……

"It seems that Zhao Kuangyin is not completely useless."

Li Shimin looked at the series of policies implemented by Zhao Kuangyin to reduce the cost of learning on the sky curtain and felt his eyes brighten.

Promoting education, popularizing paper and printing, lowering the cost of learning, allowing people from poor backgrounds to afford to go to school, and breaking the monopoly of knowledge by the aristocratic families seems to be a way to reduce the influence of the aristocratic families.

"There's no need to talk about paper. If we can lower the price of printing technology, and the imperial court builds schools..."

The more Li Shimin spoke, the brighter the light in his eyes became. He hurriedly sent someone to call Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui, two of his think tanks, to discuss relevant matters together.

……

[This is an era when the emperor is the least valuable, and even time travelers are afraid to avoid it. ]

[Many people know about the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, but few know about the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, which lasted for 53 years between the Tang and Song dynasties.]

[Mainly because this period of history is too confusing.]

[If we want to understand the history of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, we have to mention the most famous failed student we mentioned earlier, Huang Chao. ]

[You can simply regard Huang Chao as Zhang Jiao who shouted "The blue sky is dead, the yellow sky should be established" in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, and the various military governors of the Tang Dynasty were various princes like Cao Cao and Liu Bei. ]

[At the beginning, the goals of all the princes were the same. No matter what their relationship was, they had to first defeat the peasant uprising army, and then take revenge and redress.]

[In the process of suppressing Huang Chao, two groups of people stood out the most. ]

[Among them was Li Keyong, the governor of Hebei, who had thirteen generals under his command.]

[The other route was taken by Xuanwu Jiedushi Zhu Wen. ]

[Zhu Wen was born in a poor family. Later, he joined the Huang Chao rebels and became a general under Huang Chao. When he saw that Huang Chao could not accomplish anything, he surrendered to the Tang Dynasty. ]

【At that time, Emperor Xizong of Tang, who had fled to Sichuan after being beaten by the rebels, was already in a state of panic. He did not care whether Zhu Wen surrendered sincerely or not. He directly gave Kaifeng to him and named him Quanzhong, hoping that he would be loyal to the Tang Dynasty.】

【But judging from the final result, this name is simply a huge irony. 】

[In 882 AD, Li Keyong of Hedong Taiyuan, who was born in the Shatuo tribe, led 13 Shatuo cavalry to attack Chang'an. He was brave and good at fighting. He could kill two birds with one arrow at the age of 15 and had been on the battlefield at the age of . Because his voice was hoarse like a crow when he gave orders, everyone called him "Li Yaer" behind his back.]

[The troops led by Li Keyong were also called the 'Crow Army']

[Li Keyong's joining quickly reversed the war, and Huang Chao was defeated and fled. Finally, under the joint attack of Zhu Wen and Li Keyong, the great hero Huang Chao finally became hated in Langhu Valley, and the Huang Chao uprising was quelled.]

[Li Keyong defeated Huang Chao and recovered Chang'an. His military exploits ranked first among the princes. He and Zhu Wen were called the "two heroes of the late Tang Dynasty"]

[However, these two brothers who have been through life and death together still have a blood feud. ]

[Originally, during the campaign against Huang Chao, Li Keyong had saved Zhu Wen's life, but Zhu Wen regarded Li Keyong as a serious threat and wanted to find an opportunity to get rid of him.]

[So after pacifying Huang Chao, Zhu Wen hosted a banquet for Li Keyong. After getting Li Keyong drunk, he set a fire in an attempt to burn him to death. Unexpectedly, it suddenly rained heavily that night, and Li Keyong was able to escape under the cover of his subordinates, but his adopted son Shi Jingsi and the 300 Qing soldiers who accompanied him to the banquet all died in the battle.]

[From then on, Li Keyong and Zhu Wen formed a life-and-death feud. ]

……

"He repays kindness with hatred, his wolfish ambition is obvious!"

Li Shimin frowned, his eyes revealing worry.

I feel sorry and sad that the Tang Dynasty was destroyed at the hands of such people.

……

[Li Keyong was a man of quick temper and impulsive, but he was always loyal to the Tang Dynasty.]

[Although he sometimes obeyed the emperor's orders but not his orders, whenever the emperor was in trouble, he would be the first to lead his troops to help him.]

[In 895 AD, Fengxiang Jiedushi Li Maozhen and others rebelled and attacked Chang'an. Emperor Zhaozong fled. It was Li Keyong who first sent troops to defeat Li Maozhen and sent Emperor Zhaozong back to Chang'an intact.]

【Li Keyong was awarded the title of King of Jin for his merits and took control of the Hedong area.】

[In 903 AD, Zhu Wen took advantage of Li Keyong's suppression of Li Maozhen to enter Chang'an and became the Prime Minister, controlling the government. At the same time, he killed eunuchs, physically curing the problem of eunuchs' disorderly politics in the Tang Dynasty that lasted for years, and completely turned Tang Zhaozong into his puppet. Zhu Wen then moved the capital to Luoyang.]

[Li Keyong's subordinate Liu Rengong also added fuel to the fire and defected to Zhu Wen. After that, he and Zhu Wen often targeted Li Keyong. ]

……

"The traitor Zhu Wen wants to learn from the traitor Cao and usurp power!" Liu Bei, looking at the sky, felt that the scene before him was too familiar.

Isn’t this the same series of actions that Cao Cao took back then?
However, Zhu Wen had no bottom line and his intention of rebellion was obvious.

……

【Because Zhu Wen was worried that Emperor Zhaozong of Tang would contact other vassal states to attack him, he simply killed Emperor Zhaozong and made the young prince Li Zhu the emperor. 】

[In order to completely clear the obstacles to his usurpation of the throne, Zhu Wen purged all the officials from the aristocratic families in the court and dumped their bodies into the Yellow River, which is known in history as the White Horse Posthouse Disaster.]

[In 907 AD, Emperor Ai of Tang, Li Zhu, issued an edict to usurp the throne to Prince of Liang, Zhu Wen, and the Tang Dynasty was declared extinct. Zhu Wen ascended the throne and established the Liang Dynasty, with Kaifeng as the Eastern Capital and Luoyang as the Western Capital, which was known in history as the Later Liang Dynasty.]

……

"This guy is simply a combination of Cao Cao and Dong Zhuo!"

Liu Bei's face changed. He didn't expect that Zhu Wen was even more shameless than he had imagined.

At least Cao Cao never proclaimed himself emperor until his death. Zhu Wen had much less bottom line than Cao Cao.

But think about it, considering that there are people like the Sima family who killed the king in the street, it is understandable that Zhu Wen would act without any scruples.

……

[At this time, the actual territory controlled by the Later Liang was only Henan. The Southern Han, Ma Chu, Wuyue, Min Kingdom, and Nanping in the south only submitted to the Later Liang in name, while Wang Jian in Sichuan established the Former Shu on his own. Yang Wo in Jianghuai still regarded himself as the King of Wu of the Tang Dynasty and refused to submit to the Later Liang.]

[In the two most powerful vassal states in the north, Li Keyong, the Prince of Jin, and Li Maozhen, the Prince of Qi, still regarded the Tang Dynasty as the orthodox dynasty and attacked Zhu Wen in the name of revenge for the Tang Emperor.]

[Zhu Wen was furious. When the Tang Dynasty was still around, you didn't respect the Emperor much. But when the Tang Dynasty fell, you all became loyal ministers of the Tang Dynasty.]

[Li Keyong was not only a good fighter himself, he also trained thirteen sons who were also good fighters. Except for his biological son Li Cunxu, the other twelve were adopted sons. Each of these adopted sons was very capable, and they were all named Taibao by him, so they were also called the Thirteen Taibao.]

[The most famous among them is his thirteenth son Li Cunxiao, who is extremely strong and can be said to be invincible in the world, and is as famous as Xiang Yu, the Overlord of Western Chu. As the saying goes, "No general is better than Li, and no king is better than Xiang." The "Li" here refers to Li Cunxiao.]

[In the comments of later generations, there is "There was a Li Yuanba in the early Tang Dynasty and a Li Cunxiao in the late Tang Dynasty. They both hated the sky for not having a handle and hated the earth for not having a ring." This means that if the sky had a handle, they could pull it down, and if the earth had a ring, they could lift it up.]

……

"Is there really such a brave person in the world?"

Zhang Fei had a look of disbelief on his face. He rolled up his sleeves and looked at the sky in dissatisfaction.

Looking at Zhang Fei with a confident look on his face, Liu Bei shook his head and laughed.

Ever since Lu Bu's death, the second and third brothers have been feeling extremely lonely, as if no other heroes in the world could catch their eyes.

……

[After Li Keyong died of illness, his eldest son Li Cunxu inherited the throne of King of Jin. ]

[Li Cunxu was a brave warrior and good at strategy. He defeated Zhu Wen in the Battle of Luzhou right after he ascended the throne.]

【Zhu Wen, 57 years old at the time, had realized that it would be difficult to unify the north in his lifetime, so he set his sights on his son. At that time, warlords had the habit of adopting adopted sons. Zhu Wen had eight biological sons and five adopted sons. Among them, Zhu Wen's favorites were his adopted son Zhu Youwen and Zhu Youwen's wife Wang. 】

[Rumor has it that Zhu Wen had affairs with his daughters-in-law.]

[When Zhu Wen was seriously ill, he wanted to pass the throne to Zhu Youwen, but this secret was told to her husband Zhu Yougui by his daughter-in-law Zhang, who was Zhu Wen's oldest biological son.]

[Zhu Yougui was very angry when he found out that his father did not want to pass the throne to him, so he led his troops into the palace, killed his father and ascended the throne, and also forged an imperial edict to execute Zhu Youwen.]

[However, after Zhu Yougui ascended the throne, he was extremely licentious and all the royal family and military officers were dissatisfied with him. Zhu Wen's other biological son, Prince Jun Zhu Youzhen, took the opportunity to launch a coup and ascended the throne to become emperor.]

[After this internal conflict, the Later Liang Dynasty was severely damaged, while Li Cunxu in the west continued to grow stronger. ]

[In 923 AD, Li Cunxu proclaimed himself emperor and named the country Tang, marking the beginning of the second Later Tang dynasty of the Five Dynasties.]

[It is said that Li Keyong gave Li Cunxu three arrows before his death. These three arrows represent the three people who had betrayed him - Zhu Wen, Liu Rengong and Yelu Abaoji. ]

[He told Li Cunxu to destroy these three enemies to comfort his soul in heaven.]

[Li Cunxu was no pushover either. He not only inherited his father's bravery and fighting skills, but also his will. After that, every time he completed a task, he would send an arrow back to the ancestral temple. Later, he pacified Liu Rengong, conquered the Later Liang, and defeated the Khitan, finally fulfilling his father's last wish.]

[It is worth mentioning that although later historical books believe that the Later Tang Dynasty succeeded the Later Liang Dynasty, at that time the Later Tang Dynasty still claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Tang Dynasty and did not recognize the Later Liang Dynasty. ]

[After the Later Tang conquered Kaifeng and destroyed the Later Liang, it subsequently annexed Li Maozhen's Qi State and destroyed the Former Shu in Sichuan, bringing the Later Tang's territory to its peak. ] (End of this chapter)