Tang Dynasty: Taking the Empress Dowager to a brothel, Father Emperor, what a coincidence!

"What do you mean, 'Mountain of Dead Men'? Explain yourself."

The unease in Li Chengqian's heart grew stronger and stronger. He grabbed the Shadow Guard by the collar and roared.

"Your Highness... inside... are heads... mountains of heads..."

Li Chengqian abandoned the Shadow Guards, drew his sword from his waist, and walked into the thick fog.

"Your Highness is in danger."

Li Jing quickly drew his sword and followed.

Cheng Chumo, Wei Zheng, Changsun Chong, Fang Yi'ai, and others followed them inside.

The further in you go, the thicker the fog becomes.

Moreover, the air was filled with a stench so strong that it made it impossible for people to open their eyes.

A gust of cold wind blew by, dispersing much of the thick fog ahead.

The scene ahead was then revealed to everyone.

Those were huge pyramid-shaped buildings.

No, that's not a building at all.

It was a mountain of bones made up of countless human skeletons and bones piled up one after another.

One after another, they stretched as far as the eye could see.

Changsun Chong only glanced at it before bending over and vomiting.

"This...this is..."

Wei Zheng stumbled backward and landed hard on his backside.

Li Chengqian gritted his teeth and walked forward step by step.

The closer you get, the clearer you see.

These "bone mounds" are "jingguan" built from human heads and bones.

The Goguryeo people piled up the bodies of those who died in battle, sealed them with earth, and used this to show off their military prowess and intimidate their enemies.

This endless mountain of bones contains the remains of countless corpses.

Some skulls still had rusted arrowheads stuck in them, and some skeletons even retained their fighting postures from when they were alive, with the bones intertwined together.

What's most chilling is that all the empty eye sockets of the skulls are uniformly facing south.

The south is the direction of the Tang Dynasty, the homeland of the Central Plains.

Millions of innocent souls are trapped in this foreign land, hoping day and night that the royal army can bring them home.

There was not a sound at all.

Cheng Yaojin, who usually talks the most, was now standing there with his mouth agape and his eyes red-rimmed.

He gripped the Xuanhua axe in his hand, the veins on his hand bulging.

"You son of a bitch..."

Li Jing walked shakily to a mound of Jingguan (a type of ancient Chinese mound).

He bent down and picked up a rusty piece of iron from the pile of bones.

He wiped the dirt off with his sleeve, revealing the somewhat blurred patterns on it.

Those were fragments of standard armor from the Sui Dynasty.

With tears in his eyes, Li Jing knelt on the ground, holding the piece of armor in his hands.

"They are soldiers of the Sui Dynasty..."

Li Jing's voice was hoarse, and tears streamed down his face uncontrollably.

"The previous dynasty launched three campaigns against Goguryeo, burying a million soldiers in foreign lands. Back then, I was just a captain, watching helplessly as countless comrades fell on the banks of the Liao River. The Goguryeo people even built a mound of corpses of them."

Li Jing suddenly began to kowtow.

"Brothers, the Tang army is here. I've come to take you home."

Li Jing's cries echoed through the wilderness.

Cheng Yaojin turned around and was about to walk back.

"Uncle Cheng, where are you going?"

Fang Yi'ai grabbed him and asked.

"I'm going to go and kill all those surrendered Goguryeo soldiers in Xuantu City. They'll be buried with us brothers."

Cheng Yaojin roared furiously, his eyes bloodshot.

"stop."

Li Chengqian gave a cold shout.

Cheng Yaojin stopped and turned to look at Li Chengqian.

The harmless smile that Li Chengqian always wore on his face was gone.

He stared at the mound of Jingguan in front of him, his face ashen.

After his rebirth, he always treated this war as a game, a tool to gain political capital, and a means to suppress powerful families.

He even thought that blowing up those Goguryeo people with explosives would be enough.

Only now does he truly understand the significance of this war.

This is not a political game; it is a blood feud.

It is a blood debt that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese in the Central Plains.

"What's so great about killing a few surrendered soldiers? Only by razing the entire Goguryeo to the ground can we do justice to these brothers."

Li Chengqian roared coldly.

Wei Zheng got up from the ground and walked to Li Chengqian's side.

"Your Highness. The two countries are at war, each serving its own master. This is an old grudge from the previous dynasty."

The tyranny of the Sui Dynasty brought about immense suffering and death, and Yang Guang's ambition and love of grand achievements led to such a tragedy.

This debt cannot be entirely attributed to Goguryeo.

Wei Zheng tried to ease the tension with these words, persuading Li Chengqian not to let hatred cloud his judgment.

The Tang Dynasty had only been established for a short time, and it should not have exhausted its national strength for the sake of old grudges from the previous dynasty.

"Lord Wei, shut up."

Li Chengqian stared at Wei Zheng and said.

Wei Zheng paused for a moment, then sighed and turned to look to the side.

At the foot of this largest mound of Jingguan stands a huge stone tablet.

The stone tablet is covered with Goguryeo script.

Wei Zheng beckoned to the scribe who accompanied the army.

"Go see what's written on it."

The clerk ran over nervously and began to examine it carefully.

After looking at it for a while, the clerk's face turned ashen, and he knelt down in front of the stone tablet with a thud.

"read."

Li Chengqian frowned and shouted.

The clerk stammered as he began to read:

"The Great...Great King of Goguryeo...defeated a million-strong army from the Central Plains here...and built a mound of skulls to suppress the dragon vein of the Central Plains..."

"Keep reading."

Cheng Yaojin roared.

The clerk trembled with fright and quickly continued reading:

"The two-legged sheep of the Central Plains are cowardly and incompetent, at the mercy of others... All the people of Goguryeo may be killed, humiliated, and eaten... This monument stands here to demonstrate the eternal hegemony of our great Goguryeo, while the pigs and dogs of the Central Plains shall be slaves forever!"

After the clerk finished reading, he lay prostrate on the ground, too afraid to raise his head.

Wei Zheng's expression changed drastically in an instant.

He had just advised Li Chengqian to let go of old grudges.

I didn't expect the boomerang to return so quickly.

How can this be considered a grudge from the previous dynasty?

This is a violation of the dignity of the entire nation.

Do they call the people of the Central Plains "two-legged sheep"? Or "pigs and dogs"?

Wei Zheng stared intently at the stone tablet, unable to utter a single word.

This stone tablet became the final straw that broke Li Chengqian's rationality.