
"Zhinu..." he whispered to the empty room.
Zhinu was the childhood nickname of Li Zhi, the boy who would eventually become Emperor Gaozong. Watching this single historical disaster unfold, Li Shimin could picture the tragic trajectory of his son's entire reign. A ruler slowly crushed by the crown. Trudging down a lonely path into the dark.
No court historian would ever dare write it in the official records, but Li Shimin knew the brutal truth. For his entire life, Li Zhi would be mercilessly compared to his father's blinding legacy. He was always going to be the lesser shadow.
If forced to give an honest performance review, Li Shimin had to admit Zhinu was not exactly crushing it on the throne. The whole Korean peninsula situation was objectively sloppy. But then he mentally compared his son to Yang Guang of the Sui Dynasty. When your benchmark is a megalomaniac who literally worked millions of peasants to death building useless canals and fighting disastrous vanity wars, Zhinu actually looks pretty good. He was not a catastrophe. He was just average.
More importantly, Li Shimin forced himself to remember the context. Zhinu was never supposed to be Emperor. Nobody trained him for the psychological violence of the job.
Li Shimin thought of his eldest son, Li Chengqian. The original Crown Prince. The kid he had pushed and pressured until his mind broke. The madness. The plotted rebellion. The tragic exile in the eighteenth year of Zhenguan. That was entirely on Li Shimin. He had broken his own heir.
And even after Chengqian was destroyed, the crown did not go to Li Tai, the brilliant second son by Empress Zhangsun. The brutal politics of the court forced Li Shimin to bypass the obvious choice and crown his mild-mannered third son, Zhinu.
Picking a Crown Prince was never a fairy tale. It was a bloody, traumatizing mess. How old was Zhinu when the crushing weight of the empire was suddenly dropped on his shoulders? Sixteen. Just a kid playing a lethal game of politics.
From the moment the original Crown Prince was deposed to the moment Li Shimin took his final breath, only five short years had passed. Five years was barely enough time to teach a boy how to survive the court, let alone how to rule the world.
Li Shimin closed his eyes. He felt the weight of his own mortality pressing down on him. He let out a deep, heavy sigh that carried across the hall.
Time. There simply had not been enough of it.