"Sigh. A strong fortress."
Liu Bei let out a long, sentimental breath, as if the ruined scene before him stirred memories.
"Sigh. A normal man."
Zhang Fei sighed along with him.
That moved Liu Bei slightly. As expected, the Third Brother understood him best.
He slapped his thigh at once.
"How can a strong city not be defended? How can it not be fought for?"
Zhang Fei nodded vigorously.
"Exactly what Big Brother said. To hand it over without sending even a single soldier out… what kind of sense does that make?"
"Well said, Third Brother. And to burn such a mighty city to the ground besides, bringing disaster upon the people. That truly is the work of bandits!"
"Right you are, Big Brother. Burning a city and harming the people is really… wait. Which strong city are you talking about?"
"The one right before us, this ruined shell of Luoyang. Which one were you talking about, Yide?"
"The one I meant… was also Luoyang."
Zhuge Liang and Lu Su sat side by side. The two exchanged a glance and smiled.
Seeing this, Zhang Fei scratched his head and forced out a laugh, quickly adding,
"I mean… the Jin capital at Zhongdu. Yuzhou's city held out even when surrounded by three Mongol armies. What's there to fear?"
"And that Jin emperor even sent them gold, grain, and a princess. Sounds just like a Song emperor."
Liu Bei instinctively began thinking seriously about whether his Third Brother was insulting one side or praising the other. Before he could reach any conclusion, Lu Su spoke softly,
"When the Jin first rose, they rode light cavalry out of Liaodong straight for Bianliang. The Song emperor fled his capital in terror, and the state fell."
"And now the Jin once again ride from Liaodong and Yuzhou toward Bianliang. This time, the result is that the court crosses south and relocates the capital."
"A difference of barely a century. One led to the fall of a state, the other happened because a state fell. Truly something to sigh over."
Zhang Fei sighed along with him.
"At this point, who can even tell Jin and Song apart anymore? Who can tell which one's surnamed Wanyan and which one's Zhao?"
Liu Bei had initially wanted to laugh. But then he thought of the common people of Hebei, harshly ruled by the Jin and looked down upon by the Song. Now the Jin were about to fall, and the Mongols were coming. There had not been a single day of peace for them.
And if one counted it out, the Mongol Yuan dynasty would last barely a century. Later scholars even judged its founder to possess martial virtue alone, which suggested life for the Han people might not improve much at all.
"So for Hebei to truly know peace… must it really wait another hundred years until the Ming?"
The small courtyard inevitably filled with quiet sighs.
Then Lu Su found himself startled by the sheer length of Genghis Khan's western campaign route.
"Are the tribes of the steppe all this capable of migration?"
Whether it was the Xiongnu, the Turks, or these Mongols, they all seemed able to move thousands of li without effort.
And the Mongols' title as the "Scourge of God" had been mentioned more than once. Their feat of reaching Europe was something everyone remembered.
Liu Bei slapped his thigh again and said,
"We Han people, in the end, always struggle to leave our homeland. These steppe folk don't have that burden."
"Big Brother, we've been away from our home in Zhuo Commandery for nearly thirty years ourselves."
Liu Bei's eye twitched. His right hand had already lifted when Zhang Fei continued,
"But we'll definitely be able to go back next year at the latest. I just wonder whether anyone's repaired my ancestral graves."
Liu Bei sighed inwardly. Suddenly he, too, wondered whether the great mulberry tree of his childhood, the one two men could barely encircle, was still standing.
Thinking of the northern lands reminded him that something seemed to be missing from the light-screen's story.
"Right now Khwarazm is rising, the Mongols are heading west to clash with them, and the Jin are weakening and moving south. Why doesn't the Southern Song seize the chance and strike together with the rebel armies to restore the realm?"
Zhuge Liang and Lu Su exchanged a look. Then Lu Su sighed.
"Even Han Tuozhou, who once dominated the court, could still be assassinated by Shi Miyuan, his head sent to the enemy."
"With such a weak emperor on the Song throne, how could he restrain a peace-faction chancellor like Shi?"
"It's easy to guess what happens next. With Jin and Mongols locked in battle, the Southern Song will likely see the chancellor monopolize power again, and year after year they'll send tribute to maintain peace."
By this point the two of them could not fail to understand the chaos of the Song court. Before the Northern Song fell, it was the struggle between New Policies and Old. Afterward, in the Southern Song, it became the struggle between the war faction and the peace faction.
Men like Shi Miyuan had risen through advocating peace. No matter how favorable the situation became, they would never reverse course.
If Han Tuozhou had still held power now, perhaps the dynasty might still have had one last chance to fight for Heaven's mandate.
But then Lu Su remembered how the Kaixi Northern Expedition had turned into the Taihe Southern invasion, and he shook his head from the bottom of his heart. Perhaps it would not have made any difference.
"One can only sigh… Xin Qiji and Lu You will never live to see Song armies recover the Central Plains."
Liu Bei also felt the regret. He imagined that talented young man a thousand years later, full of ability yet with nowhere to use it, forced to let time grind him down into old age. At last he believed a chance had come to fulfill his ambitions, only to discover it was merely a gesture for reputation's sake.
And so he beat the railings, recalling the lament he once uttered:
"Among the heroes of the world, who could be my equal?"
At last his gaze returned to the light-screen, and he pronounced judgment:
"Temujin unified the steppe for decades, plundered Western Xia and Jin, and even conquered Western Liao without a real fight. Khwarazm's foundations are still unstable. They will certainly lose!"
Then he added, a bit curious,
"What sort of position is this 'Western Governor'?"
[Lightscreen]
[In modern histories, the cause of the Mongol–Khwarazm war is usually traced to the massacre of a trade caravan.
The arrogant Ala ad-Din Muhammad II allowed his subordinates to slaughter Mongol merchants and mistreated the envoys Temujin sent afterward. This ultimately forced Temujin to seek armed redress and declare war on Khwarazm.
But realistically, anyone can see that Mongol expansion was built entirely on conquest. Temujin himself once said, "The greatest joy for a man is to subdue, defeat, and seize everything." A people like that hardly look inclined to reason things out.
The true cause is not difficult to guess. The Mongols, at that time the strongest gang of bullies in the world, had begun learning statecraft.
In the early years of Mongol rise, Han Chinese fleeing Jin oppression gradually moved north into the steppe to serve them.
Later, after the victory at the Battle of Yehuling, large numbers of Khitan and Han soldiers who had served Jin surrendered and joined the Mongol army.
Among the more notable was Guo Baoyu, said to be a descendant of Guo Ziyi. After joining the Mongols, he offered Temujin many suggestions on military governance, most of which were adopted.
For instance: destroy Western Liao first, forbid arbitrary killing within the army, treat punishments cautiously, conscript monks and Daoists directly into service, and abolish harsh policies that harmed farming populations.
Eventually, after suffering setbacks beneath the walls of Yanjing, Temujin led his forces west. His plan was to crush Kuchlug, the remnant of the Naiman tribe, and at the same time sweep up the remaining Merkit and Naiman groups, ensuring there would be only one voice on the steppe.
In the early stage of this western campaign, the Mongol general Subutai was ordered to pursue the surviving Merkit. He chased them westward past the Chu River in a long running pursuit.
This situation soon reached the ears of Ala ad-Din Muhammad II, the local ruler. He immediately gathered more than sixty thousand men, intending to profit from the chaos.
Once he confirmed the Mongols had not turned back, he launched a sudden raid on their camp, seized women, children, and spoils, and withdrew.
At the time, Temujin's eldest son Jochi had just conquered the Kyrgyz. After joining forces with Subutai, he initially planned to settle matters diplomatically, following the principle that even a powerful dragon should not provoke a local snake.
Instead, his restraint only earned Ala ad-Din Muhammad II's contempt.
"I've got sixty thousand troops. Why would I fear your twenty thousand? None of you are leaving today!"]