"Big brother… do you have a problem with His Majesty Second Phoenix?"
Hearing his third brother's curious question, Liu Bei touched his face and denied it at once.
"To Emperor Taizong of Tang, we are all long-dead men."
"Hundreds of years separate us from the Tang. What grievance could there be?"
Zhang Fei nodded, then pressed on.
"Then… do you have a problem with Chengdu?"
Liu Bei fell silent for a moment, caught off guard. Luckily, Zhuge Liang smiled and stepped in.
"Later generations praise the Tang palaces as if heaven's gates opened to reveal them. Compared to that, Chengdu's scenery would naturally seem ordinary."
With that light remark, he smoothly shifted the topic. Turning back toward Liu Bei, he then asked the fierce general beside him:
"Yide, in your view… after the Kaixi defeat, is war still possible?"
The moment the discussion turned to military affairs, Zhang Fei's expression hardened.
He glanced at the map behind the strategist, tried to recall the situation shown earlier on the light screen, and finally shook his head.
"The volunteer forces have lost heart. Several fronts have already collapsed. Even suppressing the Yi Province rebellion only helped a little in the larger picture."
"Even if that corrupt Shi faction hadn't seized power, the best a capable commander could do would be to fortify defenses while the enemy's generals died of illness… or use the threat of breaking peace talks as bait to lure the Jin south into overconfidence. Maybe then something could be achieved."
Zhuge Liang nodded.
Zhang Fei's analysis was steady, practical, and even contained workable strategy.
He truly had the makings of a great general.
Seeing the strategist remain silent after nodding, Zhang Fei looked around and suddenly grinned.
"That Southern Song woman writes good poetry! I like it."
Of course, it wasn't that Xin Qiji wrote poorly. But to Zhang Fei, those shorter, almost pre-Qin-style lines were simply easier to recite.
"Still… the Southern Song really is funny."
"Usually they brag their achievements surpass Gaozu, and that their generals outmatch even the Second Phoenix Emperor. But once they actually fight… heh…"
That remark reminded everyone that the Song emperors really had looked down on Han Gaozu, Emperor Wu of Han, and Emperor Taizong of Tang.
But remembering the disgrace of the southward flight…
Zhang Fei snorted.
"Xiang Yu was reckless and crude, yet in the Song he'd count as both hero in life and champion in death."
"And that Shinwan-Ge, slick and tricky—"
He stopped mid-sentence when he noticed Lu Su nearby, then awkwardly corrected himself.
"Clever and adaptable. Unified the great clans while still young. No wonder the Song admired him."
Lu Su couldn't help but laugh.
Before committing himself to Liu Bei, General Yide used to speak without restraint.
Now he measured every word.
He nodded to Zhang Fei, then added thoughtfully:
"For a woman to leave her name through talent alone… that is worth praising."
But recalling how later generations once mentioned Li Qingzhao wished to take a young girl as disciple, only to be told that literary talent "was not a woman's affair," Lu Su suddenly understood the melancholy hidden behind her poems.
When, exactly, had the Southern Song lost Heaven's mandate?
He asked himself silently.
At the Kaixi defeat?
At the Longxing defeat?
Or at the Shaoxing peace?
No.
It had happened the moment they chose to flee south.
From that point on, they no longer possessed the will to rule all under Heaven.
Perhaps their only real chance to save the collapsing state had been Yue Fei.
But sadly…
The Twelve Imperial Summons shattered that hope completely.
Looking again at the ill-fated scholars before and after Kaixi, Lu Su found their state of mind strangely familiar.
How helpless it all felt.
Years ago, he had once dreamed of marching north with Sun and Liu to destroy Cao, then competing with Zhuge Liang afterward.
Now that dream too had become an impossible wish.
Zhuge Liang naturally could not guess the full complexity of Lu Su's thoughts, but from his expression he understood enough.
So he simply leaned forward slightly and spoke in a low voice:
"I may have a hundred things to say… yet in the end I hold only one wish."
"That the people may live in peace."
---
Bianliang Palace
Inside the hall, Zhao Guangyi felt that his elder brother's silence was… abnormal.
Even without putting himself in the situation, the act of presenting a Song chancellor's severed head to the Jin was enough to make him suck in cold air.
Instinct told him the Southern Song was doomed.
His brother cherished the Song dynasty's foundation like treasure.
Normally, he should be raging, venting, or at least finding someone to scold for amusement.
But now…
The Zhao Kuangyin simply lay on his couch staring at the light screen, looking as if his soul had wandered elsewhere.
He should have been relieved that he wasn't being punished.
Yet the quieter his brother became, the more uneasy he felt.
On the other side, the current chief minister Zhao Pu was absentmindedly rubbing his neck as if thinking about something, and that Liu Han imperial physician clearly couldn't be relied upon either.
Maybe… he should try to comfort his brother?
Life might be hard now, but at least they were alive.
He definitely didn't want tomorrow's Bianliang rumors to say:
"The Prince of Jin has fallen ill and withdrawn from court,"
and that "a monk at Xiangguo Temple passed away yesterday, dharma name Kongjiong…"
He hurriedly spoke:
"Brother, Han Tuozhou was a treacherous minister. Sending his head may be humiliating, but at least it removed a national traitor."
"Brother, since Zhao Gou descends from Dechang, why not exile the Li mother and son to Yi Province, strip their surname, and erase them from the clan records to prevent future trouble?"
He remembered clearly: Zhao Dechang was Emperor Zhenzong of Song. Even if the Northern Song later lost its line, the root of the problem still traced back there.
Master Kongjiong was remarkably detached about such things.
But at last, Zhao Kuangyin snapped out of his wandering thoughts.
His already dark face now looked like it could drip water.
"So Han Tuozhou is a traitor… yet those who colluded with imperial in-laws to assassinate a chancellor and humiliate the state are loyal ministers?"
He shook his head, then said thoughtfully:
"If you're so good with words, why don't you go serve as envoy to the Khitans and persuade them to recognize our Song as the rightful ruler of Huaxia?"
Zhao Pu was awakened by loud sobbing.
Turning his head, he saw a bald man clutching the emperor's chair leg, crying himself hoarse.
[Lightscreen]
[At the start of the 13th century, before the Kaixi Northern Expedition, the Song–Jin situation was already rotten beyond repair.
In the Southern Song, Han Tuozhou's authoritarian ambitions and Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucian faction fought each other viciously. Though they later reached temporary reconciliation, Han Tuozhou's obvious push for northern war made the Jin extremely nervous.
On the Jin side, the situation was even simpler.
After Wanyan Yong died, Wanyan Jing took the throne. Facing natural disasters, he responded by printing excessive paper currency, expanding bureaucracy, and launching massive palace construction.
Not exactly slaughtering the chicken for its eggs in one stroke…
More like sustainably draining the pond dry.
When Wanyan Liang was alive, he established paper money stores modeled after the Song. The largest note was only ten strings of cash.
Later, Wanyan Yong rose with support from Jurchen nobles, and obviously had little control over those illiterate aristocrats. If they needed money, they simply printed more.
During that period, Jin notes reached denominations of ten thousand strings, and were repeatedly abolished and replaced. Even ten-thousand-string bills weren't enough, so they scrapped them and printed new ones.
By the time Wanyan Jing ruled, a ten-thousand-string note could initially buy half a sheep.
After the Kaixi expedition, it could only buy a flatbread.
Two years later, Wanyan Jing died and Wanyan Yongji ascended the throne. At the crucial Battle of Yehuling, just transporting the paper money used to reward soldiers required eighty-four ox carts.
That tells you everything about its purchasing power.
In short, the Song and Jin at that time were like two half-paralyzed men wildly flailing at each other.
And under those circumstances, Mongol pressure suddenly eased.
Which made Genghis Khan, who was in the process of unifying the steppe tribes, very happy indeed.]