It swept across the world.
Inside Ganlu Hall, Li Shimin raised his head with visible interest.
The name Mongolia had already appeared several times in the light screen before.
It destroyed Song and Jin, marched into the Central Plains, founded the Yuan dynasty, and its western campaigns were later called the Scourge of God.
As for Genghis Khan, later generations described him as a man who only knew how to draw a bow and shoot eagles. In other words, posterity believed this khan's greatness lay almost entirely in martial prowess.
But looked at from another angle, the ruler of the Mongols could stand shoulder to shoulder with the First Emperor, Emperor Wu of Han, and even Li Shimin himself, relying on military achievements alone.
If that was the case, then his martial accomplishments were likely beyond anything seen in antiquity.
Du Ruhui's expression also turned far more serious.
"Though we do not fully understand the geography spoken of by later generations, that John Khan of Western Liao marched west with only two hundred cavalry and within a dozen years defeated the Seljuks and became dominant. That alone is extraordinary."
"By this reckoning, from what we know through the light screen alone, the Mongols destroyed Song, Jin, Western Liao, and India. And yet even that was not the height of their achievement."
He did not need to elaborate further.
Just those four regions already occupied an immense portion of the map.
After a brief moment of awe at the scale, Fang Xuanling voiced the question that arose naturally.
"With territory so vast, how could it be governed?"
Later generations often praised the territorial reach of the Great Tang. Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui had privately discussed this many times.
In the end, the core issue was always the same. How to maintain control over distant frontier lands.
Later generations supposedly possessed something called radio, allowing communication across tens of thousands of li in an instant. The two of them had speculated about it before, yet neither could imagine how such a thing might be achieved. Still, they remembered clearly that such technology only appeared nearly nineteen hundred years later by their reckoning.
The founding of the Mongol Yuan, however, was only thirteen hundred years away. It was still far too early for such miracles.
Du Ruhui's memory was excellent. He immediately recalled that later generations once mentioned, almost casually, that the Mongol Yuan ruled by dividing people into hierarchical classes.
But in the end he suppressed the thought and instead repeated a phrase the emperor often used.
"Let us simply watch."
[Lightscreen]
[After the Longxing Peace Agreement, though Song and Jin still had occasional border frictions, both sides were largely restrained.
The situation in the Jin state was actually quite simple.
The Jurchen noble clans who had supported Wanyan Yong's rise to power wanted one thing above all else. Comfort.
Unification? Unify my foot.
They wanted music every night, dancing every night, and a fresh set of singing girls every single day.
The History of Jin praises Wanyan Yong extravagantly, even calling him a "Lesser Yao and Shun." That was obviously exaggerated.
Yes, he did accomplish some administrative reforms.
But what he did even more effectively was intensify internal contradictions within the Jin state.
Under pressure from Jurchen aristocrats, his policies consistently upheld the principle of "Jurchen first."
Put plainly, that meant exploiting everyone who was not Jurchen.
Take taxation, for example.
Han people in the north paid four parts tax.
Southerners paid six.
Khitan and Xi peoples were treated as herding populations.
Jurchens paid none.
Moreover, Jurchens were automatically estate heads, with authority over the serf households attached to them.
Historian Zhou Gucheng bluntly stated in General History of China that during the Dading era, rebellions among the common people were unusually frequent.
That alone showed how much embellishment lay behind the so-called "Lesser Yao and Shun."
At the same time, when facing the rising threat of the Mongol tribes on the northern steppe, Wanyan Yong came up with a policy that was brutally straightforward.
Population reduction.
Every few years, Jin forces would ride out onto the steppe and conduct sweeping raids, pushing deep into the wastelands, slaughtering as they went.
They even implemented the so-called thumb-cutting method, severing the thumbs of steppe youths to cripple their ability to fight.
And each expedition conveniently brought back captives to replenish the serf population.
At the time, it was said that in Shandong and Hebei, almost every household bought Tartar slave children. Most had been seized by the army during those raids.
In short, the Jin state was busy playing slave master and hunting for more slaves. Their enthusiasm for invading the south was therefore extremely low.
For Xin Qiji, however, the Song-Jin peace felt deeply unnatural.
When he captured Zhang Anguo alive and defected south to Song, he was only twenty-three.
Young, ambitious, and burning with confidence.
At that time the court frequently discussed northern campaigns, and it seemed that fulfilling his grandfather Xin Zan's final wish was within reach.
But only two years later, the Longxing Northern Expedition collapsed disastrously, and the peace faction once again took control.
At twenty-six, Xin Qiji refused to give up.
He spent an entire year compiling all his thoughts from the previous two decades. His analyses of Jin, his plans for northern campaigns, his strategies for resistance.
He gathered everything into the ten-thousand-word Ten Essays on Meiqin and presented it to Emperor Xiaozong. He also submitted the Nine Proposals to Chancellor Yu Yunwen, hoping to raise the banner of northern expedition once more.
No one paid him the slightest attention.
Later in life, Xin Qiji looked back on that period with bitterness.
He wrote that his ten-thousand-word strategy to pacify the north was traded for a book about planting trees for some local official.
He lamented that iron once forged into swords now had to be sold and melted down into farming tools.
It was not hard to understand why.
At that time, the retired emperor Zhao Gou was busy asserting ownership over the toilets of Lin'an and scolding Emperor Xiaozong, his adopted son, as though he were a grandson.
The peace faction returned in force.
To them, Xin Qiji, a returnee from the north, represented only four words.
Utterly out of step with the times.
Still, the Ten Essays on Meiqin clearly showed his fierce patriotism. Ignoring him completely would look bad.
So he was soon assigned to local posts instead. Over the next twenty years he rotated through Jiankang, Chuzhou, Jiangxi, and other regions.
In 1180 he was transferred to Hunan. There he faced rampant banditry and uncooperative government troops.
After endless effort, pleading with superiors and negotiating everywhere, Xin Qiji finally managed to train a force known as the Flying Tiger Army to maintain order.
The bandits were wiped out.
Xin Qiji was then accused of spending money like sand and killing people like grass. He was stripped of office and reduced to commoner status.
As a youth he dreamed of resisting Jin.
As a young man he sought to bring peace to the people.
Now in middle age he could only compose poems in the countryside, pouring his blood into verses.
That was not an easy life.
Climbing mountains to admire the scenery, he sighed that he wanted to speak but stopped himself, merely remarking that autumn was pleasantly cool.
Staying overnight in a temple, he wrote of being startled awake at the western window, unable to sleep as the west wind swept across the ground.
A swordsman once capable of charging into battle, killing generals and breaking formations, was forced instead to become what later generations praised as the Dragon of Ci Poetry.
Seven years after his dismissal, he met the pro-war writer Chen Liang at Qianshan.
The two discussed strategies against Jin, lamented the fading hope of northern expedition, and encouraged one another.
The famous poem Broken Array was written at that time. Chen Liang was also known as Chen Tongfu.
A treasured sword lay buried in dust.
Great ambitions found no outlet.
A hero had grown old.]
Seeing Xin Qiji's poems appear one after another, Liu Bei seemed to understand more and more why later generations admired the man so deeply and never forgot him.
Zhang Fei laughed.
"It is nothing remarkable that later generations remember the name of elder brother's horse. But looking at this Jin state, it really does remind me of that line, keep the music playing, keep the dancing going."
Even Zhuge Liang could not help laughing along.
After the laughter faded, what remained was regret for a hero whose ambitions could not be fulfilled.
"If given the choice," Zhuge Liang said softly, "this Xin Qiji would probably prefer to serve as the first soldier climbing the walls in a northern expedition. He would accept it gladly."
"With Jin beset by both internal and external troubles, if a northern campaign were conducted steadily, step by step, with mutual support and without reckless pursuit of glory…"
"The great enterprise might not be impossible."
Zhang Fei snorted.
"That retired emperor of Song probably thinks building two more toilets is more practical than planning any grand enterprise."
"Perfectly in keeping with the times."