For the moment, the Tang officials set aside the images of the Five Dynasties' armies hacking one another to pieces. What truly unsettled them was not the bloodshed itself, but the direction the light screen was taking. With every line, the ground beneath their feet felt less stable.
After some hesitation, Li Shiji finally picked what seemed the least dangerous question he could find.
"Those so-called 'famous scholars' of the Later Han," he asked carefully, "did they actually possess real learning and talent?"
Li Shimin shot him a sideways glance, his expression openly disdainful.
"Real talent?" he said. "And if they did—so what? If they didn't—what difference would it make?"
He continued coolly, "Take those so-called Eight Kitchens. Were they anything more than scholars using their status as an excuse to flaunt wealth—trading money for reputation, only with better manners?"
As he spoke, Li Shimin shook his head and muttered, half to himself:
"Whether a 'famous scholar' had true ability was never the point. What mattered was holding power firmly—and passing that power on to one's descendants."
"Once power is in your hands," he added, "scholars who crave authority will naturally line up to sing your praises. Fame follows power, not the other way around."
At these words, the ministers of the Zhenguan court unconsciously straightened their backs. A faint chill crept upward from their tailbones. No one spoke.
Zhangsun Wuji broke the silence with his usual gentle smile.
"If not for Your Majesty's heroic resolve," he said, "if not for the loyalty and discipline of the Zhenguan ministers, how could there be a Great Tang? How could there be a flourishing Tang—let alone an empire worthy of the name?"
Li Shimin nodded slightly, then laughed.
"Why are you all suddenly so quiet?"
Only then did the tension in the Hall of Sweet Dew ease.
Du Ruhui had clearly thought this through already. He stepped forward and said,
"Your Majesty, since the screen claims this examination system will shape a thousand years, perhaps our present keju still has room for improvement."
Li Shimin nodded slowly. He understood this well enough. Just the previous year, he had already patched the system, adding an examination requirement of "reading one classic or historical text." Tang institutions inherited much from Sui, then amended them bit by bit. As for what was truly wrong—and how to fix it—those answers could only be found through trial.
"We can't possibly end up like the Later Song," Li Shimin muttered to himself, "adding painting to the imperial examinations."
The ministers looked curious, so Li Shimin explained briefly,
"When I previously reviewed the screen alone, I saw a Later Song ruler—the so-called 'Brothel Emperor'—who incorporated painting into the examinations."
Brothel Emperor?!
The Zhenguan ministers were stunned. The Song, it seemed, never failed to exceed expectations—in the worst way.
"With such a title," Wei Zheng declared flatly, "he must have been a foolish ruler."
The others nodded in agreement.
Li Shimin silently complained to himself: That's only because you've never heard the titles of those debauched Mediterranean kings of Rome. If they had, they'd lose their minds. Unfortunately, he hadn't paid enough attention at the time, and the Roman king's title had been absurdly long. A missed opportunity for educational shock.
Reviewing the notes copied down by Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui, Li Shimin's gaze fell on the final section concerning monopoly. He was no fool.
"If Wang Mang expanded the Imperial Academy and thereby bred the disaster of hereditary families," he said slowly, "then I must expand the imperial examinations—to open the path for the common people."
"We cannot allow… another tragedy like the Wei–Jin era's 'filial piety in name only.'"
His tone was firmer than ever before. The ministers bowed and accepted the command.
[Lightscreen]
[ In recent years, discussions online have revived a peculiar sentiment about the Wei–Jin and Northern–Southern Dynasties. Some people—either less educated than the content creators they watch, or indulging fantasies of aristocratic birth—have sighed wistfully:
"The Wei–Jin and Northern–Southern Dynasties were chaotic… yet beautiful."
Let us ignore, for now, how "chaotic" and "beautiful" are meant to coexist in the same sentence. If we speak only of chaos, then across Chinese history, this era ranks so high that few others dare compete for first place.
At the beginning of the Eastern Han, when Liu Xiu pacified the realm, he faced Zhu Wei, who held Luoyang. Pointing to the Luo River, Liu Xiu swore he would not pursue past crimes. Zhu Wei surrendered, was later enfeoffed as Marquis of Fugou—and the Emperor's word became a model of trust.
Fast forward to the Coup at Gaoping Tombs.
Sima Yi, facing Cao Shuang—who commanded the army—also pointed to the Luo River and swore he would not pursue past matters.
He then executed Cao Shuang and exterminated his entire clan.
From that day on, political struggle was reduced to a single rule: you die or I do. Promises meant nothing, even when spoken by emperors.
This incident earned history a phrase of rare elegance:
"The Luo River farted."
After that came Jia Chong instructing Cheng Ji to assassinate Emperor Cao Mao in the street. When Jia Chong died, ministers proposed the posthumous title "Desolate." Sima Yan rejected it and instead bestowed "Martial."
From then on, regicide and palace coups became routine. Thus when Liu Yu exterminated the Sima clan entirely, later generations most commonly commented:
"Well done."
Between "the Luo River farting" and Jia Chong's regicide, the basic tone of the Wei–Jin and Northern–Southern Dynasties was set. The Jin dynasty was, in essence, a loose alliance of aristocratic clans devouring one another.
With power scattered and political struggle unrestrained, disasters followed in sequence:
The War of the Eight Princes.
The Yongjia Catastrophe.
The invasion of the Five Barbarians.
Western Jin collapsed. The people—and the aristocrats—fled south in their robes and caps, while the north entered the era of the Sixteen Kingdoms.
The south fared no better: Wang Dun's rebellion, Su Jun's rebellion, Huan Wen's dictatorship, Huan Xuan's usurpation, Sun En and Lu Xun's uprising, Qiao Zong's secession, Liu Yu's annihilation of the Sima clan, and finally Hou Jing's rebellion.
If the Cao clan's behavior still retained a trace of hypocritical warmth, the Sima clan's seizure of power and murder of emperors amounted to outright rebellion against Confucianism itself. By Confucian standards, it was unquestionable treason.
Here lay the core contradiction: the Sima clan still wished to rule through Confucian ideology—yet their method of gaining power fundamentally denied Confucian values.
Emperor Wu of Han's policy of "Exalting Confucianism alone" had functioned both as governance and as social faith. Confucianism prized ritual and moral order. When that faith collapsed, the aristocratic clans collapsed with it.
On one hand, they worshiped wealth, indulging in obscene luxury.
On the other, they claimed to despise money, indulging in empty metaphysical chatter.
History is overflowing with examples.
Prince Chen of Hejian, Wang Chen, adored famous horses. He built lavish stables with silver troughs, jade phoenixes, and dragons cast in gold.
The Southern Dynasty general Yu Hong boasted that his territory had "four exhaustions": fish and turtles in the water were exhausted, deer in the mountains exhausted, grain in the fields exhausted, and commoners in the villages exhausted—kidnapped wholesale.
After stripping an entire commandery bare, he declared righteously:
"A man lives less than a hundred years. If one does not indulge now, when will he?"
He took over a hundred concubines, decorated his carriages with gold and jade, and furnished his bedroom exclusively with cliff-grown cypress. Silver inlay spelled out "Longevity" and "Blessings." Contemporaries called it "astonishing."
Chen Sunxiang's household—its singing boys, dancing girls, pavilions, towers, forests, and springs—was said to have no equal in the age. When ordered to govern Yingzhou, he refused a carriage. Instead, he built a massive ship from more than ten large vessels, complete with artificial mountains and lotus ponds, drifting downriver while hosting banquets onboard.
Wang Ji of the Taiyuan Wang clan left behind a smaller anecdote.
When Emperor Sima Yan dined at his home and praised the pork as exceptionally rich, he asked how it was prepared.
Wang Ji replied casually, "No special method. The pig was good. It was fed on human milk."
The record dryly notes: "Even Wang and Shi had not attempted such things." Meaning: this was beyond even Shi Chong and Wang Kai.
Those two need no introduction. Their wealth-competition entered textbooks.
At the same time, aristocratic power remained formidable. Xie Lingyun's family estate—of the same clan that praised Cao Zhi as "eight talents in one man"—was larger than modern Seoul, roughly 1.4 million mu.
The estate sealed mountains and lakes, producing everything internally: paper, textiles, medicine, iron, ceramics, wine. Only iron ore and salt were purchased externally.
The Xie clan had more than one such estate. The Wang clan had over a dozen.]
Back in Shu, Pang Tong sighed to Zhuge Liang,
"Kongming… just as Yide said—we really are country bumpkins."
Zhang Fei's face darkened when he read of Wang Ji.
"Farm infants die for lack of milk," he growled. "And these people feed it to pigs. How are they different from beasts?"
"Poetry and classics by day," he spat, "bandits and thieves by deed!"
Liu Bei stared, speechless. These brief records revealed a truth impossible to ignore: the great clans had become untouchable.
And the common people?
Where were they?
Liu Bei scanned the text. He saw them only at the margins.
Slaughtered during the barbarian invasions.
Dragged away wholesale under Yu Hong.
Forced to build Chen Sunxiang's pleasure ships.
Their mothers made wet nurses for pigs.
The people were like grain in the fields—worth less than the horses living in halls of gold and silver.
These men built what may have been the most luxurious aristocratic regime in Chinese history. Yet it could neither resist foreign enemies nor restrain internal tyrants.
"If Jin had not fallen," Liu Bei sighed, "there would be no justice in Heaven."
His eyes dropped further.
"One point four… million mu?"
"And more than one? The Wang clan had dozens?"
"How is this different from founding a state?"
Pang Tong replied calmly, "It's very different."
"A state needs ministers, laws, procedures, punishments. Even an emperor is constrained."
"But in such estates," he continued, "the lord takes and gives at will. One word decides life and death."
"More comfortable than being emperor," Zhang Fei smacked his lips. "No wonder…"
"And people still call this 'beautiful'?" Zhang Fei scoffed. "They want to be aristocrats—do they even deserve it?"
Zhuge Liang recalled a line from the screen and recited softly,
"Swallows once flew before the halls of Wang and Xie;
now they enter the homes of common folk."
"So in the end," he said, "even Wang and Xie could not escape extinction—and were cursed by posterity."
After a pause, he added quietly,
"The Sima clan truly committed unforgivable sins."
"Obsessed with the throne," he said, "yet acting no better than Yuan Shu."
Liu Bei shook his head. "Yuan Shu was foolish—but not this vile."
Wei Yan asked suddenly, "Cao Shuang commanded armies. How could he be tricked so easily?"
Pang Tong pondered.
"Gaoping Tombs… likely imperial tombs. Sima Yi struck while Cao Shuang was attending them—hostage to ritual?"
He shook his head.
"But Cao Shuang led campaigns against Shu. He wasn't incompetent. And Sima Yi, Kongming's rival, was no ordinary man."
Their struggle must have been long and complex.
Pang Tong's gaze dimmed.
"To murder an emperor in the street… is to murder one's own dynasty."
"Short-sighted," he said bitterly, "like rats of Jiangdong."
Wei Yan looked at Zhuge Liang, hesitating.
"If the Military Advisor had—"
He could not finish.
Even killing Sima Yi would change nothing.
The strategist's time was short.
Heaven had not granted Han enough years.