Li Shimin faked his death? Then I will be powerful enough to conquer the world!

In the underground Han Palace, the scales of the coiled dragon relief glow faintly under the illumination of the copper lamps in the corners of the hall.

Li Ke sat upright on the rosewood couch beside the dragon throne, his fingers unconsciously stroking the turquoise inlaid on the edge of the couch - that was the material he brought back from Jingzhou that year, and now it has been rubbed to be as smooth as water.

Li Jingye, who was standing at the bottom of the stairs, was dressed in a dark suit. The scabbard of the sword at his waist was still stained with dust from the martial arts training ground this morning. His young face was as tense as a fully drawn bow, and even his breathing was hurried and deliberately suppressed.

"The scouts of the Dark Guard Camp intercepted three secret letters in Mangshan last night."

Li Ke's voice was not loud, but it echoed throughout the hall.

He raised his hand to signal, and the sickle-masked man standing beside him handed a roll of yellowed hemp paper to Li Jingye, "Take a look for yourself."

The handwriting on the hemp paper was sloppy, and there were some dark red spots mixed in the ink. It was recognized that it was a secret writing potion used by the secret guards, which needed to be mixed with pine soot ink to be visible.

The content of the letter made him break out in a cold sweat - it was actually evidence of the Qingzhou governor's secret dealings with the former Goguryeo subordinates. The words "sea support" and "autumn attack on Luoyang" mentioned between the lines burned in his eyes.

"Your grandfather always said that reading military books is not as good as visiting the frontier."

Li Ke suddenly spoke, his eyes passing over Li Jingye's trembling fingertips and settling on the dusk outside the palace. "In the 16th year of the Zhenguan reign, he was besieged by the Goguryeo people in Anshi City. He was out of food for three days and had to rely on boiling saddle leather to fill his stomach."

"At that time, he said that the most reliable thing on the battlefield is not military tactics, but the calluses on the soles of your feet."

Li Jingye looked up suddenly and saw the white hair on Li Ke's temples.

In my memory, the prince who shot down three goshawks with a bow outside the Xuanwu Gate now has wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that reflect the vicissitudes of half the Tang Dynasty.

"From today on, you will be a secret guard." Li Ke's fingers tapped lightly on the edge of the couch, and the rhythm inexplicably matched the sound of the night watchman's clapper outside the hall.

"First, check the accounts at the Qingzhou Governor's Mansion. Remember, the secret guards' knives aren't used to cut people, they're used to cut through the fog."

He paused, his voice adding a subtle warmth. "Back then, your grandfather was caught in the snow at Jishishan Mountain. His personal guards gave their cotton-padded clothes to the wounded and froze themselves into lumps of ice."

"The foundation of this world has never been supported by a knife."

Li Jingye clasped his fists with the strength that only a young man could muster, and the crisp sound of the armor plates colliding echoed in the hall.

Only after his footsteps disappeared outside the palace gate did the man with the sickle mask take a step forward. His voice beneath the bronze mask carried a cold, metallic tone: "General, the waters of Qingzhou are too deep. I'm afraid he's..."

"Shallow waters don't give rise to dragons."

Li Ke stood up and walked to the bronze mirror embedded in the rosewood frame. The mirror surface was polished by the craftsman so that every white hair on the temples could be reflected.

There is a shallow scar at the corner of the eye of the person in the mirror. It was the mark of a stray arrow scratching during the palace coup in the ninth year of Wude. It has now become as faint as a thin crack, but it is faintly visible in the candlelight, as if telling the blood color buried by time.

"If jade is not carved, it will not become a useful object. But the strength of the carving must be controlled well. If it is too light, no pattern will be formed; if it is too heavy, it will break."

"Go prepare the carriage." Li Ke sat back on the couch, his fingertips scratching the turquoise, making subtle sounds. "Tomorrow morning, I will see the Empress and ask her to set up a branch of the Maritime Customs Office in Qingzhou."

"Some undercurrents need to be exposed to the sun."

The tide always rises at dawn on Tokyo's coast.

Li Tai, wrapped in a half-worn brocade robe, stood on the Guanlan Terrace. The sea breeze blew the waves against the railings, and the splashing water droplets condensed into fine frost on the back of his wrinkled hands.

The servant behind him, holding the heater, tried to step forward several times, but was stopped by him with a wave of his hand.

The sea level in the distance was turning pale, and the merchant ship returning to the port was slowly approaching the shore. The "Tang" flag on the mast was fluttering in the sea breeze.

Li Tai looked at the familiar ships and suddenly remembered the scene in the 16th year of Qianwu when he first met Arab merchants in Tokyo Port.

At that time, the port was still a wasteland. He measured the land with his cane, his boots sinking into the mud. His subordinates urged him to return home, but he pointed to the distant sea and said, "This will be the eyes of the Tang Dynasty. It must be able to see the whole world."

Today's Tokyo Port is no longer what it used to be.

The bluestone-paved wharf stretched for ten miles. Persian glass, Silla silk, and Indian spices were piled up like small hills on the pier. Merchants dressed in various clothes bargained in foreign languages ​​mixed with Tang dialect. Even the porters' calls had a hint of exotic tones.

Li Tai looked at all this, his dry lips stretched into a smile, revealing a few loose teeth - these were the flowers he had spent thirty years planting in the east of the Tang Dynasty.

"Stop!"

The sharp sound of an argument suddenly pierced the morning mist. Li Tai turned his head and saw a group of people gathered at the pier. A father and son were confronting each other with red faces.

The boy was about eighteen or nineteen years old. The cuffs of his blue cloth shirt were frayed. He was holding a bundle in his hand and looked like he was going to run away from home.

The middle-aged man opposite him was wearing a respectable brocade gown, but he was shaking with anger. The abacus in his hand fell to the ground, and the beads rolled all over the floor.

"I'm going to Guangzhou to study business. I've made an agreement with Shopkeeper Wang!"

The young man stiffened his neck, his Adam's apple rolling up and down, "You insist on forcing me to take the Mingjing exam. Can you really make a living from all that nonsense?"

"I believed the lies of those businessmen and lost all your mother's dowry!"

The middle-aged man's voice was filled with tears. He bent down to pick up the abacus beads on the ground. His fingers were shaking so much that he couldn't hold a single one. "Do you think doing business is that easy? Last year, Luoyang rice merchants hoarded rice and sold it at a high price. How many families were ruined..."

"That's because you're incompetent!"

"My classmate's father made his living in Persia by selling porcelain, and now he has a three-story house!"

Li Tai's cough interrupted the argument.

He walked slowly over, holding the hand of his servant. His back had actually been hunched under his brocade robe, and his knees made a slight sound with every step he took.

Someone among the crowd recognized him and exclaimed in a low voice, "It's His Royal Highness the Prince of Wei!" The discussions suddenly died down, and even the father and son were stunned and forgot about arguing.

"This abacus is well made." Li Tai bent down to pick it up from the ground, stroking his fingertips along the smooth rosewood frame. "Looking at the patina, it must be twenty years old, right?"

The middle-aged man was stunned for a moment, then nodded and said, "Yes...my father gave it to me when I first started working in this industry."

"At that time, you must have thought that this abacus could calculate mountains of gold and silver." Li Tai smiled, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes squeezed together like dried chrysanthemums in autumn.

When I was young, I also thought I could calculate the territory of the Tang Dynasty."

He looked at the boy, his eyes as gentle as the sea in the morning mist. "You want to go to Guangzhou. Do you know when the ship leaves the port there? Do you know what kind of porcelain the Persian merchants like? Do you know how terrible the storms at sea are?"

The boy opened his mouth, his face flushed red: "I... I can learn."

"You should learn." Li Tai handed the abacus back to the middle-aged man, "But it's not about learning how to make money, it's about learning how to stand firm in the storm."

He turned to look at the middle-aged man, his voice filled with emotion, "In the seventeenth year of Qianwu, I had a kiln opened in Luoyang to produce porcelain, hoping to exchange it for good horses from merchants from the Western Regions."

"When the first batch of porcelain was being loaded onto the ship, it encountered a typhoon and sank. We couldn't even pay the kiln workers."

"At that time, I hid in the accounting office, counting on this same abacus, for a whole night, and the only answer I got was two words: accept your fate."

He paused, looked at the merchant ships in the distance and continued, "But later I realized that some accounts cannot be calculated with an abacus."

"That winter, the kiln workers spontaneously came to visit with rice, saying, 'Your Highness, don't lose heart, we'll keep firing.' You see, the most valuable things in the world are never on the abacus."

The boy's eyes turned red and his grip on the bundle loosened a little.

The middle-aged man opened his mouth and suddenly sighed: "Dad is not stopping you from going, he's just afraid of you..."

"You're afraid he'll fall, so you won't let him walk?"

Li Tai interrupted him, his tone carrying some of the sharpness of the past, "When I competed with Your Majesty for the throne, wasn't there also a big uproar?"

“Sometimes you fall down, and only after you fall do you know which way to go.”

He looked at the boy and said, "If you want to go to Guangzhou, you can. But remember to write home every month to tell us about the high and low tides in the port."

"Once you've carried cargo at the dock and experienced seasickness in the cabin, you'll naturally understand that your father didn't fall down because of his abacus today, but because of his heartache."

The morning sun finally jumped out of the sea, and the golden light sprinkled on the pier, giving everyone a layer of warm light.

The young man suddenly stepped forward and helped his father pick up the scattered abacus beads. He said in a low voice, "Dad, I'm going to tell Shopkeeper Wang to wait another year... I'll learn accounting from you first."

The middle-aged man was stunned, and his eyes instantly turned red.

Li Tai watched this scene and slowly turned around, and the servant quickly handed him a heater.

He didn't answer, but just looked at the sparkling sea and said softly: "Look at this sea, it looks gentle, but the undercurrent underneath can overturn a large ship."

"But it is precisely these undercurrents that bring goods from afar and spread the reputation of the Tang Dynasty."

The sea breeze lifted his brocade robe, revealing his patched undergarment. The courtier whispered, "Your Highness, it's time to return home and take your medicine."

Li Tai shook his head, pointed at the Persian merchants unloading their goods in the distance, and said with a smile, "Look at that Persian merchant. When he came here last year, he could only say 'hello,' but now he can bargain."

"Tokyo is like a sponge. It absorbs everything and creates something new."

His voice gradually lowered, as if he was afraid of disturbing the harbor in the morning light.

The courtier looked at the back of King Wei and suddenly felt that there was something deeper than the sea hidden in that hunched back - it was the embankment that an old man had built for the east of the Tang Dynasty with his entire life, gentle but indestructible.

The tide slowly receded, revealing smooth pebbles. Li Tai's shadow stretched long in the morning sun, blending with the shadows of distant boats and nearby voices. Like a painting stained by time, it captured the ebb and flow of the Tang Dynasty for half a century, every father's concern for his child, every young man's yearning for distant lands.

This may be the reason why the Tang Dynasty was the Tang Dynasty - there was both deep thinking on the dragon throne and the daily life on the coast. The two were intertwined to create this glorious era.