While Li Shimin was still busy calculating new ways to make money for the empire,
Du Ruhui had already reached a different conclusion.
"If Zhao Gou could build up such vast private business interests," he said slowly,
"it must have been inseparable from harsh taxes and miscellaneous levies."
Fang Xuanling immediately understood.
"The Northern Song carried out reforms three times, and taxes rose twice. Even when the dynasty collapsed, the burden never fell.
When the Southern Song was founded, they raised taxes again in the name of resisting Jin. And Emperor Xiaozong never truly opposed Zhao Gou…"
Halfway through speaking, Fang Xuanling suddenly remembered that Tang also had an emperor titled Gaozong. He hesitated, then corrected himself.
"…never truly opposed Zhao Gou. From that we can infer that after the Longxing peace treaty, the Lin'an court squeezed the people even harder than before."
He continued,
"So merchants in Southern Song Lin'an faced only two choices.
Either operate under the name of Deshou Palace and pay Zhao Gou's taxes,
or wait quietly to be stripped by government offices. No wonder…"
Before he finished, Zhangsun Wuji nodded in agreement.
"No wonder later generations described the Two Songs as prosperous."
He smiled faintly.
"When merchants, craftsmen, peddlers, and laborers suffer deductions several times heavier than in Tang, improving efficiency becomes a matter of survival. Otherwise they simply wait to die."
He paused, then added with dry irony,
"Zhao Gou would not pull out a single hair for the benefit of the world.
Yet the people of Southern Song all ended up wearing themselves out from head to toe for the world."
"Tragic, isn't it?"
Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui exchanged looks that were half laughter, half disbelief.
Strangely… it did make a certain kind of sense.
They both understood the deeper philosophy of Yang Zhu's doctrine about valuing the self and preserving life without sacrificing even a hair.
But at this moment, it was actually Mencius's criticism of Yang Zhu that seemed more suitable as an evaluation of this retired Southern Song emperor.
From another angle, though, being remembered by later generations as someone whose selfishness was unmatched in history was also… a rather rare achievement.
Wei Zheng shook his head.
"When a common man is selfish, his neighbors suffer.
When the Son of Heaven is selfish, ten thousand people suffer."
His face was full of sorrow and exhaustion. Clearly he did not wish to comment further.
"If that Emperor Xuanzong had died earlier, he might have kept the reputation of a wise ruler.
If Zhao Gou had died earlier, it truly would have benefited the world without a single drawback."
Zhang Fei now only regretted that the light screen could be watched but not stabbed. Otherwise he would gladly thrust his spear through it and solve the problem personally.
Then a new question struck him.
"What's this 'Dung Tyrant' thing supposed to be?"
Liu Bei sighed helplessly.
He had begun to notice that the more strategists his third brother had around him, the less he liked thinking on his own.
Wasn't the explanation already clear from the later narrator?
A single bucket of waste water could be used to collect money from wealthy households,
and then used again to squeeze money from commoners.
And one could easily imagine the situation in Southern Song.
Too many people, too little land, heavy taxes.
How much grain would one mu of land need to produce to feed a whole family?
Under such conditions, fertilizer became priceless.
Liu Bei finally sighed deeply.
"How difficult life is for the common people…"
Zhang Fei scratched his head in confusion.
Zhuge Liang and Lu Su, both of whom had personally farmed the land, understood immediately.
"This 'Dung Tyrant' might be nothing more than a petty parasite in the city," Zhuge Liang said,
"but in the countryside he could dominate entire villages."
Lu Su nodded.
"The better the governance, the fewer strongmen and parasites remain. The safer the people live."
He lowered his voice.
"A tyranny that can last a thousand years is like seeing the sky through a tube or measuring the sea with a ladle.
If such things exist, then there are surely others we have never heard of. Firewood tyrants. Mountain tyrants. Road tyrants. And so on."
Zhuge Liang and Liu Bei both nodded, committing the thought to memory.
For them, Yizhou, Hanzhong, and Guanzhong had all been taken by force of arms.
The people in those regions had personally witnessed the strength of their army. Many even had sons or grandsons serving in Liu Bei's forces.
Only two or three years had passed since pacification. Naturally, no such parasites had room to grow.
But what about three or five years later?
Ten or twenty?
Zhuge Liang thought that preventing trouble before it formed was itself a core duty of governance.
The narrator's voice returned.
"So, returning to our earlier point.
Jin Emperor Zhao Liang gave his loyalty to Southern Song.
Song Emperor Wanyan Gou gave his filial devotion to Jin."
"Was there truly not a single normal emperor at the time?"
"Of course there was. But speaking of this ruler who lived in the same era as Wanyan Gou, let us shift our perspective slightly backward."
Li Shimin straightened instinctively.
For some reason, he had a feeling that what came next would not be unrelated to Tang.
He looked again at the map on the screen.
The East Asian map began shifting rapidly.
Fragmented states merged back into a single weakened empire.
Then that weakened empire began expanding again.
Li Shimin noticed the numbers in the corner shrinking, counting backward through time.
Finally, the date froze at the year 682.
[Lightscreen]
["We previously discussed the famous generals of early Tang, and the final figure we mentioned was Pei Xingjian, who died with regrets."
"In the year 682, Ashina Chebo, a false khagan of the Western Turkic Ten Tribes, launched a rebellion in an attempt to restore the Turkic Khaganate."
"Emperor Gaozong of Tang ordered Pei Xingjian to serve as Grand Commander of the Jinyao Route and oversee the suppression.
But before the army even set out, Pei Xingjian died of illness."
"At the same time, Gaozong's health was unstable, and the campaign was temporarily left unresolved."
"In the end, Wang Fangyi, stationed at Tingzhou, led troops out on his own initiative and rushed to reinforce Gongyue City."
"Wang Fangyi had long been Pei Xingjian's old partner. His most famous achievement earlier had been building a city in the Western Regions.
Its name was Suyab. Yes, the very Suyab said to be the birthplace of Li Bai."
"But Wang Fangyi himself probably never realized how much his campaign would change world history."
"After reinforcing Gongyue City, Wang Fangyi achieved a major victory. Seeing the situation deteriorate, Ashina Chebo fled west.
The two sides eventually faced off at the Hot Sea, today's Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan."
"The Lake Rehai lay deep in Central Asia, the true heartland of the Western Turks.
For two hundred years, surrounding nomadic tribes had been deeply tied to them."
"With the prestige of his ancestors, Ashina Chebo quickly gathered a force of one hundred thousand."
"After Wang Fangyi's first assault failed to break them, Ashina Chebo tried another tactic.
He attempted to use his 'Golden Clan' lineage to persuade the Turkic troops serving under Wang Fangyi to defect."
"It did not work very well."
"Instead, Wang Fangyi and his Turkic subordinates played along, lured the enemy, and successfully launched a surprise attack on Ashina Chebo's royal camp."
"The Turkic coalition was crushed. Wang Fangyi pursued them all the way to the Chu River.
But as winter approached and the river began freezing, he finally chose to withdraw."
"This battle had enormous long-term consequences."
"First, Ashina Chebo's defeat was equivalent to the Pope being beaten up inside the Vatican. His prestige vanished.
He could no longer command the Turkic tribes. The Turkic Khaganate was effectively swept into the trash heap of history."
"Second, the Turkic general Chisi Hongfu, who had served Wang Fangyi loyally, was promoted repeatedly, eventually reaching the rank of Grand General and Supreme Pillar of State."
"With his influence, he helped unify the Turkic tribes loyal to Tang.
The three-clan Karluks thus stepped onto the stage of history and remained a major force in Central Asia all the way into the Yuan dynasty."
"As for the rebel Turks who escaped Wang Fangyi's pursuit, they crossed the Chu River and wandered west under a leader named Wuhu."
"At that time, the Abbasid Caliphate was experiencing the Muqanna uprising.
This Turkic group joined the rebellion."
"They were soon defeated, but the chaos allowed them to pass through Abbasid territory and reach Khwarazm."
"After intermarrying with local peoples, they established the Oghuz Yabghu State and began calling themselves Oghuz."
"In the mid-tenth century, the Seljuk clan, one of the four major tribes within the Oghuz Yabghu State, declared independence under its own leader."
"From the 1040s onward, the independent Seljuk Turks conquered Persia, advanced into Baghdad, took control of the Abbasid Caliphate itself, and later under Sultan Alp Arslan defeated the Byzantine Empire in open battle and captured Emperor Romanos IV."
"At that point, the Seljuk Empire reached its peak."
"But the good fortune of the Seljuk Turks did not last long."
"Fifty years later, a new challenger entered the Central Asian arena."
"An elimination monster from East Asia."]