A true man dies without looking back.
It was easy to say—
and impossibly hard to do.
For Li Jing, all that later generations said about "the Tang people valuing martial valor" had always been a vague notion at best.
But now—seeing that even a thousand years later, people were still searching for the battlefield silhouettes of Great Tang warriors—he finally understood.
A century of flourishing Tang, much like the mighty Han before it, had carved a mark into the bloodlines of its descendants. That was why later generations would cross a thousand years of time, all for a single glimpse of Tang's martial spirit.
And with that realization came an overwhelming sense of regret.
If only I could personally lead troops to fight such an empire… even dying for the state would be worth it.
"The only regret," Li Jing said quietly, "is that this battle was lost to Turkic betrayal."
That was his greatest sorrow.
Li Shimin felt much the same. He said nothing, merely recalling the empire that had risen from the far west and expanded relentlessly—the Abbasid Caliphate.
His blood stirred.
To defeat an empire.
Just thinking about it made his body tremble with excitement.
For the first time ever, Li Shimin felt a flicker of envy toward Xuanzong.
Just as the later generations joked—if you can time-travel, then why don't you let me go?!
While the generals were still dissecting tactics, Yan Lide's eyes lit up. He had already begun sketching intently.
In pure painting technique, he could not match his younger brother Yan Liben—but as the saying went, every craft had its own specialty.
Yan Lide currently served as Director of Imperial Works. Architecture, painting, armor, metallurgy—he knew a bit of everything.
Thus, although the brothers were both drawing feverishly, the paper they used and the focus of their sketches were completely different. He now more focused on the details: the interlocking plates of the armor and the mechanics of the weaponry on the light screen.
Du Ruhui inferred something from the wording:
"To the west of this Abbasid Caliphate.… there is another empire as well. Byzantium, perhaps?"
Fang Xuanling searched his memory and offered a name:
"Has… Rome fallen?"
…
If Zhang Yichao had earlier shown the officials of Chengdu the valor of Tang warriors—
Then Wang Zhongsi and Gao Xianzhi showed them the bearing of Tang generals.
"Truly… ferocious commanders."
Zhang Fei was completely convinced now.
"So you're saying," he muttered, "that if you don't wipe out a country, it doesn't even count as merit?"
A lightning campaign across ten thousand li.
No mutiny among the troops.
Annihilating entire states.
Twenty thousand against over a hundred thousand—and still daring to draw blades.
Zhang Fei had once been quite proud of his battles at Yangping Pass and Hanzhong.
Now, seeing wars between empires, he almost felt embarrassed to bring them up.
And that long list of conquered states…
It made his eyes burn with envy.
On the other side, Zhao Yun was drawing together with Kongming, striving to record every piece of equipment shown on the light screen.
Arrow formations.
Spear walls.
Volley fire suppression.
Rotating bow-and-crossbow tactics.
Mo-dao greatswords.
Armor.
Infantry wrapped head to toe in plate like walking fortresses.
Cavalry whose horses were armored as well.
As Kongming sketched and annotated, he couldn't help sighing at their present poverty.
Take just a single unit of heavy cavalry—
The horse needed to be a fine breed fed on concentrated grain.
The rider had to be one in a hundred elite.
Then came the armor—for both man and horse—requiring iron smelting, skilled craftsmen, weaving techniques, and matching training doctrines.
All of it demanded money. Enormous amounts of money.
And most of it wouldn't show results anytime soon.
Armor wasn't just slapping iron plates together. How it was worn underneath, how the plates were linked to reduce weight—everything required research and trial.
Only now did Kongming truly grasp what "a technology tree" meant.
Without advanced metallurgy, there was no surplus capacity to pursue such things.
By comparison, weapon replication actually required far less investment.
Zhao Yun said nothing. His brush only moved faster.
As a cavalry commander, he felt as though he was glimpsing the ultimate pursuit of his life.
[ Lightscreen]
[One fascinating aspect of the Battle of Talas is how vividly it illustrates a single truth:
Small states have no sovereignty.
Weak states have no diplomacy.
For Tang, Talas was merely a warm-up—it did not damage the empire's foundations.
Gao Xianzhi was dismissed after the defeat and returned to court. Xuanzong initially planned to appoint him Military Governor of Hexi, but later changed him to Right General of the Yulin Army.
His successor was the famed general Feng Changqing.
The very next year, Feng Changqing led troops to forcefully strike Greater Bolü, compelling its king to surrender in person—once again proving to the Western Regions that Tang's hand remained iron-hard.
That same year, the Abbasid Caliphate sent envoys to Tang. Talks were amicable, and most prisoners were returned.
Black-robed Tajiks and Great Tang established relations—and began trading.
The small Central Asian states believed that driving away the "brutal Tang" would bring benevolent rulers.
Instead, the Abbasids ruled with iron cavalry.
Shiguo and Kangju were destroyed one after another.
Thus, three years after Talas, the small states of Central Asia united and voluntarily submitted to Tang, begging it to expel the Abbasids and restore Han Chinese rule.
But by then, it was already the eve of the An Lushan Rebellion—and Tang had temporarily aligned with Black-robed Tajiks
At that time, Tang's strategic planning for Anxi, Hexi, and Longyou all focused on first destroying Tibet.
The appeals of those small states were doomed to be ignored.
In modern times, however, Talas has been deliberately exaggerated by Arab historians.
In The Compendium of History, al-Athir claims that Arab forces annihilated fifty thousand Tang troops and captured twenty thousand more.
Al-Maqdisi's Book of Beginnings and History claims Tang forces were repeatedly crushed, forty-five thousand killed, twenty-five thousand captured, with their fortresses seized and families enslaved.
Even these relatively authoritative accounts pale next to popular folklore, which brazenly claims that Abbasids wiped out one hundred thousand Tang soldiers, with only a thousand escaping.
Yes—Tang lost Talas.
But not to this degree of nonsense.
If such numbers were real, Gao Xianzhi wouldn't be considering how to win Talas—he'd be sending envoys to Byzantium to jointly carve up the Arab Empire.]
[Server Chat Log]
HistoryLine: Tang truly had generals like clouds. But Gao Xianzhi really got screwed—somehow Koreans forcibly claimed him as an ancestor.
NoPrettyBoy: Seriously, when I learned Korea even made a glorifying documentary about Gao Xianzhi, I was stunned. Your ancestors were Goryeo, not Goguryeo!
Angryme: Goryeo descended from Silla and Baekje—and one of Gao Xianzhi's money-making side gigs was raiding Silla women and selling them in Tang…
So what is this—crying at the wrong grave?
Not only is Gao Xianzhi not their ancestor—he's practically a villain to them.
Tanker_65: But honestly, Korean brain damage isn't new. Just look at their TV dramas—Taizong gets shot in the left eye one moment, the right eye the next. Absolute masterpiece.
Ganlu Hall
The Zhenguan ministers in Ganlu Hall felt zero sympathy for the Central Asian states.
Their flip-flopping instead made Zhangsun Wuji chuckle.
"Is this not the perfect illustration of 'small states lack sovereignty, weak states lack diplomacy'?"
Hou Junji nodded in agreement.
"Great Tang already gave them a choice."
Li Shimin, however, paid little attention to their fate.
His gaze locked onto the scrolling text, irritation rising.
"These Koreans… should be killed."
At the same time, he mentally crossed out the peninsula.
What, you people have a vendetta against my eyes now?
Zhangsun Wuji consoled him calmly:
"Such foolish people cannot match Tang's divine might. All they can do is deceive themselves."
"Without the breadth of true powers, they will inevitably fade into history. Why trouble Your Majesty over them?"
The reasoning was sound. Li Shimin soon returned his focus to the main issue.
Looking at the map hanging on the right side of Ganlu Hall, and the routes marked through Tibetan territory into India, Li Shimin posed a hypothesis:
"If we follow Xuanzong-era thinking—destroy Tibet, then use its rear routes to enter India, establish commanderies there, and control Central Asia?"
The Hexi strategy had been studied many times. The greatest obstacle to field armies was supply.
Gao Xianzhi led only twenty thousand—not because he didn't want fifty or a hundred thousand.
One reason was the need to deter Anxi.
The other was simple reality: the Western Regions were barren. Where would provisions for massive armies come from?
Du Ruhui considered carefully and first eliminated one wrong answer:
"The Silk Road has flourished for centuries. Along it lie countless states without virtue or goodwill. If we advance westward, they will assume we intend to monopolize trade—and rebellion will follow endlessly."
Li Shimin nodded. That matched his own view.
For now, such speculation was premature.
He looked at the marked region on the light screen.
"Regardless of Central Asia—Tibet must be destroyed."
Tang had to control the Western Regions.
Tibet was like a parasite embedded in bone—able to threaten Hexi from the east and the Western Regions from the north.
Unless it was eliminated, Tang would forever need heavy garrisons in Longyou and Hexi, severely limiting its ability to project power westward.
This matter was set aside for the moment.
Hou Junji groaned.
"Another famous general—Feng Changqing…"
Li Jing burst out laughing and patted Hou Junji on the shoulder, signaling him to work harder.
As for Arab historical records, Li Shimin dismissed them outright.
"They're no different from those Koreans."
But the light screen did confirm something that piqued the ministers' curiosity.
"This Byzantine Empire… did it replace Rome?"
"So even in the West, there is no dynasty that lasts a thousand years."
[Lightscreean]
[Now that we've roughly covered these unfortunate generals, let's turn back to An Lushan.
In November 755, An Lushan raised the banner of "purging the court."
At that moment, he had an option modeled after Li Yuan: strike Taiyuan first, cross the Yellow River, and take Chang'an directly.
Theoretically, racing other governors for speed, a direct thrust at Chang'an was the fastest and most effective strategy.
But as we've said—An Lushan was not a great general.
So he chose what seemed safest to him:
March south through Hebei, take Luoyang first, then advance on Chang'an.
In hindsight, this looked like a solid plan—but its true reason was simple:
An Lushan could not mobilize the Hedong frontier armies.
The difference between Wang Zhongsi and An Lushan wasn't just loyalty versus rebellion—it was timing.
When An Lushan served as Military Governor of Pinglu, the fubing system had already completely collapsed.
In 737, Xuanzong replaced fubing with a recruitment army system.
By 738, Xuanzong declared the system a great success—border armies had fully recruited long-service soldiers and no longer needed conscription from the interior.
From that moment on, the troops of the Hebei Three Garrisons were all locals.
Their honor and disgrace rested entirely on An Lushan's word.
Fanyang and Pinglu had been thoroughly infiltrated by An Lushan under Xuanzong's watch—all his own people.
Hedong was different.
Though locals there weren't particularly loyal to the central court, they despised foreign Hu even more—and many still had hard bones.]