Chapter 85

The Taiji Hall of the Great Tang.

The night wind made the giant tallow candles inside the hall sway wildly.

Wax drippings pooled on the bronze stands.

Li Shimin stood with his hands behind his back before the massive Map of the Great Tang Territory, his silhouette radiating a weight beyond ordinary comprehension.

"From the bottom upward… terrifying kinetic energy."

Why is the Great Tang not as prosperous as the later ages?

Because the Great Tang's social strata are stagnant water.

The great clans monopolize books and monopolize the path to officialdom.

The lower-class farmers see no hope, so they seek only a full meal.

Throughout the realm, only that tiny handful of clans keeps turning.

But in the later ages, a system called "gaokao" unleashed the greed, ambition, and longing of every single person under heaven.

Countless commoners, seeking to change their fate, unleashed cataclysmic power.

"Summon!" Li Shimin turned. His eyes blazed.

"Order Fang Xuanling and Zhangsun Wuji to enter the palace immediately—through the secret gate!"

Two incense sticks later.

Two core ministers of the Great Tang Empire, cloaks damp with dew, strode into the side hall.

"Your servant kneels to…"

"Stand!" Li Shimin stepped forward and seized both men by the elbows.

He pulled them to a writing desk.

On the desk lay the Great Tang's imperial examination regulations.

"Have you two ministers understood what the Sky Screen meant by 'Involution'?"

Zhangsun Wuji's face was grave; he nodded: "The later ages use civil service exams as bait, compelling all under heaven to pour their full strength into scholarship."

"This method gathers the wisdom of the entire realm."

Li Shimin struck the desk with his finger. "Our Great Tang imperial examinations test poetry, prose, and classical interpretation."

"All these books are locked in the great clans' private libraries!"

"How can poor scholars even touch the covers? What can they use to take the exam? What can they use to Involve?"

Fang Xuanling lowered his eyes: "Your Majesty speaks truly."

"The aristocratic clans monopolize history and classics. Our Great Tang imperial examinations are merely a stage for clan sons to change their titles and enter court."

"I will change it!" Li Shimin slammed his palm onto the regulations.

"Next year's special examination—add two subjects beyond poetry and classical interpretation!"

"Arithmetic! And Agriculture!"

Fang Xuanling lifted his head, drawing a sharp breath.

"Your Majesty! These two disciplines have always been regarded by the clans as mere tricks and lowly arts!"

"If included in the examination, the entire aristocracy will rise up against you."

Li Shimin spoke coldly: "I will test precisely what they disdain."

"The clans won't study it—the poor will."

"The farmer's son understands farming; the accountant's son understands arithmetic."

"As long as they understand, as long as they pass, I will give them official posts!"

"I will use Arithmetic and Agriculture to tear open the iron seal the clans have locked over the bureaucracy."

"I will make the Great Tang's lower classes know: beyond reading those stale, pretentious texts, farming and accounting can also lead to office! Can also change one's fate!"

Zhangsun Wuji and Fang Xuanling exchanged a glance.

Both saw in the other's eyes the shock of a world turned upside down.

Weekend.

Xiao Sizi sat at her desk, practicing writing Arabic Numerals.

After the recent parent-group turmoil and the analysis of "Involution," this Tang princess had developed an instinctive urgency toward the modern education system.

She poured all the Tang Imperial Family's obsession with never losing into these few textbooks.

Lin Xuan walked over and took the pencil from her hand.

"Today is Saturday. School is off."

Lin Xuan returned the pencil to the pencil holder and closed the practice book.

Xiao Sizi looked up, her eyes filled with faint confusion.

"A string stretched too tight will snap."

Lin Xuan turned, took a light windbreaker from the coat rack, and tossed it into her lap.

"Put it on. I'm taking you out to clear your head."

…

The city center.

The Modern Technology Exhibition Center.

A vast steel framework supports a transparent dome.

Sunlight is sliced by Glass, casting onto the polished marble floor.

Lin Xuan held Xiao Sizi's hand and bypassed the noisy industrial robotic arm exhibit on the first floor.

They took the escalator directly to the third-floor atrium.

The double glass doors slid open to either side.

Hum—!

Xiao Sizi stopped walking and lifted her gaze.

The central courtyard's midair.

Three hundred pure-black quadcopter drones were performing a matrix formation demonstration.

Red and blue signal lights flashed alternately beneath their fuselages.

The propellers spun at high speed, shredding the air and lifting the cold metal shells.

Under unified computer control, the three hundred machines rose, hovered, and interwove in perfect sync.

The swarm transformed into various geometric shapes in midair, movements perfectly synchronized.

Xiao Sizi's lips parted slightly as she pointed upward.

"Geese flying south must flap their wings."

"They've abandoned wings—do they fly on those four spinning discs above their heads?"

Lin Xuan, standing beside her, explained: "Those are propellers."

"Motors turn the blades, pushing air downward to generate upward lift for the fuselage."

"This is called a drone."

Xiao Sizi retracted her finger, lost in thought.

"The Mozi records that Gongshu Ban carved bamboo and wood into a magpie, which, once completed, flew for three days without landing."

"Father once said it was merely a superstitious tale to fool the common folk."

"No human-made object can surpass the heavens' barrier."

She turned her gaze back to the metallic flying devices.

"So it's not a superstition—just that craftsmen hadn't yet reached that level of skill."

……

The Three Kingdoms timeline.

Shu Han, Qishan Camp.

On the table lay a massive sheepskin scroll, covered entirely in diagrams of gears and mortise-tenon joints.

Zhuge Liang sat cross-legged on a mat, gently waving a white feather fan in his right hand.

Exclamations rose from outside the tent.

He lifted his head, his gaze passing through the tent's seam toward the heavens.

The fan's handle slipped from his fingers.

The eternal sage, who had spent his entire life designing wooden gears and inventing the Wooden Ox and Flowing Horse to replace human labor for grain transport, sat stunned, mouth agape.

Zhuge Liang's voice dry, he murmured to himself:

"Without taking the form of birds or beasts, merely through rotating mechanisms, can one break free from the earth?"

……

Keji Bolan Zhongxin exhibition booth.

A male presenter in professional attire raised a microphone.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please look at Booth One."

"What we are demonstrating now is our company's newly developed Heavy Agricultural Plant Protection Drone."

An octocopter with a rotor span exceeding one and a half meters powered up.

Eight large propellers roared with deafening noise.

The airflow straightened the surrounding display ribbons.

The drone, carrying a large white plastic water tank, slowly lifted off the ground and hovered two meters above the ground.

The presenter glanced at the parameter board in his hand and announced loudly:

"This model has an empty takeoff weight of thirty kilograms."

"Maximum effective payload: fifty kilograms."

"Under full load, it withstands wind force up to level six and has a flight endurance of up to fifty minutes."

The presenter pressed a button on the Remote Control in his hand.

The drone smoothly drifted ten meters to the right.

"In open environments, its video transmission and remote control range reaches fifteen kilometers."

Lin Xuan lowered his head, understanding the doubt in Xiao Sizi's eyes.

"Fifty kilograms is your Tang Dynasty's one hundred jin."

Lin Xuan converted the units: "Fifty minutes is roughly half an hour."

"Fifteen kilometers is thirty li…"